There has been a specific focus on diversifying the police workforce over the last decades, and every department is working to achieve a diverse workforce in the police. Having more Black, Latino, and other non-white officers in the police can provide a better opportunity for law enforcement to link with the community. According to WGN-TV, having better representation within the department may help address some of the reservations about police. Efforts to diversify police have led to a significant increase in the number of police officers that represent ethnic and racial minorities. Individuals from different backgrounds and cultures have varying ways of carrying themselves. Therefore, diversification of policing prepares the workforce for cultural differences, which helps to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings. This essay will discuss the diversification of policing as an administrative issue, the impact of diversification on police organization, and propose administrative strategies that might help increase the diversity of the police workforce.
Description of the Issue
Police officers that spend their time in one culture might find it difficult to identify the various ways in which other individuals communicate due to language barrier. Stepping into a new culture makes a person realize that people sometimes say things they do not mean. Several things occur under the surface that requires special skills to notice. Such cases can confuse, especially when it comes to law enforcement. For instance, a police officer who approaches an unknown situation associated with tension might not know the exact approach to take if the individuals are behaving in a weird manner. Such situations occur in everyday lives, even in other situations that are not extreme. Having a diverse police workforce can help transform the work of the police into a comfortable task. For example, Latino people mostly occupy Miami, and they sometimes speak to each other in their language, which might make a person from a different culture uncomfortable. Hence, having an officer from Latin culture in such a population might enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement in Miami. Diversifying the police force also enhances the relationship between the police department and the community in which they serve.
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The first step in solving any issue is realizing that it exists. It is a significant aspect to find situations where members of a community hesitate to contact the police in case of any emergency. Trust development between community members and any law enforcement agency is an essential step in ensuring the efficiency of policing. Individuals in low-income minority communities have tensed relationship with law enforcement. Studies have related police departments that neglect community involvement with increased problems such as increased crime within the community. Nowacki et al. (2020) claim that diversifying law enforcement agencies initiates systematic and cultural changes within a police organization and speeds the response time to the served citizens. Diversification in policing entails considering various cultural backgrounds, sexual orientation, life experience, language, religion, gender, and race. Most police departments within the United States have not achieved the required diversity level that balances diversity in workforce with the diversity of community. Increasing diversity efforts may lure more individuals with different sexual orientations and with different cultural backgrounds to apply.
Despite hiring more people of color in the past decades, most police departments are still mostly occupied by the white without proportionally representing people of color. However, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that nationally, the share of minority police officers has doubled in the past three decades. It was represented by a change from 14.6% in 1987 to 27.3 in 2020, a significant change though it does not fully address the issue (Ba et al., 2021). The Illinois State Police is one of the law enforcement agencies that are working on the diversification of the police workforce. According to WGN9, the Illinois State Police recognized the need to increase the Latino population in their police force. Also, Master Sergeant Hector Alejandre reported that having more Spanish-speaking officers would make the community more comfortable (Ba et al., 2021). For instance, when a police officer gets a stranded person who cannot speak English, they can communicate with them and offer required help. The police and fire department based in Denver also decided to invest in diversification after their last recruitment yielded more whites than expected (Becerra et al., 2017). While some of these police departments are struggling to transform their workforce into a diverse one, many police departments within the US are struggling with balancing recruitment (Becerra et al., 2017). It is an issue that has not been easy to solve, and more efforts should be placed to address the problem.
Barriers to Achieving Diversity at Police Department
Todak et al. (2018) state that barriers to attaining a diverse police workforce result from the recruitment stage, the hiring stage, and the promotion stage. Recruitment barrier results when a few women and racial minorities apply for an open position in the police. The target population can be uninterested, unqualified, or unaware of the job (Becerra et al., 2017). Some barriers emerge during the hiring stage as law enforcement agencies have stringent background, residency, medical, physical fitness, and educational requirements. Socioeconomic, education, and health statistics indicate that the strict requirements act as barriers that scare away ethnic minorities and women. A small portion of ethnic minorities can meet educational requirements posed by these law enforcement agencies. When hiring police officers on their background history, the investigation done by law enforcement agencies poses a hurdle to ethnic and racial minorities.
The barrier to promotion also acts as a problem to achieving a diversified police department. Promotion barriers emerge when an agency having enough female and ethnic/racial applicants (Becerra et al., 2017). Certain promotions are kept for specific gender and racial groups. Besides, some formal exams given before promotion greatly impact the population that gets promoted. Some tests given are always biased against a specific group, such as women and ethnic minorities. Diversity also becomes a challenge in law enforcement agencies when the rate at which women and other minority groups leave the job is high (Becerra et al., 2017). However, reports indicate that most women that resign from law enforcement agencies say that their decisions are driven by gender discrimination at the workplace. An agency that understands why some people choose to remain in the agency can enhance diversity in the workplace.
Impact of Diversification of Policing on Police Organization
Administrations currently examine the impact of diversity on police organizations and how diversity should represent the ratio between the police force and the community they serve. The present social demands on police culture in the US make police departments gain benefits from diversification (Todak et al., 2018). Agencies have expanded the meaning of diversity to incorporate professional experience, backgrounds, specialized language skills, religious beliefs, age, sexual orientation, and other demographic features. Diversified police officers are surely an asset to a police organization. Bilingual officers are those that understand a different culture other than English (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). For instance, an organization in the Latino community can employ a Latino-speaking officer or train their existing officers to meet the needs of this culture (Todak et al., 2018). Diversification of policing has some positive impact on the police organization.
