Increase of Diversity in Law Enforcement: Impacts and Benefits to Society

With the increase of diversity in the country, comes a wide variety of issues facing all sectors. In the criminal justice sector we see issues such as racial profiling, discrimination amongst others.

Recently, it has been brought up that there is still institutional racism within the Police force, this, as well as many other reasons such as negative stereotyping, informal bias and assumptions from ethnic minority groups themselves are reasons why people from minority groups are less inclined to join. The Police have introduced a number of ways to try and create a more diverse workforce. Some of these methods include, improving the data collected on the age,

The objective of this thesis is to provide comprehensive information to all stakeholders who have an interest in enhancing minority recruitment and selection. The goal of this thesis is to address law enforcement professionals about the importance of diversifying police agencies; more importantly, is to address the underrepresentation of Asian-American police officers and the challenges of recruiting potential candidates from Asian communities. Through community policing, mediation, trust building, collaboration with stakeholders, and cultural diversity training, law enforcement agencies will achieve its recruiting and diversity goals. Targeting Asian cultural events, partnering up with higher learning institutions, and sending mass emails regarding job opportunities to criminal justice majors could produce students’ interests and desires to pursue a career in law enforcement (Castaneda & Ridgeway, 2010). Recruitment issues and needs will be examined; moreover, the importance of evaluating implemented strategies must be followed up in order to monitor community changes or problems that may arise (Tangel, 2015).

Ernest Duenez, Jr. was killed by police officer John Moody on June 8, 2011. When Ernest pulled into his driveway, Moody shouted to Ernest to put his hands up and drop the knife. However, Ernest had no knife in his hands. Moody fired thirteen bullets and eleven shots struck Ernest on his chest, back and head. His family was completely devastated; they searched for justice for Ernest, while helping his widow with her child, who was just seventeen days away from his first birthday. Tragedies such as this one can be greatly reduced by body cameras. For example, the Rialto study, where police officers wearing body cameras resorted to physical force 59 percent less than those who did not wear body cameras. When wearing body cameras, police officers would not behave negatively in a situation where they may incriminate themselves.

The diversity issue focused on in this paper will be racial disparity in sentencing. This paper will also focus on some of the reasons why racial disparity exists within sentencing. One of the research methods used in this paper will be case studies. In society today there are a diversity of citizens, of offenders, and leaders within in the court system. However, race still plays a big role in the Criminal Justice system especially during the sentencing portion. Although racial dynamics may have changed over time, race still exerts an undeniable presence in sentencing process. This ranges from disparate traffic stops due to racial profiling to imposition of the death penalty based on the race of

Diversity in law enforcement has grown to become a hot topic within the law enforcement community. The demographic of society has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and with that law enforcement has been changing, but have they been changing enough? Different law enforcement agencies have their own ways of implementing diversity in their practices and procedures, some of them are better than others, but with issues that happen today it is important that they do something.

Law enforcement and minorities have long been the focus of the criminal justice injustice within the United States. African Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans are a number of communities in the United States along with Caucasian or non-minorities as a whole, which make up a large portion of the United States. Racial discrimination has been a large factor the criminal justice system has been plagued with for many years. In the book Just Mercy, authored by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson details his life’s work to help those who were wrongfully convicted and biased towards in sentencing. A big part of the book is related to racial discrimination among officers. Analytically I will be looking at the question of whether the relations between the police and minority and non-minority communities differ. I will look at number of factors related to traffic enforcement practices, use of force and arrest of minorities and non-minorities in determining if there is any differences among police community relations.

Today like never before organizations are hoping to fill their positions with a group of diverse law enforcement officers that mirrors the populaces they serve. As organizations search for officers who reflect their settings in which they serve in , they are additionally expanding their meanings of decent variety. From this point of view, assorted variety can incorporate race, ethnic gathering, religion, sexual preference, and age. Being a minority working in the law enforcement field can be very helpful for an agency however, that specific group may still go unrecognized. This paper will provide a brief review of the disguised minority achievements as it relates to the U.S. Marshals Service in the past. It will also be examined in

This paper provides an overview of the problems facing the police in their efforts to improve relations with minority communities in the United States, as well as a survey of previous research and existing literature on cultural diversity

A number of problems arise from race and ethnicity issues in policing practices. From the department’s perspective, issues with race and ethnicity, create negative consequences. For example, if a police department fails properly to resolve situational conflicts, this can cause loss of productivity, tension among officers of different race and backgrounds, enhanced suspicion of other officers, and increased isolation of staff member. The department will suffer tremendously if it fails

A good way for our departments to change negative police perceptions and generate a positive perception is to ensure that all citizens hired, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, are exceeding within their departments and receiving equal high-profile criminal cases and promotions. Essential operations of a successful police agency come from a diverse and competent work force.

Police officers need better training in dealing with minority and learn how to communicate with them. Some efforts have been made by police officers to improve these situations with plans such as community policing. A question we can ask is how do we bring force the law enforcement and the minority communities to build a better relationship between the community and the police? For instance, Officer Tommy Norman, and officer for the North Little Rock Police Department have been doing community policing since he’s been an officer.

Jessie, I really enjoyed your post as I have been a police officer for 18 years and it directly relates to my job. Yes, police departments across the country must strive to make their departments more diverse, especially with the rising Hispanic population. One main hindrance to this goal is the fact that many cities are doing away with pension programs and starting hybrid or 401K retirement plans. At my agency, the Knoxville Police Department, we are having problems getting any race to apply because of the new hybrid system. I would recommend offering ride-a-long and cadet programs to attract more minorities to the field. As far as keeping arrest numbers equal to the makeup of the population, there is no way to make this happen

It has been consistently shown in research that minorities are more likely to be mistreated by the police compared to other people (Dunnaville, 2000). Recent incidents have seen the police use excessive force on people and mistreat minorities. As such, the legitimacy of the police has been put under scrutiny and questioned. Many communities in the United States have demonstrated in reaction to recent incidents of police misconduct and excessive use of force. The people have lost trust in the police because of these issues. The police force has been accused of mistreating people, sexual harassment, violent and careless arrests among people particularly the minorities. As demonstrated in the movie ‘Policing the Police’ police officers are seen mistreating people for instance the scene where the police sexually harassed a teenager by touching sensitive areas. Community members are not willing to trust or work with the police to fight crime. As such, it is critical for the police agencies and department to make improving police-community relationship a top police priority. Policies should be developed that will strengthen the mutual trust between the police and the community. This relationship is critical because the police depend on information from the community to fight crime in the society.

Further strides have been made since this period to include a concentrated effort to make police departments more ethnically diverse. Despite becoming more diverse and laws to protect citizens there remains a great deal of distrust of the police among African-Americans and Hispanics. The Rodney King case was and is a lightning rod for those who point to police abuse based on race. Unfortunately, large numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and to a lesser degree other ethnic