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Date Effective Policing in Racially Diverse Communities
The recent unrest in Ferguson Missouri has brought a number of controversial issues into the national spotlight. One day after a police shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, civil protests erupted, curfews were established and militarized riot squads secured the streets to maintain order. The small town saw peaceful protests quickly deteriorate into riots, violence and looting. The issue raised a number of important topics involving effective community policing, including the racial profile of a police department. Attorney General Eric Holder called for more racial diversity, promising that police departments will be more
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(Kasdan) Active recruitment strategies would also help address another issue. Communities should strive to make policing more attractive to minorities. Many minorities do not consider law enforcement a possible career choice. Many grew up with a negative perception of police. These adversarial relationships need to change if there is any possibility of creating police departments that mirror the changing demographics of the 21st …show more content…
police departments. African-Americans, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for about 12 percent of the full-time officers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The primarily white, male police departments of the 1950s have evolved and diversified. Today, there are large numbers of female, gay and minority officers. (Sklansky) However, there is a problem. Departments in large cities are much more diverse than small towns or rural areas. Most of them work in the nation’s largest cities, and smaller communities, such as Ferguson, have much Whiter police forces. Additionally, there is another problem regarding police diversity. The population demographics of the U.S. is rapidly changing. There is increasing Hispanic immigration. Some departments have made more progress than others. It is difficult for any police agency to perfectly reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. This would require a quota system and recruitment strategies that would be impossible to implement. However, communities of all sizes need to recruit professionals that represent, respect and care about the safety and well-being of all citizens. There is no empirical evidence that racially-balanced police forces actually treat their communities with more respect, fairness or diligence, but police must treat people
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).
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.
As difficult as their job may be, and as big a toll as it may take on them emotionally, it is important to bear in mind that police officers are normal human beings with normal brains and mental processes. Consequently, they are prone to make the same stereotype-biased judgments the rest of us are. Because they are often operating under conditions of uncertainty, high discretion, and stress and threat, the pervasive stereotypes linking Blacks and Latinos with violence, crime, and even specifically weapons are likely to cause them to make misattributions in seeking to disambiguate the intentions and behaviors of citizens. This can lead to racially disparate rates of stops, searches, arrests, and use of force. Several interventions that aim to reduce bias or discriminatory behavior at the individual level warrant further investigation in the policing context. Nonnegative intergroup contact is especially promising given its strong evidence base and that it could be achieved through
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
There is recent controversy over police use of force, especially in minority communities such as in African American communities, Hispanic communities, and other publics with large populations of minorities. Increased levels of force among these communities have created challenges for police departments. These challenges include a lack of trust from the community towards law enforcement officers and an absence of respect creating situations that lead to police use of force. There are already various programs in place that attempt to decrease this challenge by educating the public, respecting one another, and giving those who were on the wrong track second chances. A combination of these solutions and the implementation of more of them would decrease the number of contacts between police and minorities that lead to the use of force (Roberg & Novak, 2014).
A perception that police target members of specific ethnic or racial groups creates a deep divide between the police and the communities we serve. But as an officer who has spent a lot of time patrolling the city's streets, I just don't think the perception is accurate (Dutta
Diversity recruitment is vital to any organization, especially that of a law enforcement agency. Many police departments across Missouri are struggling to maintain a workforce that is equally as diverse at the community it serves. According to The Police Chief magazine, one of the most effective recruitment techniques to achieve a diverse police force is to generate a positive perception of police within the community. (Pearsall & Kohlhepp, 2016)
Often police officers build up negative feelings towards certain races, sexes, or religions. Officers tend to get the idea that if one or a few people treat them with disrespect, then other people of that same sex or creed will behave the same. Race consistently plays a key role in police brutality in the United States. Law enforcement has exposed minorities to discriminatory treatment and has many times physically abused minorities. Mistreatment is not always physical but sometimes non-violent harassment and
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
The largest component of the criminal justice system is the law enforcement. This section includes police officers, sheriffs, and marshals. The discrimination people of color experience start with these authoritative figures. “Seven in ten blacks said that the blacks in their community were treated less fairly than whites in dealing with police.” (Pew Research Center). The intended role policemen/women play is to protect and serve the citizens they represent. Yet, this study reports 70% of African Americans feel they are unequally treated in their communities by these law enforcers. Stevenson also writes about the statistic concerning African Americans and the police, “I found that
This proposed study is a monitoring evaluation of the actions taken by the City of Brooklyn Park police department to recruit a more diverse police force. As such, the study will elaborate this history of minority recruitment and the events leading to day’s urgent requirements to diversify the police force. Secondly, the study will examine the strategy and actions taken by the police force to recruit new officers and will show successes to date. Lack of successes, if any, will be examined and suggestions for corrections elaborated during this evaluation study.
Ethnicity is all around us in the world. It has a special mark on every person in the world because it is what makes everyone different in their own ways. Ethnicity has different topics that branch off into others. Examples of these are Nationality, Race, Diversity, and Culture. Each of these topics have an impact on every person and group of people in good and bad ways; the top major 2 being Race and Ethnicity. Ethnicity and Race is crucial to determine who a person really is and what also brings out the light to the rest of the world.
However, as noted in the work of Joseph Loftus (2014) the field of law enforcement that there has been a change that is dramatic over the past four decades and specifically related to gender and race in the American police demographics. In the decade of the 1960s that the great percentage of police officers were those who were “white, working-class men” (Loftus, 2014: p. 2). However, in today’s criminal justice field of law enforcement there are more females and minorities becoming police officers (Loftus, 2014). The 1964 Civil Rights Act amendment in 1972 made it illegal to discriminate upon the basis of such things such as sex, color, race, national origin or religion (Loftus, 2014). And it was this amendment in 1972 that resulted in more females entering the field of law enforcement. Such entry into the area resulted in resentment because the traditionally held view and the reason that women were denied entry into the field of policing was based on the idea that women were both emotionally and physically weak (Loftus, 2014).
The rapid increase in the minority population have spread throughout all neighborhoods and even job locations. This diversity becomes a threat to some people that never had to face different groups of people in their life. The challenges this bring to the law enforcement in communities is an issue when officers are not educated with the different cultures or ethnic background. People have different core values, moral beliefs, and religious practices which