Historically, different cultures will have cultural conflicts when the two cultures don’t understand each other. When these cultures refuse to learn about the other, the conflict will grow. Law enforcement is a tight knit culture that is constantly evolving, but due to social media and over mediated mistakes, law enforcement will always shrouded in “Blue Line” brotherhood, conflict and conspiracy. The current culture of law enforcement is not compatible with the current societal changes in this country and unfortunately never will.
The famous statue of Lady Justice is blindfolded. This symbolizes looking at a situation without passion or prejudice. Each and every law enforcement officer should respond and operate every call with this mentality. “Implicit Bias” is defined as a pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group or culture. Culture is defined as the customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. How can an individual of a particular culture that is passionate about who they are, enter into a volatile situation without Implicit Bias? Even more so, a police officer that has to force his culture onto another? The answer is training, training and more training.
Individuals in Law Enforcement have made mistakes in the past few years that are all over social media. Every person that has a computer or smartphone became a self-proclaimed analyst that put their opinions out there for the world to see. Some of these incidences led to riots, protests and more crime. The culture itself demanded swift arrests of the police and some form of retribution based off what they thought was reality. In some cases, the culture forced attorneys to make decisions based off of fear instead of fact. Social media alone has created a culture of people that don’t know how to communicate face to face and without reaction. This type of culture is making it impossible for Law Enforcement officers to be able to do their job with Implicit Bias from Society.
Finally, there is a quote by G. Michael Hopf. “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times.” Today’s society has it much better than our ancestors and previous generations. Parents are overheard saying that they will never treat their kids the way they were treated. This mentality over multiple generation creates a weak culture. This type of culture matched with being uneducated about the role of Law Enforcement is a recipe for chaos.
In conclusion, social media, bad or absent parenting, bad policing and implicit bias make it impossible for the law enforcement culture to keep up with the societal changes in this country. The Law enforcement community as a whole is making multicultural hires to their agencies and increasing training on learning the different cultures. Society will continue to change and different cultures will come to the media forefront. There are some cultures that only want change, but don’t want to learn. With the large diversity in our population and the decreasing amount of officers, cross cultural awareness training is becoming more and more important, but law enforcement will always have to adapt.