Diversification enables a police organization to earn public trust, which leads to the smooth flow of work. However, it is difficult for the community to gain trust in law enforcement since police officers always appear when the community is under tension (Alderden et al., 2017). In an interview conducted to Paul Grattan, a sergeant at a metropolitan police agency, it revealed that citizens view officers representing different religious background, ethnicities, and experiences as one of them (Alderden et al., 2017). The issue goes beyond personal perception since studies have confirmed that individuals that trust a police officer enable them to do their work without interfering with the evidence.
Diversity also leads to better communication within the organization, which leads to effective crime prevention and law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies are meant to serve the community, and they rely on communication to conduct their duties (Gibbs, 2019). Therefore, if the communication is not effective, their jobs become harder. Diversity enables officers to communicate with cultural nuance (Todak et al., 2018). A police organization with racial and gender discrimination is always considered as a threat or outsider. Including a representative in every community in law enforcement prevents the community from perceiving the organization as outsiders (Gibbs, 2019). Besides, representing every culture in the police workforce normalizes the attitudes and behaviors of every community within the broad law enforcement range. As a result, it allows police officers within the United States to understand the communities they protect.
Law enforcement agency diversification leads to job satisfaction and fairness perception within the police sector (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). It helps to change the perception of a police officer and the organization as a whole. The depictions and stereotypes of professionals in the police department do not always cover the range of skills and personalities found in the police department (Gibbs, 2019). Some agencies work tirelessly to stop the misconception that an officer should fulfill certain abilities or talents, especially during recruitment, to succeed in the process. It is essential to diversify several aspects of police officers such as military service, volunteerism, talents, hobbies, family history, training and education, family circumstances, and skillsets. It helps the organization to understand the police regardless of the preconceived ideas about the police workforce. Organizations that encourage diversification of their workforce have the potential to solve problems better than others due to an increase in their collective ability.
A diverse police workforce helps to reduce the misconception that people are interrogated entirely because of their race. The work of the police organization becomes easy when the citizens and the officers are from the same racial background (Ba et al., 2021). Also, including some minority officers in the police department would help the community view the organization as less racialized. A well-represented police organization helps to reduce the perception that certain types of investigations have a racial or ethnic background (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). Sending a diverse officer to the crime scene leads to the extraction of some positive feedback since the community will feel comfortable interacting with them (Ba et al., 2021). Therefore, diversity is an essential element in policing that has a huge impact on the police workforce.
Administrative Strategies to Ensure Diversity in Policing
Law enforcement agencies should use specific administrative strategies to solve the barriers to the diversified police force, especially by working on their recruitment strategies. The police organization should reconsider written and physical tests that may impact non-white and female applicants (Tossoukpe, 2017). The organization can achieve this by developing recruitment information that is easy to follow and encouraging. The website used for post-tests should be easy for the potential recruits to locate the required information, such as upcoming test dates. Also, testing should be culturally unbiased. Some of the tests given to recruits focus on a certain population, which leaves some minority groups (Tossoukpe, 2017). Therefore, the administration should revise the requirements to encourage more participation from different cultures. The police organization should apply differential item functioning, an approach of testing for racial and gender bias in the examination. The approach will enable law enforcement to redo the test and optimistically increase the cultural diversity of the applicants. The police department should re-evaluate how potential recruits view recruitment materials. Offering Preliminary Background Assessment would enable the organization and recruiters to assess driving proficiency, drug and alcohol use, financial records, and the recruits’ abilities to respect the law (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). However, using this assessment entirely might hinder the achievement of diversity since most black recruits have some background problems on their PBA.
Moreover, the administration should adopt recruitment techniques that attract recruits in target groups. Minorities and women have their reasons to work in a law enforcement agency. Asian recruits get excited when they work in a police department. In contrast, black recruits consider working in such an environment as a prestigious act, motivating them to seek employment in such fields. Unlike men, female recruits would not be attracted by a good salary to work in the police force (Lee, 2017). Based on these findings, the police department can investigate some of the motivating factors for these groups and work towards encouraging them to apply. The administration can also address what the minority population perceives to the downside of the police job to encourage them into the law enforcement field (Lee, 2017). All these strategies should be channeled to reshape the negative perception among the recruits and their potential influencers. Some cultures, such as Asians, are easily influenced by the perception of their peers not to apply for a job at law enforcement agencies (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). The police force should work to correct the perception spread within such cultures to encourage them to work with law enforcement agencies (Lee, 2017). Offering recruitment programs that celebrate the achievements of officers, demonstrate effective community policing, and display the agency’s diversity can influence the perception of both the recruits and the family members. Other strategies that can help build a diversified workplace include building a partnership with educational institutions and develop internship programs for minority communities (Lee, 2017). The police administration can engage stakeholders to help create a diversity reflective of the community. Involving the stakeholders in decision-making will help them to develop a good strategy to enhance diversification. Lastly, the police department can allow applicants with previous arrests to apply for exemption and include them in their workforce (Carbado & Richardson, 2017). Doing so will encourage more people to apply, especially the blacks who have some background issues.
Conclusion
Conclusively, diversification of police departments has been an issue in the police organization in the United States over the last decades. Most departments are working to develop a diversified workforce, while others are still lagging since they have not achieved the balance between the workforce and the community they serve. Including officers from the community they serve has a huge impact on the police organization since it makes the community gain trust of the police force, enhancing the efficiency of policing. Some of the barriers that hinder the achievement of a diversified workforce in the police include strict recruitment requirements and retention barriers. These barriers can be eliminated by administrative strategies which act towards developing a recruitment approach that encourages women and racial minorities to apply for the police job.
References
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