How has affirmative action for blacks and latinos worked out in general? Why would any society want competent police in the first place?
Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped and creating better contact with communities and victims? Or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that more black and minority police officers increase crime rates. This arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the most heavily black populated areas. The annual victim costs for all categories of crimes was at least $5.4 billion. Other issues addressed are: the impact that this changing composition of police departments has on their organization as well as the murder of and assaults against police officers.
…While the U.S. Department of Justice states that the appropriate
testing procedures nearly eliminate disparate impact while improving
merit hiring (Gottfredson, May 20, 1997),11 critics of affirmative
action in policing argue that these tests lower reliance on important
cognitive skills. According to a 1993 survey of twenty-three large
police and sheriff departments (conducted for the Department of
Justice and Nassau County, New York), the cognitive portion of
police tests have been completely removed in three cases in an
attempt to increase minority recruitment. Even the remaining
twenty had reduced their emphasis on cognitive skills, with all the
respondents indicating “that adverse impact was considered when
determining the selection process” (Dunnette et. al., April, 1993, p.
18). Using this survey to help justify its decision, Nassau County
removed all cognitive tests except for a reading comprehension test,
which is graded pass-fail and requires that “applicants had to score
only as well as the bottom 1% of current police officers.” The
Louisiana State Police replaced a cognitive exam with a test that
initially contained six parts: three personality, one biographical, and
two cognitive, but later threw out one of the cognitive sections to
further reduce the impact on minorities (Price, June 13, 1997).12
After spending “$5.1 million to have consultants develop unbiased
exams, only to have minorities fare poorly again,” Chicago moved to
a heavily weighted seniority system for promoting police officers and
a lottery system for hiring firefighters (Spielman, 1996, p. 16).13
Some academics have charged that the new tests are consciously
designed “to work little better than simply picking applicants at
random” so that the pass rate is the same across different racial
groups (Gottfredson, May 20, 1997 and October 24, 1996). If
minority applicants with low cognitive skills are hired and if these
skills predict how good of a police officer a candidate would be,
preferential treatment adversely affects the effectiveness of police
departments. Indeed, some extreme claims have been made about
the importance of cognitive skills. Expressing concerns about the
poor English skills of new police recruits, a Washington Post
editorial (1993, p. C8) claimed that: “Between 1986 and 1990, 311
of the 938 murder cases the D.C. police brought to the U.S.
attorney’s office—roughly a third—were dismissed. . . . One local
prosecutor says many D.C. cases were thrown out because
prosecutors couldn’t read or understand the arrest reports [written by
the police].”14…Even more controversial are accusations that in increasing
minority hires police departments have lowered standards in
screening out those who might be predisposed towards corruption.15
For instance, in Chicago, while black officers make up 26 percent of
the sworn police force, the African-American Police League claims
that they accounted for “85 percent of the [corruption related]
suspensions and firings by Internal Affairs during the last two years”
(Martin, June 20, 1997, Pg. 4). The league attributes this high rate
to blacks being singled out by a “racist” police department.… The effect is so large that eighteen of the specifications imply that a one standard deviation change in the percent of the police force that is black increases the corresponding crime rates by at least 10 percent of its mean value (see the percentages listed next to the coefficients). The effects are dramatic no matter how one examines these estimates. For example, increasing black officers’ share by one percentage point increases property crimes by eight percent, and the same increase raises the murder rate by 4 percent and overall violent crime by 7 percent. As the median increase in black officer’s share of police departments during this seven year period was 3.9 percentage points, I conclude that if nothing else had changed, the average city’s
murder rate would have risen by 16.4 percent.…Changing tests to employ a greater percentage of blacks can make it
more difficult to screen out lower quality candidates generally,
including whites and other racial groups. Independently of the
consent decree, the size of the change in black employment may
thus proxy for changes in the level of standards used to hire
employees in general. Similarly, changing promotion rules which
favor seniority over achievement can affect morale and incentives
across all categories of police officers.…Asians had a greater deterrent impact on crime. More Hispanics and
American Indians did not tend to increase crime by the magnitude
