Chandigarh, November 20, 2019: In the honour of fallen Indian-American Sikh police officer Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal, the Houston Police Department has allowed officers of other faiths to carry articles of faith while they are on duty.
Dhaliwal (42) was shot dead while conducting a traffic stop in Houston on September 28 when the driver of the vehicle he stopped shot him in the back.
He served the force for 10 years and was allowed to grow a beard and wear a turban at work, a development which made national headlines.
"@houstonpolice is now the largest law enforcement agency in TX to adopt a policy allowing officers to wear articles of faith on duty," City of Houston tweeted on Monday.
"Proud to announce HPD (Houston Police Department) will accommodate Sikh officers by letting them wear their articles of faith while on duty, one of the largest police departments in the country to do so. Deputy Dhaliwal taught us all a valuable lesson about inclusion. It was an honour to know him," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner tweeted.
"Proud to stand with @SylvesterTurner and so many members of our community to announce our policy and get the word out to our greater community," Chief of the Houston Police Department Art Acevedo tweeted.
"I''m honoured," Sandeep Dhaliwal's father, Pyara Singh Dhaliwal, was quoted as saying by the KHOU Television station.
"The honour I got from this community and from the chief, the police department and the sheriff department is ... I have no words to say. So, I very much thank all of these bodies. Wonderful moment," he said.
The New York Police Department, the Chicago Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington and the Riverside Police Department in California are the other law enforcement agencies in the US where Sikh officers are allowed to carry articles of faith while on duty.