Diversity in Law Enforcement

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 occurred on this day caused great hate for the Middle Eastern culture. According to huffingtonpost.com there have been multiple occurrences of violence against the Middle Eastern culture post 9/11. The one that stuck out to me the most was “Sept. 15, 2001 – Mesa, Ariz.: Four days after the infamous attacks of 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh, is shot and killed outside the gas station he owned by Frank Silva Roque. When police approached to arrest him, Roque says, I’m a patriot and an American. I’m American. I’m a damn American.” (huffingtonpost.com) Tragedies like this call for reform in how we police these communities, people have developed unfair bias’ towards people they know nothing about, and it is up to law enforcement to protect and serve the community, no matter what race, religion or what have you. History proves that minorities have always been treated lesser than the majority. The biggest historical incident that proves this is the enslavement of Africans in America. Africans were brought into America under the worst conditions, they were treated like animals, and disregarded as ignorant, and inferior. Ever since Lincoln freed the slaves with the emancipation proclamation there has been great hate towards