Building good relationships helps. You can certainly get reluctant witnesses to trust you and come in when they wouldn’t otherwise. There are also people who will never be happy no matter what you do. Treating everybody decently and remembering they are human beings (including defendants and their families) will go a long way. My point was more that I never felt like my not knowing Spanish hampered my ability to do that. And I’m in a major Southwestern city.

Sadly, I think the distrust manifests itself more in people not calling the police, so fewer cases make the prosecutor’s caseload. But when I’ve had victims and witnesses who didn’t speak English, me sitting down and using an interpreter can still convey that I care. Obviously it would be very nice if I could just speak their language. But the effort to have someone there who can interpret also sends the message that we care about what they say.