When Captain Jeff Ausnow took command of the Placer County Sheriff’s Department Tahoe substation in October, one of the first things he noticed was the fractured relationship with the Kings Beach Hispanic community. This was due, in part, to the immigration raids that occurred last April, where deputies assisted Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in rounding up illegal immigrants. But another reason is that the sheriff’s department no longer had a connection to the Latino community since its Spanish-speaking community services officer, Kristin Mann, was removed almost three years ago due to budget cuts.
Thanks to Ausnow, Mann is back on the job. For Kings Beach community leaders, this sends a strong signal that the sheriff’s department wants to repair a damaged relationship and restore the trust that was broken in April.
Mann started as the community services officer in 1997. Her job was to act as a liaison between the Kings Beach community and the sheriff’s department. This included working with the schools and local nonprofit organizations like the North Tahoe Family Resource Center, Boys & Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe, and Tahoe Women’s Services to prevent domestic violence. Her role was also to help immigrants understand the cultural differences between the United States and their home country as it pertains to law enforcement and the legal system.
‘My job was to reduce the fear and intimidation of coming to a new country,’ said Mann, who speaks fluent Spanish and English along with four other languages, ‘to teach people the way we do things here is different than in Mexico or Guatemala.’
Some of this included allaying fears that calling the sheriff’s department or fire department would cost money, explaining the process of what happens when someone gets arrested, and helping residents to resolve landlord-tenant issues. Mann also helped organize Toys for Tots and set up a family resource fair where people could come to learn about parent groups, sports, hospitals, afterschool activities, and education.
Mann said she worked hard to garner the trust of the Kings Beach community, which was not easy since she was a woman and not Hispanic. She earned that trust, she said, by being a good listener, honest, neutral, and fair.
But in 2007, the community services office was shuttered and Mann was transferred to Tahoe City dispatch and then, after it was closed, to records. The only person fluent in Spanish in the Tahoe City substation was now gone, and with her went many of the relationships she had developed over the 10 years she had worked in Kings Beach.
Nowhere did this become more evident than after the April immigration raids. The event caused much confusion and fear in the Kings Beach Latino community, yet the person they would have normally turned to to help them understand the situation was gone.
‘She was the go-to person when people had issues or concerns, but that communication shut down when she went away,’ said Paul Bancroft, Tahoe Women’s Services prevention program coordinator. ‘The immigration activity exacerbated the situation.’
In Mann’s absence, community members turned to the FRC for answers. While the organization has a bilingual staff, it was missing a vital element that Mann had — access to law enforcement.
‘We didn’t know why people were getting deported,’ said Emilio Vaca, FRC executive director. ‘She could have told us if they had outstanding warrants or a deportation letter if she had been here.’
The FRC and the local Hispanic community felt so much in the dark that Vaca actually called up Mann to see if she could explain what was going on. He also contacted the Placer County Board of Supervisors about getting her back. Without Mann, Vaca said, people didn’t know who to turn to. Her absence was also eroding people’s trust in the sheriff’s department that Mann had worked so hard to build.
‘Definitely trust in law enforcement went from high respect to not having someone to talk to,’ Vaca said. ‘There became a huge gap. It’s hard to trust the law when you don’t have someone to talk to.’
Captain Ausnow, who was a deputy at the lake from 1987 to 1998 before moving to Auburn, recognized that the lack of a community liaison was harming the relationship between the sheriff’s department and the Kings Beach community.
‘The epitome of community policing is getting to know the community we serve and having them get to know us,’ he said. ‘By not having a voice in that community or a finger on its pulse, we were missing out on what was going on in that portion of the county. It made sense to put her back out there.’
Mann started back at her old position out of Kings Beach Elementary at the end of November.
Vaca and Bancroft, who recently met with Ausnow to discuss holding cultural proficiency workshops with deputies, see Mann’s re-installment in Kings Beach as the first step in redeveloping trust between the Hispanic community and the sheriff’s department.
‘Bringing Kristin Mann back is indicative of the new leadership of Captain Ausnow and his commitment toward rebuilding those relationships,’ Bancroft said. ‘It’s a really good step, but it’s just one step.’
