Allowing cops to have beards is right move
Acevedo’s decision to change HPD’s policy recognizes cultural, generational differences.
The Houston Police Department’s decision to allow its officers to grow beards may have prompted some grumbling from “old-school” members of the force and even some of the more traditionalist segments of the community, but it is the right thing to do.
Announced this month in an email to the department from Police Chief Art Acevedo, the decision belatedly recognizes the cultural and generational differences that are already being accommodated in workplaces across the city, county, state and nation.
It also will help HPD to better compete for new recruits after police departments in Dallas and Austin and the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office had already loosened their bans on beards.
It’s also a simple recognition of the area’s diversity.
The change in facial hair policy comes two years after HPD relaxed its regulations on visible tattoos and two months after changing its uniform policy to allow Sikh officers to wear articles of faith, including a turban and a beard. That came after Sandeep Dhaliwal, the first Harris County Sheriff ’s Office deputy allowed to wear a turban and beard, had been killed in the line of duty.
“We have to evolve as an organization to serve this melting pot we call Houston,” Acevedo told the Chronicle, “but we also need to change to meet the needs of our workforce.”
Those needs include finding new recruits to patrol the streets and to replace those officers who are retiring or moving to other departments or careers.
The changes to dress codes in Houston and other police departments are part of a broader recognition that the difficulty in recruiting those new officers is not just a result of low starting pay, dangerous and stressful work conditions and depleted morale — the socalled Ferguson effect, a reference to the backlash that followed the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. — but because of random and arbitrary requirements that had little to do with fielding an effective and responsive police force.
Automatically eliminating possible applicants simply because they had tattoos or beards (or both) doesn’t make sense, especially as that pool is growing with changes in style and fashion.
The traditional view that clean-shaven, ink-free police officers looked more professional and trustworthy to the public became harder to square with the fact that many residents were routinely putting their lives and well-being in the hands of doctors, dentists, lawyers and even judges with beards and the occasionally visible tattoo.
“Professionalism is about conduct, professionalism is about service, professionalism is about results, not a tattoo on an arm or a leg,” Acevedo told the Chronicle when he changed the tattoo policy in 2017.
The specifics of the beard policy have not yet been released to officers, although it is expected to track those in other departments.
The Dallas policy says, “A groomed and maintained mustache, goatee or beard is authorized. Beards must be worn with a mustache. Facial hair must not be longer than a quarter-inch in length. No portion of the beard may be exceptionally longer than the rest.”
There is nothing there to suggest that a bearded police officer will be hindered in enforcing the law or that the public will be alarmed by what it already accepts from other professionals.
And, if it helps HPD sign up a few more qualified officers, all the better. It was time for this change.