Black Cops Say Discrimination, Nepotism Behind U.S. Police Race Gap

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Thomas Boone has spent 22 years as a police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a predominantly Black suburb of Washington, proudly wearing his uniform and driving his patrol car to coach kids’ football and basketball teams.

Some of those athletes are now 18 to 20 years old, including his own son. They might have pursued careers in law enforcement, Boone believes, but the death of George Floyd has made that less likely due to the anger directed at police, particularly in Black communities

“When we go to the grocery store in town, we have to get stopped to be asked, ‘Why do you all do this to us?'”, said Boone, a lieutenant.

Floyd’s killing by a white policeman in May has triggered fresh scrutiny of police brutality against African Americans. Black men are more than twice as likely to die in an interaction with U.S. police than white ones, a 2018 study showed.

Some policing experts believe one way to address the crisis is to attract more Black Americans to law enforcement, and promote them to the top ranks. U.S. police forces remain generally whiter than the community that surrounds them, despite decades of attempts to reform.

Whites accounted for 71.5% of the 701,000 sworn local police officers in the United States in 2016, Bureau of Justice Statistics data https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd16p.pdf show, compared to an estimated 60% of the population. African Americans account for 11.4% of local police forces, compared to around 13% of the population, a drop from 11.9% in 2013.

Discrimination, Nepotism Behind
U.S. Police Race Gap

The nationwide averages mask much bigger gaps in big cities, which are both less white and have more police per capita than many rural areas, suburbs, and small towns.

Reuters spoke to more than a dozen former and current law enforcement officers, as well as criminal justice experts and families of police officers. Black representation in U.S. police forces has long been hampered by discrimination in hiring and promotion, they say, and some warn it could shrink further.

“George Floyd is such a ground-breaking situation. It is definitely going to affect the recruitment of minorities for a long time,” said Sergeant Anthony Russell, a former recruitment supervisor who heads a Black officers’ advocacy group in Baltimore County, Maryland.

He and other Black officers said there are several reasons why the numbers of African Americans in the blue uniform are low, including application tests skewed against Black candidates, straightforward nepotism in the senior ranks and a lingering reluctance by Blacks to be part of a group that enforced segregation in the South decades ago.AMIBC® - VOTE! BE COUNTED! BE HEARD!

He and other Black officers said there are several reasons why the numbers of African Americans in the blue uniform are low, including application tests skewed against Black candidates, straightforward nepotism in the senior ranks and a lingering reluctance by Blacks to be part of a group that enforced segregation in the South decades ago.AMIBC® - VOTE! BE COUNTED! BE HEARD! SOURCE ⇒ USNEWS  

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