Policing in a Diverse Community

America is a diverse country, people live here from different backgrounds with different beliefs. Besides of these two things there are also a lot of difference between people living in a community from different backgrounds eg their behaviors, their language, their feelings, their festivals etc. It is not easy for a law enforcement to communicate and to enforce law in society where peole live from various backgrounds. So, how a law enforcement agency can serve in that type of community? What type of steps a police department can choose to serve in a multi-cultural society?

The enforce proper law and to communicate with a multi-cultural society proper training should be provided to the police officers so it could be easy to them to understand different situation. In a multi-cultural society every one can have their different beliefs. So well trained officers are required who can provide their co-operate with the community and solve various issues. The article "Introducing Recommendations on Policing in Multi-Ethnic Societies — a new tool for the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities." by Drzewicki Krzysztof states that ," Ensuring that police training and other forms of professional support respond appropriately to the sensitivities of minorities (No. 8), organising training in minority issues and inter-ethnic relations in both initial and in-service training and for both junior and senior officers (No. 9), including standards for policing in multi-ethnic societies in police codes of conduct (No. 10), and tasking police managers and supervisors with the responsibility to ensure that their staff achieve these standards." this quote give us an idea that to serve in a minority or multi cultural socciety proper training should be provided to the police officer so it can be easy for them to make a good relation with them. It is very common that if a police officer is treating people in a proper manner he/she will going to get a good response from the community people. Law enforcement cannot pressurize the community to maintain peace or work according to them, to maintain peace and prper engagement with the community police department have to engage with the society by respcting their beliefs, values and cultural. So, to keep communicate with society and maintain good realtion with them proper training should be given to the officer to work with the multi-cultural society.

Proper training to the police officers to serve a multi-cultural society is a good idea but completely it cannot bring hundred percent result. To bring more effectiveness the other thing the Law enforcement can do is to hire police officers from different ethnic backgrounds to serve a multi-cultural society. An article "Rural Marginalization, Policing, and Crime in Lithuania" by Arunas Juska & Vygandas Paulikas states that ," Police failed to control the gang, in part because its members were able to intimidate even the police. Since the police were helpless, local entrepreneurs and business owners formed their own militia and began to patrol the streets. Beatings and violence between the militia and the gang escalated. After the gang had chased and beaten one of the local businessmen and members of his family, the local militia group caught and beat one of the leaders of the gang, stripped him naked, tied his hands and legs with a rope, and left him lying in front of the local police office with a message to the police, ‘If you cannot handle your job, we will do it for you’ (Cizinauskaite, 2003). Such breakdown in rural social order and vigilantism was unknown, at least since the end of the Second World War, and it shocked many in the country." This quote shows that how it violent could go in a society if police is unable to make good relations with the society. So, the other way to do policing in a multi-cultural society is to hire officers from different ethnic backgrounds. The first benefits will be to break the language barrier because everyone in a society does not speak english and for most people english is there second language. If a police department will have different language speaking officers it will be benefit for the society and for the police department to communicate with each other. Secondly there are some things which can seem funny to me but for a other culture those things can be very important, so if we have officers from different backgrounds a police department will have knowledge about different customs, festivals of different cultures. Thirdly a the same ethnic background officer will have more understanding with the same community resident as compare to a different ethnic background officer, in other words it will be easy to communicate with a multi-cultural society with multi-cultural police officers.

Policing in multi-cultural society not only deals with race and people from different ethnic backgrounds but it also deals with different genders, different age groups, disabled and senior citizen. The article"Policing Diverse Communities: Do Gender and Minority Status Make a Difference?" by Black Pamela J and Kari Camilla J states that,"Multiculturalism is not simply an issue of race and/or ethnicity. Criminal justice professionals deal with a wide variety of cultures, including but not limited to women, religious minorities, gays and lesbians, the elderly, and the disabled. For example, most clients of the criminal justice system are young adult men. As pointed out by Jackson (2006), as the baby boomers grow older they are likely to retain prodrug attitudes and will become increasingly likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system