A new pilot project at Edmonton Police Services (EPS) aimed at improving communication and strengthening communities.
Speaking on CBC Radio Active, Laurie Hauer added that programs like these — with officers who speak these languages and have cultural knowledge — have an added benefit. “There’s an element of interpretation that’s really critical, and that’s the cultural element,” she said.
Edmonton police officers are showing us the languages they speak through a project that uses identifier tags to highlight multilingual officers in the community. The pilot launched in February, using Velcro tags worn on the front of the uniform so community members can see what other language is available to them.
The tags, worn by officers in the EPS west division, are for 71 languages, including Punjabi, Urdu, Cantonese, Mandarin, Basa, Romanian and Ukrainian. It’s part of ongoing work at the police service to increase language accessibility. In 2019, EPS launched its language services department, the first of its kind in Canada.
