To protect & speak: Cop in Brooklyn’s Chinatown teaches himself Mandarin

[Kamaji]

To protect & speak: Cop in Brooklyn’s Chinatown teaches himself Mandarin

By Griffin Kelly
May 7, 2022

His mission is to protect — and communicate.

With a growing population of native Chinese language speakers in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and Bensonhurst neighborhoods — along with the surge of hate crimes against Asian people in New York and across the country in the past two years — Neighborhood Coordination Officer Joseph Aiello of the 72nd Precinct decided he needed to better relate to the people he serves.

So he decided to learn Mandarin.

“I felt like there was a boundary between the two cultures. We would respond to scenes where nobody spoke the language, so we’d have to wait and get a translator,” explained Aiello, 25. “I wanted to take the initiative to control a scene and communicate if anyone needs medical attention.”

Aiello, who has Italian heritage, knows some basic Spanish. His former partner, Officer Kai Lee, was fluent in Mandarin.

“When I worked with him, he would be able to have full conversations because he’s a native speaker, and I would just be sitting there in the back, like, ‘I have no idea what’s going on,’” Aiello said.

Aiello isn’t receiving any formal training. Attending classes is too expensive, he said. Instead, he listens to an audiobook while on patrol, practices small talk with neighborhood fishmongers, and orders traditional Chinese eats in Mandarin, including coconut buns and yuenyeung, which is a mix of coffee and milk tea, at local bakeries.

*  *  *

Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/05/07/cop-in-brooklyns-chinatown-teaches-himself-mandarin/

[Kamaji]

That will serve him well; not only because he'll be able to communicate better with people, but because he might be able to overhear important stuff that was said aloud because the speaker assumed that, being white, he wouldn't understand.