Diversity in the Department, but How?

By: Taylor Lawson

The struggle of diversity within police departments has increasingly become an issue for many departments around the nation today. As cities continue to become more and more diverse, many departments find themselves playing catch up trying to both mirror and respond to this diversity in their community. An honest desire to ensure that their city’s people feel legitimately represented by their police department, along with political pressures, make up a few of the reasons why diversity is becoming more of a priority in departments. Some reasons reflect a much higher level of seriousness, such as those that fueled the Frederick Police Department’s need to prioritize diversity. The Frederick PD, located in Frederick, Maryland, received a lawsuit condemning the reality of the department’s mainly white male demographic.  The Frederick News Post describes, “the allegation in the civil action was that the predominantly white police department had been routinely stopping and searching black residents without probable cause.”

             

With these real and immediate pressures, the issue then shifts to how departments can begin diversifying in a fair way. However, the question of how to go about solving this issue just leads to more problems. For example, in Frederick, the lawsuit reached a settlement that required the department to hire “at least one black applicant for every non-black hired, until 13% of the force’s officers were black”. A goal demanding enough on its own, it also brings more difficulties with the effect it has on other groups. One issue stemming from the action of Frederick to achieve a more diverse police force is the fact that now the department is forced to discriminate against all other minority groups when being compared to an African-American applicant. This does not seem fair to all other minority groups, especially those less visible to the public eye, as diversity consists of more than just ethnicity, but also one’s economic background, sexual preference, etc.

             

The Baton Rouge Police Department faces a similar problem, despite efforts to diversify. Jim Mustian, writer of the local Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate, shares that the past five years of hiring data suggests that African-American applicants are less likely to be hired than their white peers. However, police spokesman Lt. Don Kelly says there is no easy answer as to why the department does not have more diversity, defending fair hiring practices, and describing that it is a “disservice” to look past the individuals and include things such as race, as ignoring the best individuals for any reason simply lowers the standards.

             

Questioning how aggressive the department’s efforts are to diversify, Kwame Asanté, president of the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, feels that there is not enough community outreach. Increasing a “community-based effort to recruit” qualified individuals of minority groups will increase minority applicants, making the hiring of minority groups more likely. While there are many factors to point to in describing why there is not more diversity, such as unfair standardized tests or a biased oral interview board, there does not seem to be any clear solution yet. For the recruiting officers in Baton Rouge, they have decided to take the community outreach approach, reaching out to minority groups through community appearances at churches, universities, and job fairs.