Art Acevedo, City of Miami police chief, joins a Gun Violence Peace March on June 16, 2021, in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Criminals prey on the most vulnerable of our neighbors. It is these individuals’ vulnerability that makes them attractive to someone seeking to take something from them—whether that is their property, the sovereignty of their bodies, or control of their lives. Police leaders appreciate intuitively that the marginalization of their neighbors, resulting in a lack of access, agency, representation, and participation in crucial processes, increases people’s vulnerability and leads to greater potential for victimization. Some of the most historically marginalized portions of society include communities of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community. That marginalization can be multiplied where these communities intersect. When neighbors are marginalized, they feel they don’t have access to justice and the criminal justice system or that such access does not lead to positive outcomes for them, and they will often, understandably, stop engaging with the system. This lack of engagement further contributes to their marginalization and, hence, vulnerability. Conversely, actively celebrating diversity, providing ready access, and including all aspects of the community equitably through policies, practices, and diverse personnel will decrease marginalization and vulnerability and improve engagement and outcomes for individuals and communities.

The first step to improving diversity, inclusion, and equity in policing is recognizing and acknowledging how the origins and actions of policing in the United States have contributed to certain neighbors’ marginalization and vulnerability. Policing in the United States has a long, sordid history that frequently is not discussed openly enough. In the United States, policing has roots tied to slave patrols and the protection of coastal mercantile interests.¹ Over the generations, police and the political establishments to which they have reported have continued to generally, unilaterally define safety and order in ways that protect established interests while excluding minority and marginalized voices and communities—particularly communities of color—through practices like the enforcement of post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws, protection of “sundowner” towns, suppression of labor unions, and support of political machines against community activism.² Policing has all too frequently—and all too recently—been used more subtly, and often unintentionally, as a tool of oppression through policing approaches whose consequences have not been well studied or developed in concert with affected communities. Such policing can often disproportionately impact communities of color and the most disenfranchised neighbors. However, addressing this history and this reality prepares law enforcement to begin to forge a new path that, while complicated and potentially frightening, is also absolutely necessary and possible.

The contrast between the promise of U.S. policing and its reality has often been stark, especially when one reflects on the foundational principles of modern policing first espoused by Sir Robert Peel in the 19th century. Peel’s principles include the admonition that the public are the police and that the power of the police depends upon public approval.³ That is, the Peelian principles insist that police exist and succeed only through true partnership with and subjugation to the community. This is as true today in the United States as it was 200 years ago in England. To succeed, policing needs to see, value, and engage a diverse community. Furthermore, there is a direct connection between a workplace that values and reflects diversity in an equitable manner and one that is able to provide service to a diverse community. The path forward will necessarily involve building meaningful relationships, empowering a broad group of collaborators to contribute to developing policing approaches, and adopting concrete policies.

“Addressing this history and this reality prepares law enforcement to begin to forge a new path.”

As mentioned, one of the core Peelian principles of policing is that the power of the police to fulfill their obligations requires the support of the public. The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing reinforces this 200-year-old principle when it recommends that law enforcement engage in “co-production” policing.⁴ Co-production policing means that the broader community is empowered to have a voice and agency in the development of policing strategies and approaches. Peel’s principles allude to what is now known as procedural justice and its core tenets of equity, transparency, voice, and impartiality. Every aspect of a diverse community wants and deserves to have a voice in how policing is implemented. Because of the direct relationship between the way diversity is valued and reflected internally and the way it is valued and engaged externally, real growth toward inclusivity and equity starts with organizational change. One of the first organizational changes to be implemented is to promote a top leadership team that deliberately reflects the diversity of the department and the community it serves.

Building on these fundamental truths in observance of legitimate claims of inequity and lack of inclusion in processes by the black community and other traditionally marginalized communities, police agencies also need to implement co-production of policing. To that end, for example, the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Police Department created a working group of neighbors, activists, community leaders, and civil rights groups to work with the police department to identify policies, practices, and procedures that would ensure delivery of police services in an inclusive and equitable manner. That working group produced actual approaches that were implemented to improve the way the police department provided fundamental internal processes such as the promotional process, which had been previously identified as less than equitable. Improving internal equity demonstrates to team members and community members a commitment to this core value and provides a foundation for similar community-police co-production collaborations on external efforts. Those external collaborative products include the efforts highlighted by Paul David Smith and Stacy Johnson (see sidebars) and others like a real-time intelligence center, a minority internship program, public safety cameras, and a minority recruiting program.

