Police force diversity crucial to building bridges with minority communities

The graduating police cadets stood straight in the banquet room, wearing their most serious stares. The holsters on their belts would soon hold guns. They ranged in size and age, but most of them had this in common: They were white.

In law enforcement agencies across the Tampa Bay area, the percentage of white officers patrolling communities is higher than in the populations they serve. In some cities, it’s drastic, like the Tampa Police Department, where the city is 46 percent white yet white officers account for 70 percent of the force.

Hillsborough County’s Sheriff’s Office is 70 percent white, while its white population is 55 percent. In St. Petersburg, the city has 10 percent fewer black officers when compared with residents.

The police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the ensuing protests brought increased scrutiny of police force diversity. Ferguson is a town where 67 percent of its 21,000 residents are black. In contrast, its police force is 94 percent white.

“When you diversify, you protect against the suspicion that the police don’t care about what happens in the community,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, a professor of social psychology and founder of the Center for Policing Equity at the University of California at Los Angeles.

It’s not that black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian officers police minority communities better, Goff said. What’s most important is that the community feels it’s being treated fairly. In this way, a representative force builds trust. If law enforcement does not reflect the community, it’s easy to view officers not as peacekeepers, but as an occupying force.

“The reason the protest happened in Ferguson is you have a community that feels they’ve been occupied and mistreated for decades,” Goff said.

Tampa City Council member Frank Reddick asked for a police diversity report last week after he heard there could be “marches and other things taking place” in Tampa if a grand jury in Missouri clears Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, in the fatal Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, 18.

Police Chief Jane Castor assured the council that if protests happen, the department would work with protesters to ensure peaceful demonstrations.

Reddick said he was pleased that the department’s diversity numbers were better than those in Ferguson, but thought there was room for improvement.

Agencies in the Tampa Bay area say they aggressively seek qualified minority candidates.

“We are looking to hire minorities,” said St. Petersburg police Chief Tony Holloway, who is black. “We want to. And if they are qualified, please give us a call.”

Clearwater police have a detailed minority recruiting plan that includes building a relationship with military bases in North Carolina and Kentucky.

“Though it may be fiscally impractical to visit individual bases outside of the State of Florida, the department can maintain networks with these transitional stations through telephone contacts and other means, such as flyers and recruitment brochures,” the plan states.

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office established a minority council of 15 people and hired a Hispanic recruiter. As a result, its force is nearly equivalent with its black population, and only 3 percentage points fewer than its Hispanic population. Still, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said, it’s a constant battle against attrition and changing area demographics.

“What I see is that there’s a shortage of minorities applying for these jobs,” said Holloway, who left Clearwater this year to become St. Petersburg’s chief. “We have to make it attractive for minorities.”

Many agencies echoed Holloway’s sentiment: They would love to hire more minorities, but there are few qualified applicants to be had. Holloway said he has even taken to handing out business cards to parents when he’s at a speaking event — just in case their kids are interested.

Recruiting for law enforcement is different than most jobs.

“It’s not like some service industry business where you can just hire everyone,” Gualtieri said.

Officers and deputies must pass strict background tests, physical tests, medical tests, cognitive tests, written tests and even a credit history check.

A Rand Corp. study from 2012 said three things inhibit minorities from entering law enforcement: They are either disproportionately unaware, unqualified, or uninterested.

The Rand report recommends law enforcement begin outreach programs and work with leaders to let minority communities know they’re interested.

Most law enforcement agencies require a high school diploma or GED, and in some cases some college credits. This shrinks the pool of qualified minorities, as nationally black and Hispanic kids graduate from high school at a rate that’s 20 percent lower than their white peers.

The fitness and health tests also pose another challenge, because Hispanics and blacks suffer from higher obesity rates, according to the Rand report.

Lastly, in 2009, national arrest figures for black juveniles were more than twice the rate for whites overall, and nearly double for drug-related offenses, according to the report. This leads to criminal records, and possibly to failed background checks.

But perhaps the most challenging barrier is that minority communities tend to view law enforcement jobs as undesirable.

“The biggest damage to diversity in law enforcement is not who’s in jail,” said Goff, “it’s who’s putting them in jail.”

If law enforcement officers of any color are arresting and jailing a higher percentage of a minority group, Goff said, that community will view the agency as prejudicial and unfair.

“If you come from a neighborhood that feels like it’s occupied,” Goff said, “then your girlfriend or wife, brothers, cousins and parents aren’t going to support you if you say you want to join these people.”

Watson Haynes, president of the Pinellas County Urban Defense League, agrees that diversity within the department is key to building community trust.

“It’s only when you change the makeup of your workforce that you can change the way people act and react on the outside,” Haynes said.

Goff is currently studying some of the principles law enforcement could improve. Some are easy fixes, like placing the question that asks what ethnicity an applicant is at the end of the written tests, which if done has been shown to reduce anxiety in minority test takers and improve scores.

Others, like community perception, will take much longer to improve.

(From the: Tampa Bay)