The NYPD announced Wednesday rules relating to head coverings and beards will be loosened as a way to adapt to the department’s change in policy on uniforms that accommodate officers who are of the Sikh faith, The New York Post reported.
“We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said standing next to Sikh officers following an officer graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden.
“It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully,” he said.
According to O’Neil, the NYPD presently employs 160 Sikh officers and told The Post he has been working with the officers for a while on the issue.
“We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to be one way to help us with that,” he said.
The change in policy comes in the wake of the NYPD arrest of a Muslim woman charged with filing a false police report claiming she was attacked by Trump supporters who tried to grab her hijab off her head.