Mending bridges

Rights for All People works to fix strained relationship between immigrants and law enforcement

By BRANDON JOHANSSON
The Aurora Sentinel

AURORA, CO. | The volunteers with Rights for All People don’t seem to have trouble staying busy.

In the past year and a half, volunteers with the immigrants’ rights group have knocked on hundreds of doors, spoken with hundreds of local immigrants and even met with the city’s police chief.

And, the volunteers say, they have more work to do in their effort to inform members of the city’s Latino community about what rights they have and to mend what can be a strained relationship between immigrants and law enforcement.

“The reason why were working through this organization is because we want our children to grow up in a world where they can live without fear, and where things are equal,” Consuelo Vazquez, a volunteer with the organization, said through an interpreter.

Early this month, the group, which has been active in the area for more than a decade, opened an office in north Aurora near East 25th Avenue and Dayton Street.

There isn’t too much happening at the headquarters now as RAP gets settled into their new home in the Colorado Coalition of Faith building.

“We’re just getting started here in Aurora, so primarily we’re using this space right now for meetings and for planning,” said Emily Parkey, the group’s lead organizer in Aurora.

In the coming months, the group plans to have regular office hours so community members who have concerns — including reports of civil rights violations — can knock on the group’s door and get help, Parkey said.

RAP has been active in the metro area since at least 1999, working closely with the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition on efforts aimed at improving the lives of local immigrants.

Lee Ann Gott, an Aurora teacher and volunteer with the group, said that RAP has had members from Aurora for years, but the group always met in Denver, which made it difficult for Aurora members to be as active as they might have liked to be.

Because of connections the group made through the city’s Key Community Response Team and Human Relations Commission, they were able to rent the Aurora office from the Colorado Coalition of Faith, Parkey said.

One of the big projects the group has planned is working with the city to develop a written policy on when police will notify federal immigration authorities when they contact an illegal immigrant.

Alma Mendoza, a RAP volunteer, said having that kind of policy in place is important because it would mean illegal immigrants are more likely to report to police when they are a victim of crime.

“Often times people don’t report crimes,” she said through an interpreter. “This is a problem that affects the entire community, including Anglos because when people don’t report crimes, the whole community is effected when the crime rate rises.”

The group met with Police Chief Dan Oates earlier this year and met with other members of the police department to discuss issues important to the immigrant community.

The meetings were similar to a series of forums held last year that brought police and members of the black community together, Parkey said.

Those forums didn’t include many members of the Spanish-speaking community, and members of RAP say they hope by meeting with police now, they can accomplish some of the things last year’s forums did, including laying out plans to improve communication between police and the community and recruiting a more-diverse police force.

“We’re trying to compliment those efforts,” Parkey said.

For more on RAP, visit their website at www.rap-dpt.org.