Final Paper 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. There have been major incidents in our generation that have caused the need for diversity reform in law enforcement. The biggest incident was the attacks on the United States of America that occurred on September 11th, 2001. The attacks that
According to an interview on usmayors.org, Bakersfield is one of the most diverse cities in the state of California. The Police Department there does what they think is necessary in order to train their officers on how to deal with the variety of cultures in the city. “The Bakersfield Police Department also presents cultural awareness training during in-house advanced officer schools. This training is not sensitivity training nor is it designed to get the officer to adopt the characteristics of other cultures, rather it helps the officer gain an understanding of the differences between cultures.” (usmayors.org) It is programs like this that are going to make a huge difference in the hate crimes we see today. If we have officers that know the cultures and can police accordingly, they can make a difference in someone’s life. Not every department is as lucky as Bakersfield PD. There are places that may have poor practices, and care very little about diversity. It wont make a difference if we leave it up to the local government to develop diversity practices and procedures, because it would most likely get put on the back burner. This is something that needs to be mandated at a state level. If we implement statewide diversity practices and procedures that are enforced at the local level I believe that we would see a great change in our communities. We are all the human race, and I think it is sad when people forget that. Diversity should not be a