As the Regina Police Service swore in its newest batch of recruits on Jan. 5, the discussion for some quickly turned to how diverse this year’s group was.
Across the province, police forces have been making more of a push to further diversify when it comes to gender, ethnicity and background of officers.
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College, said having more representation leads to better law enforcement.
“Policing is ultimately in the interests of local communities and that means the police force needs to reflect the communities that it is policing,” Leuprecht said. “In a democracy, we want the police force to reflect the values that we cherish, one of which is of course diversity.”
He argues a police force reflective of the people they represent is very important to further trust in the law. And while some diversity is easily seen, others may not appear at first glance, such as sexual orientation or culture.
More diversity in the police force also means more people might be willing to join.
“Greater diversity within institutions is important to change institutional culture, because ultimately it’ll be hard to attract a diverse pool of labour to your organization if the diversity of that pool doesn’t see themselves reflected in the organization itself and the way that organization treats its members,” he said.
The Regina Police Service and the Saskatchewan Human Right Commission have laid out a number of goals for increasing the diversity of sworn-in police officers.
“We are at 24.9% female sworn police officers. Our total workforce numbers show women make up 40.3% of our total workforce,” the Regina Police said in a statement.
Saskatoon Police have laid out similar goals for diversity.
The actual progress of women in under-represented occupations includes all women in the workforce.
Regina Police Chief Evan Bray said the changes in diversity in the community as well as the general public perception of policing have made it difficult to recruit new officers. However, he believes they are taking steps in the right direction.
“It can be a challenge because this isn’t a job people wake up and say ‘I’m gonna give it a shot;’ oftentimes people have been thinking about this for a while,” Bray said. “And there have been some challenges in policing that haven’t made policing the most appealing job so the fact that we have people excited to join our service and serving our community is very positive.”
At the end of the day, Bray said it is extremely important for police to represent the diversity of the community they serve and it is crucial to earning their trust.
“Trust and respect in policing is the foundation of what we do…but trust and respect is extremely fragile,” Bray said to the new officers. “Every time you go into the community, your focus is providing them the help they need.”