Analyzing Methods of Policing in a Diverse Community

Policing in Diverse Community

The following will be a response to an article written by Mark. A Prosser called "Policing in a Diverse Community."

Back in the 1999s, Storm Lake Community leaders realized the change in the community and that it would keep changing. The immediate challenges they had to confront were language unfamiliarity, absorption of new cultures, and requirements of the community services from the whole development. Considering these challenges and keeping in mind the successive community studies, service providers started changing the service providing strategies in order to effectively adjust with multiethnic and multilingual customers. In transforming the community, the Storm Lake Police Department played a pivotal role, which is still going on even today (Prosser, 2007). To share the experience of arranging and applying effective programming feedback to fulfill the various community requirements, the department has approached different cities in Iowa and the Upper Midwest. Same demographical changes have also been experienced by other cities in the region.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The Storm Lake City Council provided funds, in the mid-1990s, to include community service officer positions for helping the 18 sworn officers in the police department. In the city agency, these bilingual positions were the first full-time staff interpreters and translators. At present, almost every department has bilingual employees. Furthermore, multilingual forms and signs in Spanish and Lao have also been developed by the police department. Cultural diversity training is conducted regularly for staff to support officers and civilian employees to understand the new cultures, which at present, regard Storm Lake as their home. Some or all meetings about the community, including the minority communities, are attended by the police department. In developing the Community Voices Program, there is mutual cooperation between the police department and the city. This program adopts the example of a citizen police academy with a curriculum that is delivered in various languages by interpreters and not specific to public safety topic. To study and share knowledge on the community's changing demographics, the police department has depiction on local and countrywide diversity committees and the task force. To perform effectively on the street, the police officers are taught survival language tips and many officers have also taken extra language classes. Besides responding to the services requested, the Storm Lake police officers are required to set up one or more contacts on each shift that are indifferent to the police-related events. There are always aspects of strengths and weaknesses of all matters. Multilingual signs are not the answer to everything. When the community tried to establish effective communication with their new residents, it observed that there were a number of people who could not even read and write their native language (Prosser, 2007). In the continuous communication challenge, this is considered the only weakness at this stage.

Compare/Contrast Approach