New York’s Police Force Criminalized So Many Blacks, It Struggles Hire Black Nazi-Cops

Another old ass article where it was STUPID, I didn't bother to post it!

New York’s Police Force Criminalized So Many Blacks, It Struggles for Diverse Hires

By Rebecca McCray, Daniela Franco | Takepart.comJune 10, 2015 3:00 PMTakePart.com

Earlier this week, William Bratton, commissioner of New York City’s police department, raised eyebrows by bemoaning the challenge of hiring black police officers. “We have a significant population gap among African-American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them,” Bratton told The Guardian in an interview published on Tuesday. The commissioner then acknowledged this smaller applicant pool is, in part, one of the “unfortunate consequences” of controversial policing strategies such as stopping, frisking, and interrogating people on the street. Studies and lawsuits have found this NYPD strategy disproportionately affects people of color—particularly young black and Latino men.

Roughly 16 percent of the NYPD’s officers are black, while roughly 26 percent of New York City residents are black. Meanwhile, black New York City residents comprise more than half of all street stops and interrogations each year.

Criminal records pose an undeniable barrier to employment in law enforcement and other industries. While there is a growing movement throughout the U.S. to prevent employers from requiring applicants to disclose past convictions by “banning the box,” the practice remains pervasive.

So, Why Should You Care? This creates a formidable challenge for former offenders when attempting to reintegrate into society. It also perpetuates a dangerous cycle in which an ex-offender, left with no other viable options, is more likely to return to a life of crime and incarceration.

Bratton’s contentious comment also calls into question the NYPD’s efforts to recruit black officers. As incidents of excessive and fatal use of force by white police officers against black citizens across the U.S. have driven news reports and federal government investigations, the diversity of local police departments has also fallen under scrutiny. One example is Ferguson, Missouri, where last summer black teen Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white officer. Sixty-seven percent of Ferguson’s residents are black, but the city’s police force remains 89 percent white. Experts say this demographic mismatch may aggravate tensions between police and the communities they serve.

“If you want your department to be diverse, you’ve got to get creative to recruit people of color,” Rochelle Bilal, vice chair of the National Black Police Association, told TakePart. Bilal said that while growing up in a rough neighborhood in North Philadelphia, she did not like police. “In the 1980s, the police used to run through my neighborhood like it was a place to just beat people up,” she said.

Her perception changed when a group of black officers came to her community to talk to her about the job. “They started talking to us and relating to us how if you want to make a change, you can do that on the job,” Bilal said. “So I took a second look at the police.” Eventually, she joined Philadelphia’s police force and worked as an officer for 27 years before retiring in 2013.

In 2013, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that an estimated 605,000 people are employed on a full-time basis in the country’s more than 12,000 local police departments. Out of those people, about 58,000 are black. That population has grown barely 5 percent since 2007. Despite the small gains, these numbers demonstrate that nationwide, black people are not being hired with frequency by local police departments.

To join the NYPD, applicants must go through a lengthy process. If someone has a criminal record, he or she is automatically taken off the applicant list. Other charges such as summonses do not disqualify an applicant, although repeated minor offenses can.

Because of the NYPD’s reputation of stopping a disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic New York residents, it’s hard to imagine how the job might appeal to young people of color. “You have to send real people with real stories to tell to reach out to people of color,” Bilal said. “You turn people off from even looking at policing as something they’d want to do with policies that mistreat and disrespect people of color.”