My name is Juan Pablo Montoya. I work with the Arlington County Police Department, assigned to the Community Engagement Division. We participate in civic association meetings and community events.
My mission as one of the Latino officers in the department is to engage, primarily, the Latino community. I grew up Medellin, Colombia. I moved to the States when I was 19 years old. I lived in New York for a few years before joined the military. I was in the Marine Corps for 10 years, stationed in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and then I went to Iraq for 10 months and then I went to Afghanistan for 12 months. I served the country and now I'm serving the community.
I deployed in 2009 to Iraq and then 2011 to Afghanistan so when I came they asked me if I wanted to go to the D.C. area, to the Marine Barracks. It was just ceremonies, funerals, parades. I was kind of tired of deployment, going to combat zones. I wished to see something different. So I got here in 2012, and I liked the area. I'm from New York, but I didn't want to go back to New York. Here the pace is slower. It's not crazy, like New York City or Yonkers, everything moving at a fast speed. The pace is different here. I find here that it’s a little more like home and it's more comfortable. I began my career as a police officer in D.C., but D.C. is very busy, with a lot of crime. It's hard to interact with the community when there is a lot of crime and the department doesn’t have that many people. So I was looking for a place to go besides D.C. When I came to Arlington to the police station, everybody was friendly. I met a lot of people the first day I come in check it out. I saw that everybody was happy, everybody's smiling. I did a ride along with an officer, and I noticed that he got plenty of time to do what he wants to do, like traffic stops. He’s got time to grab a water to drink at 7-Eleven. We had time to walk around, to help other units with calls for service. I noticed that there was plenty of time here for you to do your own thing. So I thought, "Okay, if I come here, I'm going to have time to engage the community, I'm going to have time to walk around in the beat, but I'm going to have time to do my own policing, what I want to do as a police officer." So I came in here and was on patrol for over two years before I become a Community Outreach officer.
I started my patrol in the north side of Arlington in the area around the hospital - George Mason, Wilson Boulevard, Lee Highway. And then I got moved to the 3rd District. This area is 3D; Columbia Pike, between Columbia Pike and Arlington Boulevard, over to Washington Boulevard. After that I was on the Pike the Delta 35 beat, all the Pike from the east to the west, the whole thing. We covered the Pike from McDonald's to the Mega Mart area. I was going east and then going west every day. When I got assigned to this area, normally we saw a lot of domestic incidents, a lot of accidents, a lot of disorderly, homeless people, drunk people walking around. That was most of the calls in the Pike.
This area was a bit different to work than North Arlington. I mean, all the county is diverse. You can find Spanish people, African-Americans in the north, but this area right here, Columbia Pike, the majority of people in this area are Hispanics. A lot of the restaurants are Hispanics restaurants.You can find anybody of any nationality in the area, though; the Pike is very diverse. It’s good and it's not a challenge. It’s good because you interact with everybody on the Pike. There's so many different type of people in the Pike.
In my new mission, I’m not in patrol. I am not responding to calls for service, but I assist the patrol units when they need Spanish translators. When I see an accident, if they're busy, I take care of the call. If I see a dispute between neighbors, I respond. I still help patrol, but in a different capacity. If there's somebody having an argument, I might be there to calm them down.
We are trained for this in the police academy, but we have extra training in our department. We have a CIT, Crisis Intervention Team. They teach us how to deal with people going through mental or emotional issues. Some people have bad days. They feel down and or they may feel aggressive. So we go and talk to them. They teach you how deal with those situations, because there's a lot of mental health that we deal with now these days in the police department. We get good training how to deal with these situations. but we're not doctors. We're not psychiatrists. We're not the experts in the matter. We are police officers. We are training to help people to deal with different situations, we have knowledge of the basics of how deal with mental health, but we we’re not the experts. When these people call for help, obviously we have to respond for the safety of the person, the safety for the others.
We get diversity training too. The County provides us with classes online. Since day one, people deal with diversity, with different types of nationalities. We understand and know how deal to with many kinds of different people.
