Right now the Tulsa Police Department is in desperate need of officers who speak Spanish. We found out why there’s a shortage and what the agency is doing to turn it around.

On a typical day you’ll find Officer David Ledezma patrolling Tulsa’s north side. He is one of only 28 officers with the Tulsa Police Department who can communicate with Latino citizens.

Tulsa’s hispanic community is 70,000 strong. Federal guidelines suggest a police department should reflect about 10 percent of the community it serves. Meaning TPD needs more than double the Spanish-speaking officers it has now. The department recruited Ledezma from New Mexico a year and a half ago.

“I wanted to be in an area where I assist and help and I have certainly been able to do that here,” said Ofc. Ledezma.

His Spanish comes in handy almost everyday.

“If its not on a car stop or a call or assisting other officers in other parts of town I use it daily,” Ofc. Ledezma said.

But, a Spanish-speaking officer is not always available to help, which makes it difficult for other officers who don’t know the language.

“They struggle. They absolutely struggle,” said Ofc. Jesse Guardiola, TPD’S Director of Hispanic Outreach.

In some cases the officers have no choice but to use children as translators. Ofc.Guardiola explains why it’s a struggle to hire locally.

“The issue is the pool of applicants we have in oklahoma are very young. The average age of Latinos is 14 in Oklahoma.,” Ofc. Guardiola said.

He said the shortage of Latino officers in Tulsa could lead to distrust of police in the hispanic community.

“If you are victim of a crime and you were just driving through east Tulsa or an area where you have quite a few Latinos in that area and they don’t call the police department out of fear then we all as a city fail in this,” Ofc. Guardiola said.

The presence of officers like Ledezma help mitigate the issue, but doesn’t solve it. Right now TPD is progressive about hiring more Spanish-speaking officers. In the next few months officials will travel out of state to New Mexico and Texas to recruit college graduates.