In two communities in the Mid-West recruiting efforts have achieved a policing force that is composed of approximately 5% of minorities "Nearly five our of every 100 officers are from ethnic minorities" (Force 11).
There are others who are convinced that law enforcement agencies are not going far enough in their efforts to reduce minority tensions. In St. Louis, the Alton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is filing suit in federal court in order to increase the number of minority officers on the city's police and fire departments. According to one representative of this chapter of the NAACP "Federal courts ruled twice that the city discriminated against blacks in hiring for the police and fire departments…The only time we have any success is when there is a decree in force" (Hillig 1). If the NAACP is successful in its suit, it would require the city to hire enough minorities in its police and fire departments to reach 18% of the overall number of employees (Hillig 1).
Yet, even if this suit is successful and in light of the increased efforts of other police departments to achieve similar goals, there are some who doubt if these actions will be enough to help resolve community tensions while reducing crime. Because of these doubts, researchers have conduced studies to determine if such actions have an impact of the percentage of crimes in neighborhoods with higher ethnic representation of the police force. John J. Donohue III, of Stanford Law School, culled data from 134 major U.S. cities from 1977 to 1993 to analyze how the ethnic composition of police forces affected arrest and crime patterns (Koretz 27). Their findings support the fact that greater racial composition on local police forces reduces crime and arrests. They theorize this is because own-race policing is thought to lead to fewer incidences of police misconduct and greater deterrence among potential criminals. As...
Police Brutality in the US. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:50, July 02, 2015, from http://www.collegetermpapers.com/viewpaper/1303971080.html