Two cops who are reaching out

By Pam Louwagie and Dan Browning, Star Tribune

Last update: October 10, 2005 - 11:00 PM

Kevin Navara walked into the tiny St. Paul apartment, his tall frame and booming voice commanding attention.

He stepped carefully over the toys strewn across the living-room floor and asked the Hmong children who lived there if he could see their older sister. She was a sexual-assault victim, and it was time for him to check in with her.

While he waited, he walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and posed questions: Where's your mom? Do you have food for the baby? What's the baby going to eat?

It wasn't the first time he'd visited the family. And it probably wasn't going to be the last. As a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy on the Minnesota Gang Strike Force, Navara has direct contact with girls who have been assaulted and live in tough conditions. The father of three can't help but take some cases to heart.

That's also true of his St. Paul police counterpart, Sgt. Richard Straka.

Both are experts on Hmong gangs (Straka published a piece in an FBI journal about Hmong gang rape and prostitution). And both are well-known faces at Hmong New Year's celebrations and other gatherings, where gang members and victims alike greet them with waves and hellos.

Each took an interest in the Hmong community after encountering its people through volunteer work. Navara worked for a Ramsey County Sheriff's Office after-school program for Hmong children about eight years ago. Straka led a Hmong Boy Scout troop for a decade.

Now they have devoted their professional lives --and some of their personal lives -- to the lonely cause of breaking codes of silence and shame about rape in the Hmong community.

Like so many law enforcement officers, their work often goes unnoticed by the community at large.

Navara and Straka say parents of Hmong kids in trouble are always cooperative and ask for help trying to keep their children on the right path. But they say the metro-area community hasn't done enough to acknowledge and stop the problem.

"I don't know what it is about this problem that we can't get a grip on," Straka said. "I want something done to help these girls. That's the only thing I care about."

So they step in where they can.

Each has mentored victims, helping them find jobs and get counseling.

Straka, through his Boy Scout troop, has taken kids camping and fishing. On at least one occasion, he brought Hmong rape victims Asian food when they were staying in shelter homes on city outskirts.

"You see that these little girls, they get victimized more than once. They get victimized by the suspects. Sometimes they even get victimized in their own community," Straka said. "It's like they're just stuck in the middle. ... We just want to try to somehow help out."

Navara and his wife have gone to one girl's high school choir concerts. He once took a wrapped toy from under his family Christmas tree to give to the child of a teen girl he was driving to a shelter on Christmas Eve.

"You've got little girls out there that their lives are being destroyed. ...They try to hide it. It's going to be shameful, embarrassing," Navara said. "I want them to know there's people who understand what happened and there's people that will help them out of their situations."

The writers are at

plouwagie@startribune.com and dbrowning@startribune.com.

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