Of Common Bonds: Accounting for Intergenerational Culture Competency in Community Policing

Abstract

Community policing is grounded in a set of knowledge and skills that promotes a collaborative relationship between community residents, law enforcement, public and private industry, and governing elected officials to achieve safe and sustainable communities. In the fall of 2016, on the heels of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division's Investigative Report, a cohort of Morgan State University's School of Social Work faculty, trained in the results-based accountability (RBA) model, developed and implemented an interactive workshop on cultural competency with 70 community partners from law enforcement. Cultural competence is an inherit cornerstone of a viable community and police partnership. This article shares how outcome-based performance strategies such as RBA can facilitate a pathway for enhancing community generational cultural competence leading to public safety.

Ethnocultural Empathy and Racial Colorblindness Among White Police Recruits: Do Cross-Racial Friendships Matter?

“…The current project was designed to address the gaps in the literature by exploring the association between ethnocultural empathy and racial colorblindness among police recruits. Having this information can help shape recruitment and training strategies (April et al, 2019; Vaughn & Johnson, 2020), and inform policies and practices within police departments, including community-based cultural competency training (McLane-Davison et al, 2018). We argue that in order for officers to support antiracism policies and practices it is essential to have care and compassion for BIPOC and to have an awareness that structural racism exists and negatively influences the lived realities of BIPOC communities.…”