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Recognizing and Valuing Diversity in Law Enforcement
Recognizing and valuing diversity promotes trust and legitimacy for law enforcement
agencies because it leads to diverse perspectives, enhances cultural competency, improves a
department’s image, and facilitates reform (Espiritu, 2017). Concerning diverse perspectives,
having law enforcement officers from diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds
within a department helps break down rigid mentalities by exposing staff to diverse
perspectives on various issues. Increased cultural competency –better appreciation of other
people’s diverse cultures – can help law enforcement agencies improve their services to
culturally diverse communities. Because of improved and culturally relevant services, a
department’s image within the community stands to improve. Also, a diverse workforce
enhances a department’s image and standing in the community by demonstrating that it is
open and accessible to all, not a preserve of few. Finally, a diverse workforce facilitates
reform through the plurality of ideas.
Even though the value of diversity in law enforcement is well-understood, actually
ensuring a diverse workforce comes with its set of challenges. These challenges revolve
around recruiting, hiring, and retaining law enforcement officers from diverse backgrounds
(Espiritu, 2017). With respect to recruitment, diversity requires law enforcement agencies to
proactively target recruits from diverse communities, something that is costly and time-
consuming. With regard to hiring, ensuring diversity requires agencies to review their
selection criteria and holistically view applicant information gathered during recruitment.
Again, these are tedious and time-consuming activities that resource-constrained agencies
may not be inclined to undertake. Finally, agencies must implement a raft of measures to
retain a diverse workforce, including providing competitive remuneration and mentorship
programs.

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Agencies can overcome these challenges by establishing robust recruitment teams
comprising motivated officers who are willing to reach out to hard-to-reach and minority
communities in recruitment drives; ensuring that officers involved in the vetting and
processing of applicants are trained and well-versed in an agency’s hiring goals and criteria;
working with communities to ensure the communities play an active role in the creation of
workforces that reflect the communities’ diversities, and offering competitive compensation
and attractive work conditions. Still, if need be and in the interest of diversity, agencies
should consider hiring non-citizens into law enforcement, as is the practice of the United
States Military and as some police departments in Vermont and Hawaii are doing already
(Espiritu, 2017).
Important as it is, diversity alone is not a cure-all solution to the problem of abuse of
police discretion and authority. This is clear from the fact that even though America’s law
enforcement agencies are more diverse than ever before, accusations of officer misconduct
and abuse of discretion still persist (Espiritu, 2017). Under these circumstances, a more
radical solution is needed. The best solutions, I believe, are those that place the burden of
misconduct and inflict some pain on offending officers. One such solution would be a
stipulation that an officer who is accused, investigated, and found to have engaged in
misconduct or abuse of discretion more than once will be terminated, barred from ever
working in law enforcement again, and listed in a public database of debarred officers. One
such database, one of its kind, has been pioneered by USA TODAY (Kelly & Nichols, 2020).

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References

Espiritu, D. (2017). The Future of Diversity and Police Legitimacy: Does Diversity Make a
Difference? The Journal of California Law Enforcement, 51(3), 7-14.
Kelly, J., & Nichols, M. (2020, June 11). We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for
misconduct. Now you can read their records. Retrieved from USA TODAY NEWS:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-
revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/