There is a balance in police work between maintaining law and order and infringing on constitutional rights.

The Tulsa Police Department is departing from a strong-arm approach to training recruits to a “professional” approach that includes education on the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, how to handle Muslims and how to treat homosexuals.

While policemen should treat all citizens with common courtesy, the training seems to be trending toward social work rather than fighting crime.

Obviously, it is productive when officers mingle in high-crime areas and get to know people. That helps in not only deterring crime but it emboldens some witnesses to criminal activity that might not otherwise step forward and testify.

The troubling aspect of this is the direction from the Mayor’s Police and Community Coalition. Mayor G.T. Bynum is all about politics and favors “social justice” and “social equity (whatever that means)” over law and order. That’s bad news if you are a victim of a crime or even if you are worried about rising crime rates in your neighborhood.

Most police officers already want to serve the community. They help crime victims recover, they protect children from bad influences and they deter crime by enforcing statutes.

One clue to the dubious direction of the new training is that the “dealing with homosexuals” course is taught by the director of a local homosexual advocacy group. Do we really want someone with such a lack of morality lecturing police recruits? Bynum apparently thinks so.

Here’s a tip. Police officers understand that they will encounter people of all different races, varying religious backgrounds and sexual proclivities. They should treat everyone the same under the law and not make special accommodation for “social justice.”