CrimeBeat: Can law enforcement use a child to translate for parents?

When responding to a call, can law enforcement have children ?translate for their parents?

No law explicitly states children can’t translate for their parents, but it’s best if law enforcement finds a different means to conduct its investigation.

“In rare circumstances they could” use kids to translate, said Sgt. Jon Wolf who oversees Spanish language introduction and testing for the Santa Rosa Police Department. “(Kids) could aid in a basic situation, if we need initial information in a rare case it would be the last resort. That info would always be vetted.”

The preferred choice is to have a bilingual officer respond to the call and speak to a person in their language, the ?sergeant said.

In mid-2017, roughly 11 percent of Santa Rosa police officers were fluent Spanish speakers, the department reported.

But for the non-English and non-?Spanish speakers in Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa police use LanguageLine, a third-party interpreter service. When an officer needs translation, a call is placed to the 24-hour service and an interpreter aids the cop and the victim, witness or suspect.

Wolf said officers use LanguageLine “all the time” to help communicate with residents.

In the courts, defense attorneys often have had judges deem inadmissible information gathered through a child acting as an interpreter.

“It’s not good policy,” said Bernice Espinoza, a criminal immigration specialist with the Sonoma County Public Defender. “You don’t know the language level of the child.”

Additionally, officers don’t always know whether or not the child is a witness and could be “tampering with information between witnesses,” Espinoza said.

And using a child as a translator when a crime may have been committed could harm the child and create psychological distress, she said. Children could be torn between wanting to comply with a police officer and the authority of their parents, Espinoza said.

“There’s other ways to get the information,” she said.