My job is with the Community Outreach is engaging. We deal with any type of young kids, adults, teenagers. The department has created a division that is going to focus on young kids. the youth division. Because they removed the school resource officers from the schools, the department is creating these units so that way we can still be dealing with the kids’ issues. Even though the officers are no longer in the school, that doesn't mean the problems go away. But that doesn't mean they're not going to report the problems to the police. We're going to try to keep these problems away from the patrol units. They already go into different calls for service, and when the kids go home and want to report something or the kid is going through something, or the kid runs away constantly on the weekends, we don't have the school resource officers to handle it anymore. So we have created that unit to focus on those kids that need help. We are going to be at the police station with the youth division. Let's say when a patrol officer goes to a call for service and a kid constantly runs away and their parents tell us, "Yeah, he's been running away for a few days," that unit is going to get in contact with the youth division officer. The patrol officer is going to take a report and is going to notify the youth division. And then the youth division is going to do a follow-up, is going to provide help. It's going to give different options to the parents, how to deal with the kid, and to see what's going on with the kid. This is a privilege. We have so many resources in the county for everything. If anybody needs help, the County has so many resources but a lot of people in the community don’t know about them.
My interaction with the citizens is always positive because I like to engage, I like to talk to people. I get out my car. I walk. When I go to the 7-Eleven, when I go to a restaurant to buy food, when I'm waiting for my food, I talk to anybody that is there. I try to engage in conversations because we want to take away that stigma with the police like, "oh, the police are the bad guys." But we are just here to help people. We're not here to ask people in the Pike, "Are you a citizen? Are you a resident? Do you have papers?" We not here to ask people about their immigration status. We are here to provide help to the community.
We don't have a perfect relationship with the community because a lot of Hispanics people in the Countycome from other countries and in those countries, they are afraid of the police. When they come here, they don't know anything about the police. They don't know what kind of crimes they can report to the police. They don't know a lot of stuff about how we do police work in the United States.
One of my jobs now that I'm going to be appointed to be the first Latino Liaison Officer is to try build that relationship between the Latino community and the police department. Because of the language barrier, because they're new in the County or the country, they're scared of the police or they think the police are going to deport them. There’s a little bit of misunderstanding about our duties as the police department. We are here to help and provide service to the community. We're not here to ask you your immigration status and stuff like that.
People are not going to report crimes, people are going to hide, and people can use that as an excuse, "oh, the Spanish people are not reporting crime because they're scared," so they're going to commit crimes towards Latino communities. They're going to become vulnerable and they're not going to report the crime. So this is one of the issues that we have, that people don't call the police. Sometimes just me having a conversation with somebody in the Pike helps. I spend a lot of time in the parks. I go around, I talk to people. Somebody might say, "Officer, by the way, two months ago a guy punched me." Another might tell me, "Hey, Officer, one of my friends got assaulted a few months ago. He got a pistol whip in the head and somebody stole his wallet, his money." And that's robbery. That's a big crime. That is not just something petty, it is a big crime, a felony. It's something that needs to be reported, something that needs to be in our radar in this area. If community trust builds with our department, hopefully crime will be less, people will be safer.
Sometimes it can be they are afraid of the police. Also they can be like, they don't know if they need to report that or they don't speak English and they worry, "I don't speak English," or, "How I'm going to call the police?" We are here to educate them and say, "Look, you can call the police. We have people who canspeak Spanish., they are going to answer the phone call. If not, they're going to have a translator. You can call the police every time. You can request a Spanish translator and you can call the police.” And we're not calling ICE. We are here to provide service and to provide help to whoever needs it. It's equal help for everybody.
The toughest thing obviously is that we deal with crime sometimes. At the end of the day we’re doing our job, and by the end of the day we want to go home to see our family. This profession, it's dangerous. You don't know what's going to happen. Things can happen anywhere. The hardest part is that every day we walk into the unknown. It's not, as we say in police work “a routine traffic stop.” It's never a routine day. Every day for us, it's a new day.