“Policing efforts must be procedurally and socially just and directly accountable to the people who empower the police in the first place.”

Expanding upon the original Peelian principles of policing and more modern ideas of procedural justice is the concept of social justice. Social justice is based on a fair and just relationship between individuals and society and distinguished by four foundational concepts across a broad spectrum of basic human needs like wealth, education, health care, safety, and opportunities: (1) equity, (2) access, (3) active participation, and (4) individual rights. Social justice is an essential component of healthy, effective communities and is also necessary for neighboring communities to feel safe. While true social justice is a goal that transcends policing, it cannot happen in an environment where people do not feel safe. Feeling safe starts with effective and procedurally just policing that includes all community members equitably.

Policing is often inclined to praise its heroes for successes and condemn individuals (or “bad apples”) for failures to live up to its promises. This focus on individuals and their abilities, desires, and intentions instead of on organizational values, policies, and practices that constrain misconduct and promote equity can be very dangerous territory. Professor and activist Ibram X. Kendi said in How to Be an Antiracist,

Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It’s a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.⁵

Instead of writing off the hopes for progress by simply praising people for doing the right thing and criticizing the “bad apples” for doing the wrong thing, it is necessary to explore practical policy solutions produced in true partnership with the community that can produce an environment that promotes inclusive and equitable behavior and eliminates contrary and unacceptable behavior. The profession should commit to principles and concepts that share a commitment to the fundamental beliefs that policing is accountable to the community for its existence, its purpose, and its approaches and that those approaches should support the welfare of the community in a fair, equitable way. Policing efforts must be procedurally and socially just and directly accountable to the people who empower the police in the first place—the community members. Some practices to begin with include the following:

• Acknowledge and teach the oppressive origins and utilization of policing in the United States as part of any basic training and continuing education.
• Implement true co-production policing in which the community has substantive voice and authority in determining the scope of law enforcement, its basic roles and responsibilities, and its approaches.
• Demonstrate appreciation for diversity and a commitment to inclusion within policing organizations.
• Invest in partnerships that can create alternatives to relying solely on policing and enforcement that include sophisticated evidence-based study of the roles, responsibilities, and strategies of local policing with a goal of reducing the expectations and demands placed on policing to address broader community wellness issues.

If our neighbors don’t feel safe to engage with law enforcement, they won’t report crime or fears. If our neighbors don’t report their concerns, police cannot respond to the incidents or the feelings, whether individual or aggregate. If our neighbors don’t share what they experience, the police cannot know what they are going through and cannot effectively help them. Lack of inclusion and appreciation can lead to distrust, which can lead to people not engaging with the police, which leads to police being unable to address crime and safety issues, which leads, like a Möbius strip, back to distrust. Consequently, one of the most important things the police can do to uphold their sacred obligation to help their neighbors be safe and feel safe is to work deliberately to make everyone feel they are represented, that they are included, that they are valued, that they have a voice, and that they have agency in the processes that affect their safety. The journey begins with embracing diversity, inclusion, and equity in the agency’s people, policies, and practices. Such efforts must be both inward-facing as well as outward-facing. That is, any organization that hopes to improve its appreciation of a diverse customer base while increasing inclusion and feelings of equity, must also practice those values internally within its own organization. d

Notes:

¹Olivia B. Waxman, “How the U.S. Got Its Police Force,” TIME, May 18, 2017.

²Waxman, “How the U.S. Got Its Police Force.”

³Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing,” New York Times, April 15, 2014.

⁴President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2015).

⁵Ibram X. Kendi¸ How to be an Antiracist (New York, NY: One World, 2018), 28.

Please cite as

Fred Fletcher, Paul David Smith, Stacy Johnson, “Accountable and Inclusive Policing: Three Perspectives on Diversity and Equity,” Police Chief 88, no. 8 (August 2021): 34–41.