Boise has more than 2,000 refugees from cultures as diverse as Iraq, Kurdistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Vietnam, and Rwanda. The department's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) made contact with the Mountain States Refugee Center. Three years later, COPS orientation sessions with new groups of refugees are a regular part of the agenda at Mountain States. A key resource is the Outreach to New Americans program. This was established in 1993 by the National Crime Prevention Council in partnership with the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The outreach program assists communities in building collaborative relationships between police and refugees. It also sponsors an annual Best Practices Conference for police/refugee partnerships. Outreach staff also provide on-site, telephone, and written technical assistance to refugee programs and law enforcement agencies. Some examples of police-refugee programs are refugee/immigrant hiring by police departments, police instruction for refugees about laws and Neighborhood Watch techniques, refugee/police sports activities, and police/refugee social activities. By increasing police-refugee/immigrant contacts and communication of information, both the police and the refugees learn about cultural differences and the meaning of various cultural behaviors and language.