This story is part of Asian American Bustle, an occasional series publishing during Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Matthew Loh’s relationship with the Grand Prairie Police Department began with a tragedy.
A 35-year-old Vietnamese man walked into a local skating rink in 2011 and fatally shot his wife and four other relatives before killing himself during his son’s 11th birthday party. The family was like many other Vietnamese people who have called eastern Tarrant County home.
The tragic shooting took place not long after Steve Dye became Grand Prairie’s police chief. Dye asked Loh, the CEO of the retail center Asia Times Square, how the department could offer more support to the Asian American community and the family.
Their initial conversation inspired a partnership that has helped recruit and retain officers of Asian descent and establish a relationship with the city’s nearly 7,000 Vietnamese, according to the 2022 American Community Survey.
“It was a tragic incident but there’s a silver lining; the Asian community and the police department really have a good relationship now,” Loh said.
Studies dating back 30 years show varying levels of trust between Asian Americans and local police. Four police officers who spoke to The Dallas Morning News said they’ve seen mistrust among the Vietnamese community — and improvements during their time on the force.
Efforts from several North Texas police departments to connect with diverse populations, including partnerships with local Asian American hubs and enclaves, aim to cut at skepticism of law enforcement and improve officer diversity. Language and cultural barriers loom large, but experts say increasing Asian representation among police is a key way law enforcement can overcome these hurdles.
Left-behind birthday presents and belongings remained on scene as police tried to investigate the shooting at Forum Roller World more than a decade ago.
Grand Prairie police Lt. Marc Taddonio, who didn’t work on the investigation, said when officers attempted to get witness statements, they found many people didn’t speak English and they had to find interpreters from outside the department. Taddonio has been with the department for over three decades, he said.
“That was I think the pinnacle point of [Dye] figuring out that we didn’t have a good enough community relationship, that we need to go out and do better,” Taddonio, 62, said.
Building new connections
In 2012, the police department launched Unidos, a Hispanic community outreach program in which officers hold meetings with Spanish-speaking residents and act as a resource for those who may need help. Unidos is a program Dye, a fluent Spanish speaker, helped start at the Garland Police Department with Lt. Pedro Barineau in 2002, Barineau said. Unidos means “united” in Spanish.
That was key in a city that’s about 45% Latino or Hispanic.
“What happened was that ended up transforming into having lectures about how to get your license plates, how to get your driver’s license, how to do things around town so we can help teach a lot of people who were separated by the language barrier,” Taddonio said.
In 2012, Grand Prairie police hired their first officer of Asian descent, Thai Nguyen. At Asia Times Square’s annual Lunar New Year event, the police department set up a table to recruit. Nguyen, who was part of a Buddhist youth group, met a city police officer for the first time and asked about the hiring process, he said.
Nguyen, 37, is now a sergeant.
Many local Asian Americans were suspicious of law enforcement, Taddonio said, so the department used events at the retail center to meet people directly and eventually established a satellite office at the plaza. He’s led special events, such as these engagement initiatives, for the past eight years.
To better connect with the growing Vietnamese population that increased by about 2,000 from 2010 to 2022, the department in 2022 created an outreach program, Kết Hợp, that is based on Unidos.
Kết Hợp, which means coming together in Vietnamese, is hosted entirely in Vietnamese at Asia Times Square and local religious institutions every few months.
Since the department began its outreach efforts more than a decade ago, it has increased its number of full-time Asian American police officers to seven, or about 2% of its total officers.
Nguyen, who leads Kết Hợp meetings, has received support from several officers over the years who wanted to help with community engagement, including Officer Brandon Tsai who was killed last year during a police pursuit. Nguyen still has a memento — a patch from Hong Kong — from his fallen fellow Asian American officer.
Having Asian American police officers is incredibly important, Loh said, because people communicate better when they see “someone of your same race who speaks the same language.”
Other departments in North Texas
Other police departments in North Texas that have a similar share of Asian residents also utilize retail centers, religious organizations or grocery stores to build connections with the Asian community.
Police departments such as Richardson, Lewisville, Carrollton, Denton and Arlington have anywhere from 2% to 5% Asian American representation in their workforce.
Carrollton police officers participate in an annual Korean festival each year and focus recruiting efforts at H Mart, located in Koreatown, and New Song Baptist Church. A Richardson police spokesperson said the department’s community relations unit meets community members at DFW Chinatown’s Lunar New Year Event.
The Lewisville police department held an open house with the Chin community — the city has one of the largest Chin populations in the country — and has held several meetings with the Korean consulate along with business owners from Zion Market, a Korean supermarket.
