Saturday, July 28, 2007
The city of Dayton plans to intensify minority recruiting through a committee it formed on the issue. Ideas include raising salaries for recruits and offering them assistance in relocating.
Columbus is targeting Hispanic and Somali neighborhoods with ads in the residents' native languages. The city also plans to increase its efforts to recruit students at historically black colleges. And Cleveland is coming off an apparently successful campaign by recruiting in churches and recreation centers.
"In the past, people were beating down the door to become police officers. Now, you've got to go out to people instead of them coming to you," said Columbus police Sgt. Anthony Wilson, supervisor of the minority-recruiting unit.
Dayton's police force is 18 percent black in a city where blacks make up 43 percent of the population.
"It doesn't look good that we have a city that is almost half African American with less than one out five police officers of color," City Commissioner Dean Lovelace said.
In Columbus, which has a black population of about 25 percent, blacks make up about 13 percent of the city's police officers.
"It's been gradually declining," Wilson said.
Police recruiters and city officials say potential black recruits are often discouraged from becoming police officers by family and friends whose perceived experience with police has been negative. And some potential recruits don't believe they have a real chance to become a police officer because they seldom see officers of their race.
In addition, minorities who do apply and pass the tests become discouraged by waiting a long time before they can actually join the force. So they take other jobs or join the military.
Having few minority police officers can create problems in neighborhoods where officers don't know the culture, Wilson said.
"People aren't comfortable with speaking to you," he said. "There is that trust issue."
Lovelace said more minority officers would help ease historic tensions in Dayton between blacks and white officers.
Derrick Foward, president of the Dayton chapter of the NAACP, said Friday that recruits who come from families with a history of serving as police officers - most who are white - seem to do better on the testing. He said that puts minorities lower on the hire list.
Foward said the NAACP is forming a committee to review diversity in the safety forces.
In Cleveland, about 27 percent of police officers are black. Last summer, the city launched a campaign to increase the number of minority recruits.
"This is one of the biggest efforts we've ever done," said Mary Bounds, assistant safety director.
Billboard ads went up in minority neighborhoods. About 50 buses wore recruiting wraps. Officers handed out applications at rec centers. And notices were placed in church bulletins that said: "Police work is a calling. Are you listening?"
Of the 3,500 people who called the police department expressing interest, each received a letter thanking them for their interest and a phone call giving them information about how to take the police test.
Of the 1,180 recruits who passed the written exam in April, nearly 30 percent were black, 11 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian and other minorities.
Source: AP, July 28, 2007