The Benefit of Diversity Within the Police Department Essay

The issues of racial and other diversities have been controversial for a sufficient period of time and actual for many countries all over the world, as in most of their citizens are not all of the same ethnic origin and the main aim of the state is to guarantee to its citizens equal rights irrespective of their religion, ethnicity, gender and so on. Thus there is no wonder that the issues of diversity at workplaces have also become the subjects of discussion. Diversity management is the special branch of management, which controls the creation of positive work environment, which is based upon valuing of various differences between individuals, working at an organization. The system of criminal justice should be used first of all to guarantee safety and order to all citizens, correspondingly it is possible only under the condition that it is operating on the basis of strong ethical principles, which are applied both theoretically and practically. Social and political conditions in America have changed and demanded changes from personnel policies and approaches, for example the issues of racial and gender components of police departments were reconsidered. The main modern tendency is the growing diversity in police departments, as it proves to be beneficial for them, as well as for the whole society.

The role of police departments is without any doubts crucial for supporting order in social life. Police departments present one of the most visible branches of civil government, with the main task to support and control the fulfillment of the laws, guaranteeing public safety and public order. “However, the guiding philosophy, strategic designs, tactical approaches, and organizational structuring of police departments have changed with the ever expanding notion of American democracy and its more inclusive classification of, and regard for, American citizens, regardless of racial, ethnic, gender, and other differences” (Naomi, 1998, p. 6).  Only morally and physically strong, responsible and decisive individuals are able to become police officers. On the one hand this is a positive tendency, on the other hand such individuals are strong enough to be guided by their own ambitions and judgments in defining, what is right and what is wrong, which often leads to the cases of noble cause corruption. In order to better understand the role of the police, it could be treated with application of four dimensions – the strategic, the philosophical, the organizational and the tactical. All of them are aimed at: better involvement of citizens into the process; development of the role of law enforcement; managing of the more positive and advantageous communications with public; providing the space for good cooperation between the police the constituents. “Consequently, these dimensions have played a key role in the ongoing efforts to compensate for the darker side of American policing, inclusive of the compelling evidence that identifies the old slave patrols as the progenitor and forerunner of contemporary policing” (Ungar-Sargon, 2015, p. 2). Based on these dimensions, it is possible to make a conclusion that the better is the communication between representatives of the society and representatives of the police organized, the more advantageous it would be for both sides and the better outcomes it would have in the frames of public order and safety. “This coactive function blends the more traditional reactive role (responding to calls for service) and proactive functions (police-initiated activities) with community partnering (police and citizens regularly meeting, listening, discussing, planning, and evaluating concerns that relate to public safety, broadly conceived)” (Ungar-Sargon, 2015, p. 2). Successful operating of this coactive function is closely related to the diversity of the police personnel, as America is the unique country, where cultures and traditions are constantly overlapping and mixing with each other.

The traditional views upon the police members have been limited to white people, preferably men. Irrespective of the general level of ethnic and gender diversities in other spheres and in social life of the country, there has been the same approach towards police personnel within many decades. The statistical reports proved this reality, stating that upon research of the full-time police office personnel, the results showed that only 10.6 % of females were working there with 89.4 % of correspondingly male workers. In 2000s however the reports revealed the increase of the female personnel by almost 60 %. Talking about race diversity, it is possible to use the following statistics “22.7% of all full-time local police officers in 2000 were minorities. This represented an increase of about 61%, or 38,000 officers, from the 1990 levels. African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, and other ethnic groups (that is, Asians, native Hawaiians, American Indians, and Alaska natives) accounted for 11.7%, 8.3%, and 2.7%, respectively, of all local police officers in 2000” (Ungar-Sargon, 2015, p. 4). The increase of the number of Latino, African American and Hispanic officers was evident. On the one hand these statistical data prove that diversity was growing in police departments, on the other hand they don’t make it vivid, and how the American society was changing in relation to its diversity. The former idealistic image of melting pot is considered by most specialists to be fading away, being replaced by more realistic view of the issue. At any rate police departments show the tendency of becoming more responsive towards the changing public demands, which is probably one of the main reasons of the appearing diversity there. One of the brightest examples of this could be the official utilization of gay and lesbian officers in police departments in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Montana, as this is direct response to the concerns of the community, where irrespective of the attitude of officials or usual people, there are still gay and lesbian members. Another example is the situation in Chicago Police Department, where the special Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy model was worked out, because the local police departments were to treat the problems of people of different cultural backgrounds, arriving to the country as immigrants. Since they become equal citizens of the country, irrespective of their cultural and ethnic origin, it is vitally important to find the ways of avoiding of any type of cultural, language or any other barriers in communicating with them. This should be done for the sake of newcomers, as well as of the native people of the country. Somebody would consider such efforts to be not sufficient, as the problem in reality is huge and complex, still this model proved to be a good beginning to building stronger connections, based on understanding and mutual trust between police officers and societies. The role of the police as “a mechanism for the distribution of nonnegotiable, coercive force employed in accordance with the dictates of an intuitive grasp of situational exigencies” provides the possibility to understand the importance of the diversity in police departments, because “growing challenge for police in multiethnic, liberal, democratic societies is to find the correct balance among the public goods at stake. They must enforce the law but also maintain racial and ethnic peace. These goals are incompatible to some extent . . . enforcing the law may disrupt the peace” (Naomi, 1998, p. 8).

