New York Police Department will now allow the Sikh officers to wear turbans and keep beards as it relaxed its policy for the standard norms of uniform and changed it to promote inclusiveness and encourage more and more people of from all communities to join NYPD.
New York Police Department Uniform norms
“We’re making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity”, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said at the graduation ceremony for the new police recruits on Wednesday.
Under the new rules – the Sikh officers will be allowed to keep beards that can extend a hald inch from the face and wear turbans with the hat-shield instead of weraqing a traditional police cap.
He said that these changes have been made to make the police department as diverse as possible. Furthermore, he added – “We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy. It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully.”
The commissioner said that currentluyther are around 160 Sikh officers in the police department and that he has introduced the eased norms for the uniform policy for welcoming new members in the department from the Sikh community as well as from other minority groups.
Earlier, the officers were prohibited from keeping beards, but now exceptions have been made for the Sikh officers.
