Dylan Foltz
Professor Polson
English 1B
3 November 2015
Affirmative Action
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is composed of over eighteen thousand employees. The hiring process is a long and arduous process, consumed with numerous steps. The most pivotal aspect of the hiring process is the background investigation on applicants. Background investigations are a crucial step to deciding if an applicant will be qualified for employment. Unfortunately, even qualified applicants are overlooked, and under qualified applicants are offered employment to meet discriminating hiring quotas. These hiring quotas are a result of a policy known as Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is an extremely controversial policy that has deeply affected millions of Americans. Balancing equal opportunities and the discrimination of minorities, employers, and government agencies use the policy Affirmative Action. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, Affirmative Action is defined as “An active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women” (Merriam-Webster). One of the main criticisms of Affirmative Action is that it takes employment opportunities out of the hands of qualified applicants, and puts them into the hands of under-qualified minorities. Many government agencies use this policy, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the fourth largest policing agency in the United States. The hiring process for
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the third largest police agency in the United States. The LAPD has approximately 9885 sworn officers and 2718 support staff. They cover approximately 500 square miles and is for the protection of over 4 million people. With that in mind, managing such a behemoth agency is a complicated and problematic endeavor. Therefore, one of the LAPD strengths is the way they manage themselves and protect citizens. Another strength of the LAPD is created many various kinds of investigation divisions, bureaus unit and special operation units. The components allow the LAPD to address a different kind of crimes, services, and investigation. Some of these components are specialized units with members that specially trained to for the unit's purpose or the specific type of crime or investigation. For an example, they have counter-terrorism bureau, background investigation unit, commercial crime division, gang and narcotic division, juvenile division, robbery homicide division and also technical investigation division. The LAPD also addresses the needs of the community by setting up many stations to handle the needs of their constituents. The LAPD also has a support unit to manage the day to day operation such as the personal division, jail division, property division and administrative section to manage massive bureaucratic tasks.
Affirmative action is a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination of minorities through active measures in order to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment. In other words, it is policy that was established to hopefully eliminate racial preference and equalize the United States. The fight against discrimination has been a long lasting one that started with the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ended in the desegregation of all schools (Ficker). Affirmative action was put into place in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Executive Order that mandated government contractors to “take affirmative action” in all aspects of hiring and employing minorities (Brunner). Upon its arrival, the policy
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.
Affirmative Action is one of the many social issues facing America today. Affirmative action was signed into place in 1961 by President Kennedy and allows minority groups or people who face discrimination to become employed or get an education that is equal to that of a white male. Groups that Affirmative Action aims to help are women, blacks, Latinos, and people with disabilities. While these policies were signed to slowly rid the workforce and schools from discrimination, it hurts people who do not face discrimination, specifically whites. Many white men and women lose special opportunities to work or go to college because of certain standards that the Affirmative Action laws require. Universities and the military require a certain number of minorities in order to meet the standards and have a more diverse atmosphere. An example of this is the California V. Bakke supreme court case of 1978.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff 's Department is tasked with providing health care services to all incarcerated prisoners within a jail system which at present exceeds 18,500 inmates. Correctional Treatment Center (CTC) provides care and treatment for inmates requiring inpatient medical and or psychiatric care in this 196-bed rated medical unit located in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. The inmate population is in poor health, largely due to the lifestyle choices of the inmates which often include substance abuse, violence, and living on the streets of Los Angeles. They require the same basic medical care that all residents of Los Angeles County require, including routine illness to advanced medical issues such as tuberculosis (TB), AIDS/HIV+, heart disease, diabetes, dialysis, paraplegics, and acute mental health problems. Additionally, problems associated with aging are becoming common as the jail population increasingly includes older inmates. In the wake of chronic overcrowding in the county lockups, the Sheriff 's Department has been struggling to provide adequate care for thousands of inmates, many of whom have never been treated, with illnesses ranging from tuberculosis to AIDS to schizophrenia. Reported rates of tuberculosis in jails and prisons are more than six times higher than those for the general population. Jails and prisons concentrate individuals at high risk for TB or noncompliance with therapy, including those who are
Discrimination against race, gender, religion, or other social characteristics is occurring in all parts of the United States almost every day. Unfortunately, the U.S. has a history of extreme case of discrimination, which has evoked controversy and in worse cases, violence. To discourage any more of adverse discernment towards certain individuals, the Federal government has imposed legislation called affirmative action. According to At Issue: Affirmative Action, “Affirmative action is designed to promote access to opportunities in education, employment, housing, and government contracts among certain designated groups, such as women and minorities“ (At Issue). This law is necessary in today’s society in order to maintain equality and