The supporters of the old tradition approach of involving only white male people into the work at the police departments might start asking simple questions – why is it so important to take people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds to these jobs? Are they able to develop different relations with communities? This might seem not logical, as ideally all police officers are trained in the same way and they have the same duties and rights, irrespective of their race. Thus there seems to appear another artificial confrontation. Some of the researchers are sure that there are direct relations between the race of the police officers and the way they are treating civilians, how they stop them, how they question them and so on. At the same time it is not possible to rely purely on such statistics, as the rate of its predictability of individual human behavior is controversial. For example there were statistical researches conducted, which showed that black officers are more inclined than white officers, who are to work in black communities, to reveal the necessary degree of respect towards representatives of these communities, provide them all the necessary information. Black officers in their turn were reported to be more inclined to use their physical force more often against usual people, in case some conflict situations took place. However, it is important to note here that such studies could not be considered absolutely true to life, as the role of the individual factor should never be underestimated, and this factor doesn’t allow anybody make the concrete judgments, apart of some statistical reports, about the behavior of the police officers of any race or gender. This fact could be easily explained, because all officers, irrespective of their ethnic roots or anything else, have to go through the same education and training, they are gaining their skills in the same conditions, even if they come from various social backgrounds. This results in the evident similarities of their behavior and ways of treating civilian people, either white or black. The conclusion, which could be made here, is that there is no chance to take the racial parameter, as the defining one for splitting good police officers from those, who make mistakes or perform their work duties badly, to the same extent it is useless for predicting of their potential attitude towards any minorities. Racial diversity is rather a positive factor for police departments, still it could not be considered the decisive force for solving of all possible problems in relations between police representatives and societies. “A 2008 study in Baltimore, Maryland by Peter Moskos documented precisely this shared mentality among both white and black officers.” (Ungar-Sargon, 2015, p. 4).

Often the opinion of people, who should be under the protection of police officers, also matters a lot. There were special polls conducted, which proved that around 70 % of black, Hispanic and other minorities were sure that the police department of their city should have the same racial composition, as the town itself. According to the same study, it was found out that only 5 % of all citizens wanted the police departments to consist purely of the same race, as the residents of the city, as the rest voted for having racially-mixed departments with representatives of various racial groups there. Taking into consideration such results of these polls, it is possible to conclude that one of the ways to build strong relations and mutual trust between police officers and usual people is certainly involvement of all racial minorities into this kind of work. This is not a secrete that the more police department looks like the local population, the more chances are there for their positive coexistence, the quicker could be the trust bridges built and used, which in its turn is crucial for overall outcomes of the work of police officers. “It also helps, in majority-black or majority-Hispanic cities, if the chief of police comes from that community as well because, as the public face of the department, he or she can allay suspicions when controversial incidents occur in a way that white police chiefs may not be able to do.” (Alcindor, Penzenstadler, 2015, p. 2).

