Twin Cities Daily Planet
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Last month, the Minneapolis Police Department celebrated the graduation of its first new recruiting class in three years.Seven
of the 13 new officers are members of minorities, a step in the right
direction for Minneapolis police Chief Janeé Harteau’s mission to
diversify the department, said Minneapolis police Sgt. Steve McCarty.
“People identify with people who are similar to them,” McCarty said. “It just makes good business sense to have diversity.”
The percentage of minority officers in the Minneapolis police force has risen by almost 5 percentage points since 2001.
Diversity
among officers and how they reflect the demographics of the communities
they serve is a problem for many police departments, McCarty said.
The
University of Minnesota Police Department has only three minority
officers among its total of 50, according to University police Chief
Greg Hestness.
“It’s a struggle for everybody because the hiring opportunities are slim,” he said.
University
police rarely have the budget to hire more officers due to the small
size of the department, Hestness said, so it’s difficult to diversify
the department.
“We can’t really do the recruiting if you’re not
going to have a job available for two to three years,” he said. “There’s
more opportunity in the city.”
Another problem University police face is a lack of qualified minorities in their recruiting pool, he said.
“You can’t just hire anybody,” Hestness said. “They have to be licensable.”
One
proposal Hestness has to diversify his department is to introduce a
cadet program that would pay for a recruit’s education and training.
If
the recruit completes the training, he or she would be promoted to an
officer in the University police, he said. If the officer chooses to
leave University police, he or she would have to pay the department back
for the training.
“It’s a way of balancing quality with diversity,” he said.
Hestness
said he believes once University police hire a few more minority
officers, others will see the department as an attractive place to work.
“When
you have a few minority officers in the door of your department, it
starts getting easier,” he said. “They know they’re welcome in your
department.”
Importance of diversity
A
2003 study published by the Policy Studies Journal reported that racial
diversity in police departments is important because it increases police
empathy with minority residents.
According to the study, minority
officers are more familiar with minority cultures, and they can help
spread that knowledge to other officers in the department.
A
diverse police force is especially necessary on a university campus,
said Kenneth Brown, former chair of the Minneapolis Commission on Civil
Rights.
“The community is so diverse,” he said. “If you only have a one-sided view of the world, you’re not going to treat everybody with respect.”
Having a diverse group of officers allows residents to better relate to the police and makes them feel safer, Hestness said.
“If
you have a couple of minority officers working a diverse community,
it’s not going to be seen as targeting,” he said. “Not that it’s fair,
but that’s the reality of it.”
Minneapolis police have tested the theory by adding Somali cops to patrol the West Bank community, McCarty said.
Although
he said he thinks Somali residents may be more comfortable with the
Somali officers, it is difficult to tangibly compare the success of
those officers against white officers.
The University community is
one of the most diverse areas in the Twin Cities, so Hestness said he
isn’t satisfied with the current demographics of his department.
“I
feel like the time is due,” he said. “The time is due for us to be
reflective of how diverse our city is and how diverse our campus is.”