The Influence of Sir Robert Peel on Cultural Diversity.

The Influence of Sir Robert Peel on Cultural Diversity
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The Influence of Sir Robert Peel on Cultural Diversity
Sir Robert Peel is credited with creating the world's first police force as an organized, uniformed body responsible for maintaining law and order. Modern law enforcement has adopted his nine principles as a guide in the profession of policing. This essay proposes a plan of action for a police department to address improving its relationship with the African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native Americans, LGBTQ cultural populations, and Muslims and other religious groups. The paper will also cover the importance of improving cultural diversity in public policing, current cultural issues prominent in public policing and private security, and the relevance of Sir Robert Peel's principles today.
Effective policing and maintaining public safety require strong relationships between police agencies and the communities being served. Police officers rely on the support of community members to identify crime and disorder problems and develop solutions for the same. However, community members' willingness to cooperate with police officials depends on whether police actions reflect community values and integrate the ideologies of procedural justice and lawfulness. Negotiating the cultural and religious barriers that can exist between officers and the communities they serve is therefore critical to community policing. Law enforcement officers must be capable of meaningfully and effectively engaging with all cultural and religious communities in their jurisdiction. In the wake of recent incidents of excessive use of force by police officers and victimization of people of color, the need to build trust with those groups that are vulnerable and have historically been abused by law enforcement is critical.
Police engagement with African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American communities has been challenging for decades because of racial profiling and the fear of law enforcement officials extant in these populations. In order to address the common obstacles to engage with members of these cultural communities meaningfully, this paper recommends providing cultural competency training to officers, race-based diversity recruitment, and recruiting volunteer community liaisons. Community meetings are a useful way for police and members of these communities to meet, communicate, and understand one another. They also provide an opportunity for locals to build trust and rapport with law enforcement officials over and above, share information and address those concerns that directly affect the particular populations (CSR, 2016). Cultural competency training to officers enables them to deal with any language barriers and cultural differ...