DAMMAM: All too often, crimes against non-Arabic speaking expatriates go unreported because of their fears about getting police involved.

Robberies, burglaries, purse-snatching and mobile-phone and laptop grabs often result in arrests and convictions of the perpetrators; what is unknown is how many avoid punishment because a crime is not reported.

In one case, a jewelry heist of about SR70,000 went unreported because of the maid’s legal status.

“Part of the reason was that we had a maid who was not on our iqama,” the reluctant victim said. “She was a legal resident but had come to the Kingdom on someone else’s visa. If we had reported the theft to the police the first question they would have asked us would have been about the maid. She was a nice and religious person, and we did not want to get her into trouble. So we never went to the police.”

Even when police are contacted, the inability of expatriate victims and police to communicate with one another makes the fear of being misunderstood outweigh the value of the goods stolen.

An Indian family whose home was burglarized during Ramadan was encouraged to call police by a Saudi neighbor who offered to speak to the police for them, but when police arrived the neighbor was asked to leave.

“Our neighbor promised to help us out by talking to the police,” said the Indian husband and father. “Even as we were weighing whether to report the incident he rang the police, and policemen came immediately. ‘Who is the owner of the house?’ the policemen wanted to know. ‘I am the owner,’ I said. They then asked everyone else to go away, including our neighbor who had promised to speak to the police in Arabic.”

The Indian man said the interrogation was unnerving.

“The policemen conducted their investigations, collected all the fingerprints and then asked me three questions: ‘Is your passport safe? Do you bring company documents at home? Do you keep company cash at home?’ I said no to all three questions. After listening to my answers, they said: ‘A thief comes for one of these three reasons. The answer to all the three questions is in the negative so you are the problem.’”

Language problems continued to heighten tensions.

“I felt offended,” the victim said. “They asked me to follow them to the police station. I did. They wrote a complaint on my behalf in Arabic and asked me to sign on it, but I refused saying I didn’t know what was written there. That infuriated the policeman. His commander then explained everything to me in English what was written in Arabic.”

The man said the experience left him disheartened.

“Here I was a victim of a theft and was being seen as a thief, as well,” he said. “Such experiences tend to discourage expatriates from reporting the cases to police.”

Some have suggested the police ensure that officers responding to a crime scene should be able to use the services of a translator if none of the police can communicate with the victim. Police say all residents need to report all crimes when they happen.

“Our men are trained to exhaust all possibilities, and in such cases there will be aggressive cross questioning, but that shouldn’t deter those who have not committed any crime,” said one senior police officer. “Maafi jurm, maafi khauf, (no crime, no fear).”

The officer said when such cases are reported it makes the task of police work easier. “We document all the fingerprints, and as and when we arrest the criminals it helps us to convict them and to deport them if they happen to be foreigners.”

He said all the fingerprints taken from the scene of a crime are fed into a national database. “That is also one of the key ways of arresting criminals,” the policeman said. “My advice to expatriates will be to approach the police and help them in nabbing the culprits. It is everyone’s duty.”