“Emergency dispatchers and response teams are struggling with a widening language divide as they attempt to service Waterloo’s growing population of non-English speakers.

The communication barrier creates problems for all parties involved, from the dispatcher deciphering a 911 call to the officer trying to put together an accurate police report to the concerned resident trying to communicate a problem with little to no knowledge of the English language.

Over recent years, Waterloo Police have dealt with a slew of languages including Bosnian, Spanish, Serbian, Croatian, Burmese, French and Vietnamese.

In 2006, Burmese refugees began settling in Waterloo for the employment opportunities at Tyson’s meat plant, and the community has been growing ever since.

Dispatchers at the Black Hawk Consolidated Communications Center receive about a half-dozen calls a day in foreign languages.

But resources for interpretation are slim, a Courier investigation shows. More.

See: WCF Courier

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