Police Response to Conflict Within the Community

This week’s written assignment has to do with the conflict in  relations between community members of different cultures and the  police.

In a 2-3 page paper, adhering to APA style guidelines, describe  how you would handle the following situation if you were one of the  responding police officers. Be sure to describe how the actions that you  propose to take would be consistent, no matter what ethnicities are  involved.

You are a police officer in an agency that has been involved in  community-oriented policing for several years. You are working in a  neighborhood where there has been conflict between Korean Americans and  African Americans. You have been summoned to a Korean American store  where the Korean clerk has made a citizen’s arrest on an African  American youth for petty theft. A group of African Americans has  gathered to protest the arrest. They are angry, but they are not hostile  to you and your backup officer. There are several ways you could  approach this multicultural community problem and some of the ways would  probably ignite the situation more than necessary. What do you think is  the best way to handle the situation given the animosity between the  two groups?