One of the utterly important aspects, related to police force diversity, is the attitude of individuals to the practice of stopping and asking questions. A lot of black people and those of Hispanic origin are sure that they are stopped only because of their race and this causes some unpleasant, if not risky, situations with them. In case citizens and police officers are of the same race, there is no chance for any racial minorities to feel unequal in their rights and responsibilities. At the same time the positive impact upon the general image and reputation of the police department, is utterly important for its successful operating for the sake of the society, performing its functions to 100 %. However, even in cases when police departments’ authorities are ready to accept people from racial minorities, being aware of the potential positive influences upon citizens, there is another problem – people of Hispanic origin or back people are often afraid of starting their career as police officers, as they are aware of such examples as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. One of the potential solutions to this problem could be preliminary preparation of the local people, in other words – additional efforts for building positive relations between police officers and local people, providing the chance to start from creating of some roots for further involvement of minorities into police work. It is always better to start from the regions, where the relations between racial minorities and police officers have been better from the very beginning. Thus police chiefs are welcome to start their recruiting measures exactly in such districts, in order to be more successful in the rest ones.

It was already mentioned that involvement of racial minorities into work at police departments should not be seen as panacea and easy solution, rather as an important step towards introduction of the huge reforms’ program, contributing to the improvement of the situation at police departments generally. Even if there is no direct connection between racial minorities’ participation in police work and general change of police officers’ behavior, still the researches prove that “in comparison to white officers, black officers get more cooperation from black citizens, are less prejudiced against African-Americans, know more about the black community, and are less likely to arrest black suspects, other studies show just the opposite.” (Alcindor, Penzenstadler, 2015, p. 2). This is true that black police officers are often inclined to make the same mistakes and misbehave in the same way as often, as white officers do. Surprisingly there are even cases, when they reveal the same extent of racial prejudices. Still there are evident benefits from such approach. First of all community develops the tendency to trust more the mixed police departments, which makes the work of police officers more effective. Secondly, diversity has an impact upon culture of the department itself, it becomes less monolithic and more open for reforms and innovations. Leadership positions of the higher ranks of police officers are also stronger, as when a police department is a kind of reflection of the community, which it serves for, there are more possibilities to build a stronger team with better organization and closer relations, because it is always easier for any individual to discuss his problems or difficulties with his chief of the same race or minority group.

Overall, the issues of racial and other types of social equality have their reflections in the work of police officers; before making any conclusions and building any approaches, it is necessary to remember about the key roles of police for the society, which are protection of general order and individual well-being of each member of the society, irrespective of his racial, cultural or any other peculiarities; also it is necessary to acknowledge existing problems, which need to be solved or even eradicated for the sake of higher efficiency of police operating. Diversity in police departments is not the only possible, still utterly important approach for building better relations between police officers and citizens, for introduction of reforms and improving of the level of police operating via its connecting to usual people. Police officers should be aware of the fact that noble cause corruption is absolutely not the best way out, this could be reached with the help of corresponding training programs, working out of ethical codes of conduct and control of their fulfillment.

 

References:

Alcindor, Y., Penzenstadler, N. (January 21, 2015). Police redouble efforts to recruit diverse officers. USA TODAY

Bamshad, M., Olson, S. (2003). “Does Race Exist?” Scientific American.

Eileen, H. (2007). “Cross-Cultural Considerations”. STUDENT ISSUES. Professional International Education Resources

Estrada, S. (January 27, 2015). Where is the diversity in police departments?

Froyland, I. D.,  Bell, D. (1996) “Making police more efficient?”, in D. Chappell & P. Wilson, Australian policing: contemporary issues, 2nd edn, Butterworths, Sydney

Hartel, C. E. (2004). “Towards a multicultural world: identifying work systems, practices and employee attitudes that embrace diversity”. Australian Journal of Management

Kelly, J. (January 22, 2015). Police diversity lags in many cities. USA TODAY

Naomi, Z. (1998).  Thinking about Race. Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth

Naomi, Z. (1995). American Mixed Race: the Culture of Microdiversity. Lanham: Roman and Littlefield

Ungar-Sargon, B. (January 27, 2015). Lesson for Ferguson in creating a diverse police department. Police Diversity

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
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[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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