According to Dye and MacManus, affirmative action is defined as programs pursued by governments or private business to overcome the results of past discriminatory treatment of minorities and/or women by giving these groups special or preferential treatment in employment, promotion, admissions, or other activities. Race was the issue surrounding this affirmative action decision. The City of New Haven was worried that because more white
The police department of Whittier began in April 1917 and their primary objective is to maintain the upkeep and protect the community. In 2001, Chief David M. Singer took oath to take upon the leadership of the department. Prior to his new role, he came onboard with years of law enforcement experiences and held the position of Chief of Signal Hill. Singer implemented public service area policing and created a system where it held the police department accountable to resolving neighborhood problems. According to City of Wittier, “Department History” (2015) Singer has implemented the first ever injunction against street gangs like “Whittier Varrio Locos” and added numerous technology such as the graffiti tracker system, automatic license plate hunter and remove cameras in high risk locations. Graffiti has been an ongoing issue in Whitter because of the ongoing recurrence. In an interview with Lieutenant Ellis (personal communication, September 28, 2015) he states when an area looks vandalized, more vandalism happens and called this the “broken window theory”. This shows the ongoing recurrence of graffiti in Whittier and action is taken almost immediately the day of or after. The city of Whittier is broken down into four years, which are called “Police Service Areas”. In the interview with Lieutenant Ellis (personal communication, September 28, 2015), he explained that the four areas are divided into labels named PS1, PS2, PS3, and PS4. These areas are labeled because they are
Affirmative Action is an outcome of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. Its purpose is to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment. It is not until 1961 did the term “affirmative action” was first used by President John F. Kennedy. He made it very clear in an Executive Order that directed government have to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Since a lot of cooperation still tends to hire white male, by enforcing affirmative action, the number of minority groups and women in the labor force will increase.Affirmative Action helps to eliminate the imbalance in the society and reform the American system. The US Department of Labor describes affirmative action as the banning of discrimination.
Affirmative Action remains one of the more complicated and controversial topics dealt with in American society. Affirmative Action is an action or policy designed to protect specific groups who suffer from discrimination, and provide them with programs and special opportunities. These government or private programs were designed to set right historical injustices towards the members of these groups who have suffered things like employment and educational disadvantages from racial discrimination. The goal for these actions are to redress past wrong doings by fixing things like inequalities in employment and pay, as well as increasing opportunities for education. By achieving this, the outcome would restore equal access and opportunity in favor of the members of these groups. These groups generally consist of certain minorities that have suffered from social ills such as slavery and segregation.
Racial discrimination occurs everyday to many different people. In America,the individuals who are usually discriminated against are the minorities like African Americans and Hispanics. Affirmative action is a policy that was created and has been claimed to be positive discrimination. The policy was created to give equal opportunity to groups of people who are usually discriminated against. Although Affirmative action has been named to be positive and support minorities, it is still unjust. There should be no positive aspects of racial discrimination. Many believe that it is only racial discrimination or racist if a caucasian person discriminates against a person of color but do not consider it racism if it happens to be the other way around. Racial Discrimination in any form is harmful which is why affirmative action policies are not correct.
What is it? Well affirmative action is, in plain text, the consideration of your class, race, gender, color, ethnicity, national origin, and disability when deciding who gets a certain job or admission into a school. If you are amenity applying for a job and there are other people that are applying as well then you will be considered for the job over one of the other people, even if they have more experience. It is not only for jobs, it is also used in any situation that there is a minority or different person, racially or ethnicity, because the particular business or corporation needs to have some minorities working in that business or in that school. They do this because of a
According to Raymond A. Noe, affirmative action is an organization’s active effort to find opportunities to hire or promote people in a particular group (Fundamentals of Human Resource Management 68). There are various arguments for and against affirmative action. Some believe that it gives certain groups of people an equal opportunity to find employment where they would otherwise be kicked under the rug. Others believe that even though it creates an opportunity for minority groups, the issue of reverse discrimination comes into play where once predominantly white male jobs offerings go to women and minority groups instead. The topic of affirmative action remains very controversial and
Many critics of affirmative action believe it has failed to achieve its stated goal of equal employment opportunity. A few even believe that it has done more harm than good. A review of the statistics, however, shows
Section 15(1) of the Labour Relations Act defines ‘affirmative action measures’ as ‘measures designed to ensure that suitably qualified people from designated groups have equal employment opportunities and are equitably represented in all occupational categories and levels in the workplace of a designated employer’ (Section 15(1)). In short, affirmative