The Arlington Police Department’s engagement centers on the eastern part of the city that includes Ben Thanh Plaza and the surrounding corridor. Officers and police leaders attend cultural events at the plaza, Arlington police spokesman Tim Ciesco said.
“The primary focus… that we had was solely for the business owners to let them know that, ‘Hey, whatever problems or trends that you may have, you can report them to us, and we’ll be actually able to help and partner or even give advice,’” said Kyrus Branch, the deputy chief of the east district for Arlington police.
When launching some of its initiatives, department personnel also have built relationships with a Buddhist temple in Arlington and created pamphlets in English and Vietnamese, Ciesco said.
“The reason why we’re intentional is because historically if we don’t have that connectivity, they may not report those crimes,” Branch, 43, said.
Asian Americans’ perception of police
When asked in a 2016 poll from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund whether police departments treat racial and ethnic groups equally, about half of the 14,000 Asian Americans questioned were split between yes and no. Ethnic groups differed in their beliefs, NPR reported, with those of Korean or Indo-Caribbean descent largely answering no. The largest portion of people who answered yes included Cambodian and Vietnamese Americans.
There also was a generational divide in the poll. The organization reported that 68% of the youngest voters aged 18-29 believed police treat racial and ethnic groups unfairly while only 32% of Asian American voters ages 70 and up believed so.
There is a limited amount of research on Asian Americans’ perceptions of the police, said Ivan Sun, a professor in the department of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.
One of the earliest studies in the early 1990s found that the main concerns of Chinese Americans in southern California were fear of crime and perceived police prejudice while Vietnamese Americans had concerns about poor communication with policing and gang activity. A 2011 study, of which Sun was a co-author, found influences on perceptions from Chinese immigrants included what neighborhoods they lived in, whether they are foreign-born and their perceptions of police in their home country.
For a study published in 2023, University of Delaware doctoral student Stephanie Ha interviewed 20 Asian Americans and found the majority of them were very supportive of policing.
“They definitely acknowledged that… [there are] improvements that can be made, especially in terms of Asian American relations,” Ha said. “One of the things they talked about was definitely seeing more representation of Asian Americans on police forces would be really beneficial.”
Some variables that played a role included age and ethnicity. A majority of her participants were of Chinese descent, but Ha said the two people of Indian descent shared concerns of being in contact with police and what biases an officer might have against them because of their skin tone.
“Age is a very consistent predictor,” Sun said. “It’s not just Asian Americans, the younger generation [is] normally more critical.”
2020 data from the U.S. Department of Justice did not specify the share of Asian American officers but said a range of populations, including Asian Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders made up about 4% of the country’s local law enforcement. Those same groups represented a little over 6% of the total U.S. population that year.
‘We had to engage the community’
Asian Americans have different reasons for becoming police officers. Nguyen, who came to the U.S. almost three decades ago, said it was his childhood dream.
Liz Duong, a community outreach officer with Arlington PD, said she had no intention of joining the police. At the University of Texas at Arlington, she said she became interested in criminal justice after hearing about a forensics class at a career fair.
When applying for jobs after graduating from college, she sent in an application to the department and said the process moved by very fast. Duong’s final interview was scheduled, she said, so she prayed and asked God for a sign that this is what she needed to do. On a drive home, she saw a shooting star.
“So, I was like, ‘Oh boy. Okay well, I guess we’re going to do this.’ And so, I did so seven years later I’m still here,” said Duong, a south Arlington native.
Duong, 29, currently does outreach with the unhoused but previously worked with the Vietnamese community when she was on foot patrol.
“In the Vietnamese community, there’s a lot of distrust and fear that comes when [interacting with] officers, and that comes from the policing style in Vietnam,” Duong said. “So, a lot of it was trying to help them break down that wall and help them realize, ‘Hey that’s not our style of policing over here, and please call us if you need something.’”
While not all encompassing, these efforts can help improve the diversity of a department’s officers and increase community trust. They can even diminish the outside resources need to investigate tragedies — like the one at the roller rink that killed 29-year-old Trini Do, 21-year-old Hien Ta, 28-year-old Michelle Ta, 16-year-old Lynn Ta and 25-year-old Thuy Nguyen.
Taddonio, a native of nearby Arlington, said these efforts are important because of how diverse Grand Prairie has become.
“Nobody came in and showed us how to do this,” he said. “We felt like we had to engage the community, especially our cultural communities, because we have a very high population of Hispanics, African Americans and Asians.”
Staff writer Hojun Choi contributed to this report.