NCJ Number
140096
Date Published
1992
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Members of the Law Enforcement Steering Committee report on their meeting to consider pending issues of major significance to policing.
Abstract
Agreement has been reached on several challenges that face the police community today: community/police relations, cultural bias training, agency composition, police accountability, community policing, quality leadership, hate crime laws, media fairness and professionalism, victimization, support for law enforcement professionalism, and the federal role in realizing safer communities. The police need to make a systematic effort to analyze their relationship with the community and to identify factors that create conflict as well as to develop an action plan to resolve the conflict. To minimize the impact of biases held in the broader society, police departments should screen applicants carefully. Concerted efforts also should be made to recruit more minorities and women and to ensure their advancement into the higher ranks. Police leaders need to take responsibility for adopting more progressive and department-wide policing strategies and for bringing about the cultural changes those strategies require. The report concludes with recommendations to Congress and the Administration.