Women and Minorities in Law Enforcement

Women and minorities can be found in many policing agencies across the United States. Unfortunately the history of policing in the United States portrays how hard it was for women and minorities to become police officers. Additionally history also shows how the minorities and women rose up to earn an equal opportunity to represent their communities as police officers.
An All White Male Club Police agencies in earlier years lack several elements that most present day police agencies have. In history most police agencies lack both ethnic and gender diversity (Grant, 2008). As the 1960’s and 1970’s pass through, many equal opportunity and equal rights movements occurred, which opened up opportunities for women and minorities. Legislation was passed such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act which helped minorities fight employment discrimination by policing agencies (Grant, 2008). Eventually Affirmative action was born, which made policing agencies overlook ethnic and gender criteria, and hire personal based on their performance and qualifications.
Their Changing Role With an equal opportunity of becoming police officers, many women and minorities need to adjust to their new roles. Women in today’s policing agencies currently answer more domestic abuse calls because they have been statistically better at handling those situations then male police officers (Grant, 2008). Policewomen also tend to hold more roles in community relations. Many policing agencies use minority officers to help to recruit more minorities like themselves (Grant, 2008).
Women Get A Weak Pass? Despite many peoples beliefs, women police candidates do not get a pass from the physical agility test. Instead many police agencies have modified the tests from predominantly upper body strength exercises, to full body exercises like obstacle courses (Grant, 2008). This was an effort to allow women a better chance of passing the physical agility test. All candidates regardless of gender have the same requirements. Those requirements are: - twenty-one years of age - currently hold or can obtain a state driver’s license - have no felonies on criminal record - Pass a written exam, medical exam, interview, physical agility test, and physiological screening (Grant, 2008).
Conclusion
While policing agencies in the past have been an all white male club, equal opportunity legislation has opened up new doors for both women and minorities in the police field. Many minorities police officers’ patrol and recruit individuals in high minority population jurisdictions, which allow policing agencies to reach the minority population on a higher level then before. Women police officers have proved quiet valuable in handling domestic situations and in improving police community relationships.

References
Grant, H. B., & Terry, K. J. (2008). Law enforcement in the 21st century (2nd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.