What Are The Demographics Of Police And Community Demographics

Police and Community Demographics “The police are the people and the people are the police” those words, said by Sir Robert Peel, the father of community policing, describe how a well ran city and police department should be. The people of the community should feel comfortable enough with its own police department to act as the police department’s eyes. A police department can only afford to pay so many police officers, that it is virtually impossible to bring justice to all the wrong doings in the community. That is where the community comes into play, by acting as the eyes of the police force. In order for this to happen the community needs to feel comfortable and at home with the police force. This means that a police department has to

Police departments can match demographics of the city is serves by have a police force that is a reflection of the community it serves. If a community is very diverse in race say fifty percent Vietnamese, twenty five percent Hispanic and twenty five percent Caucasian, a successful police department needs to match those demographics in order for them to do a good job. A community will feel more comfortable with its police department, if the police department is as diverse as the community its self. Another reason why police departments need to match the demographics of the community if serves is because of cultural and language barriers that come with a very diverse community. If a citizen came from a country like Vietnam where the police are corrupt and instead of putting an end to crimes they add to them, they will see the police force in America the same way. This can result in crimes like domestic violence, robbery’s and rapes not to be reported because the citizen will feel that the police department will not help. This can be resolved and avoided if a police department matches the community’s demographics because then they will have Vietnamese officers that will be able to help the citizen by educating them on the police force, letting them know that they are here to help not hurt. Without matching the community’s

For example the city of Ferguson, Missouri has a high population of African Americans sixty-seven percent black and twenty-nine percent white to be exact, so for the police department to truly be able to serve the community they would have to match the demographics. Unfortunately the police department was not doing a great job of matching the demographics of the city. Well in August of 2014 just after the shooting of mike brown, a black male that was killed by a Ferguson police officer, USA Today released an article about the demographics of the Ferguson police department. They stated that all the though the city of Ferguson has seen a dramatic shift from having a majority white population to a majority black population, the police department does not reflect the demographics of Ferguson at all. Out of the fifty-three police officers that serve the town of Ferguson, only three of those police officers are black. When USA today asked residents of Ferguson if they would like to see more black officers in their home town, one citizen responded by saying "We want answers, we want justice in our community, we want diversity", another citizen responded by saying “of course, most definitely I think it would help the morale of the city and increase positive interactions between the community and police force.” These are examples of