I find my military training has been helpful in my police work. In military training they train you to de-escalate situations, how to deal with stressful situations. I deal with my tools, first talking with somebody, then move to what is the next step to de-escalate a situation. The military is diverse too. We have a lot of people in the military from different places of the country, nationalities. So you already deal with a lot of other people, youlearn different cultures. Based on the training you can have an idea how to work with Middle Eastern people, Latino, Korean, Japanese, Africans, to deal with all the people.
When I got to the US from Colombia I was 19. I thought " I want to serve. I’ve always wanted to be in the military." I was working in a dealership across from a recruiting station and one of the recruiters was buying a car. He was in full uniform. I aid to him "Oh, damn, sir. I would like to serve in the military one day." Theuniform looked nice. Marine Corps uniform, the best uniform in the world. So I went to the Marine Corps office; in 2007. There was a war in Iraq, Afghanistan. I took the test. I passed the test. Next thing I know, less than a month, I was already in bootcamp. Oh my God, marching in Parris Island, talking to myself, wondering what I'm doing. Because it's hard, I am sure everybody had the same thoughts. But that's the best thing I ever did in my life. I'm so proud to be a Marine. I was proud of my service. And now I'm serving the community. I'm around Columbia Pike talking with the community. A lot of people recognize me all the time.
I'm going to get appointed to be the first Latino Liaison Officer in the Arlington County Police Department. The first one. It's a good thing they’ve created this so I can interact more with the Latino community. The Latino community is going to have a person to go to. It’s a good thing that now we have this, so the community can go "Hey, let's go see the Latino Liaison." They’ll feel a little more comfortable. Not so scared. We have a big population of Latinos. We can start engaging with the community, focus on the vulnerable Latino community that is maybe affected by crime or other issues. We want them to feel comfortable. For any reason, we hope they can now call the police. They just don't. They say "Oh, I don't want to call the police because I'm afraid. Oh, I don't want to report this because I'm afraid." No, we want them to feel comfortable so they can call the police for anything. And not just when trouble is going on, but also when they have an event, like a parade or special community gathering.
It's hard to tell what the Pike is going to look like in a few years. The way Arlington is going, all these buildings, people coming in here, it's probably going to be like a little Manhattan really soon. Expensive, buildings and people from everywhere. I like it, though. It's a nice place to work. Every time when we come to the station to work, I don't hear any officers complain about the community.
This is a hard time to become a cop, though. Obviously, in many other places, a lot of police officers are not happy just to go to work. Here, we're still coming here with a smile on the face. We come here ready to help the community. Sometimes when I'm driving around, a call will come in. Somebody needs help. We go there really quick. We're not complaining. We want to help. We're here to help.
Usually the community is happy when they see us. In Arlington County our police response can be less than three minutes. So every time you call the police, we're going to be there for you.
We hear the community asking for many things. They want more police presence in the community because we’ve got people breaking in garages or in the parking lots, stealing things from the cars. But we have a short staff. We cannot be in every single spot in the county. A lot of people say, "Oh, this bad stuff is going on in this area. You guys aren’t doing anything." "Okay. When did you report it to us?" "Oh no, I didn’t call because you guys don't do anything." "Well, you’ve got to report it first. If you don't report, how can we help? Did you call us? Did you go online?” You can report crimes online. You can call, send emails to us, complain about locations, about speeding, incidents, but you’ve got to report so that we can help.
As a Latino officer, I want to bring solutions to the table. Let's complete the community. Let see what kind of issues we have and what are the solutions. We don't want to continue saying, "Oh, this is the problem." We need the community to bring solutions to the table. We can do a lot as a police department. We're having events at the Mega Mart with the chief and other officers. We're going to all these events because we want to help the community, to see what we can do better as a police department in ways that are going to affect and benefit you, to help you to live better and to have a better interaction with us.
Photography and interview by Lloyd Wolf.
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