SPOKANE, Wash. – Balinda Kizombo is a proud volunteer of the Spokane Police Department Reserve Unit. He graduated from the academy last fall and volunteers 20 hours a month doing the same tasks as full-time officers.
He says he fell in love with the program because he gets to learn at a slower pace and can still work at World Relief, where he speaks six languages and helps refugees resettle in the Inland Northwest.
Balinda says the criminal justice system in America is the fairest system he’s ever experienced. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region faced with civil war and unrest since the late 1990s.
UNICEF reports thousands of children across the DRC have been forced to fight and kill. Balinda says militia and law enforcement were often one in the same and would threaten people to join their forces, do what they wanted, and would hurt and execute people who refused.
He, his two brothers, and parents fled the DRC when he was eight and went to a refugee camp in Uganda. Balinda and his brothers resettled in Spokane when he was a teenager. And now, he’s settling into a position to help other refugees new to our country by working with Spokane Police.
He works with Spokane Police Department’s Community Outreach Program and Senior Officer Jen Kerns, teaching refugees about the laws of America. Officer Kerns says it is pivotal to educate refugees about things like drinking and driving and domestic violence, which are legal in many parts of the world.
Officer Kerns says educating refugees protects them from breaking the law in their new land, and also helps them from becoming victims. Kerns says extortion and bribery are common for groups of authority in other parts of the world, and that refugees must learn that paying people off is not expected, and is not legal in America.
Balinda hopes to eventually work as a full-time officer for the Spokane Police Department. He says he’s proud to work for a police department that upholds the law and is held accountable. He looks forward to raising his new daughter with his wife in a place he’s happy to call home, Spokane.
