Post & Mail photo/Chris Meyers
Gina Kessinger, administrative assistant for the Columbia City Police Department, finishes a Rosetta Stone lesson. The department recently purchased two copies of the software to help officers learn the language.

By Chris Meyers
Staff writer
Of Whitley County’s total population, 98.4 percent of it is Caucasian, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, but that doesn’t mean local police don’t encounter people who don’t speak English.
To help make such encounters easier, the Columbia City Police Department has purchased two copies of Rosetta Stone, a computer software program to help officers learn Spanish as easily and quickly as possible.
“We have four officers currently training in it and another five signed up to do so,” Mike Petersen, CCPD chief, said of the software.
The training is not mandatory, but Petersen said the officers overall have shown an interest in learning the language.
“There’s a huge drive to do it on their own,” he said.
The department has been looking for about two years for the best way for the officers to learn Spanish and found what they were looking for in Rosetta Stone.
Previously, the officers had what Petersen referred to as a “cheat sheet” of common Spanish phrases.
At a total price of $900, Petersen feels the department will get its money’s worth for the investment, especially given the high costs of classroom training sessions.
“It is a total immersion in the language,” Gina Kessinger, administrative assistant for the department, said of her experiences so far.
Much like some rigorous classroom courses on foreign language, the software does not use any English during lessons.
“It’s amazing how fast it teaches the language,” Petersen said.
Whitley County sheriff’s deputies also encounter non-English speaking people — usually during traffic stops.
To help in those situations, the department has an on-call translator.
Sgt. Mike Engle of the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department said traffic stops are the most frequent occasions where a translator is needed.
Whitley County Sheriff Mark Hodges said the jail’s confinement officers started Spanish training a few months ago.

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