shown by hiring additional black officers.…For both murder and manslaughter the results are very consistent. More minority, black, or female officers are associated with higher murder and manslaughter rates, while more white and male officers imply lower fewer deaths. These two crimes are also the most accurately reported…
…The effectiveness of different types of police officers
lies more along racial than gender lines, though there are notable
exceptions for Asians where males are associated with fewer crimes
and females more. Murder divides along racial lines, with more
whites (both males and females) coinciding with lower death rates,
but the reverse being true for blacks and Hispanics. In all but a few
of cases, more blacks and Hispanics are associated with higher crime
rates.…The variables explaining rape provide very little evidence that the
gender of the police officer affects this crime differently.…In conclusion, the results for assaults on officers are consistent
with women being physically weaker than men. Criminals are more
likely to attack if they believe that an attack will successfully allow
them to escape. Consistent with the hypothesis, mentioned in the
introduction, that female officers have a shorter time to react to
perceived threats because they must make a decision before they
come into physical contact with the criminal, there is some
preliminary evidence that male officers are more likely to avoid
shooting civilians. Interestingly, the reduction appears to be greatest
for black male police officers.… Overall, the results imply that consent decrees raise crime
rates independently of the changing racial or gender composition of
the police force. For both violent and property crimes, there is
evidence that consent decrees matter because they alter the behavior
of the existing police force.For property crimes, the quality of the
new hires produced by consent decrees also appears to matter, with
each additional year that the decree is in effect raising property
crimes by another 1.7 to 1.9 percent. Increasing the number of black
officers on a police force independently of the length of time that
the consent decree has been in effect is associated with increased
violent crimes, though the inclusion of Hispanics and American
Indians together with blacks to examine minorities as group
produces a much smaller and not statistically significant effect.… In terms of consistent results, the race measures shown in the appendix generally imply that a greater share of the police force that is black, the higher the violent crime, murder, manslaughter, robbery, or aggravated assault rates. More Hispanics imply higher violent crime rates, though the effect is less consistent than for blacks. Higher shares of whites or Asians are usually associated with lower violent crime, murder, manslaughter, robbery, or aggravated assault rates.
…A massive experiment has been conducted with law enforcement
during the last couple of decades, with more minority and women
officers being hired. But does increasing the number of minority and
women police officers raise effectiveness by drawing on new
untapped abilities, or are standards lowered too far in order to hire
large numbers of minorities and women? I have argued here that the
effect depends upon the type of crime. The evidence for rape is
mixed, with most results implying essentially no difference between
male and female officers, though some estimates indicate that the
actual changes in the composition of police departments helped
reduce the number of rapes. However, for all other crimes, more
black officers lead to more crime, not less. This does not say that
there are not large potential benefits from minority and women
police officers, but only that the particular new officers that have
been hired have costs that outweigh the benefits. On net, the
current policies appear to be costing American cities at least $5.4
billion per year in additional victimization costs.These changes in the composition of police departments have been accompanied by changes in the organization of police departments. Some of these changes—such as an increasing movement away from single officer patrol units—is likely due to the presence of more female officers with less physical strength. Women officers are more likely to be assaulted than men, though their overall probability of death on the job is the same. Some preliminary evidence indicates that white women officers are more likely to shoot civilians, and that black male officers are the least likely. The evidence is not consistent with the hypothesis that black officers are more effective at dealing with crime in predominately black areas. Instead. surprisingly, the results suggest that it is the most heavily black communities that are the most at risk from the increased crime produced by affirmative action policies.
The evidence contradicts that recent claims concerning the
differential dangers facing minority and white police officers. While
black officers are most likely to die from accidental deaths, black and
white male officers face the same probability of being killed by
criminals.
The problem is that because of large differences in strength and size between men and women, different standards are applied to ensure that there are more female officers. In the Nichols case, the difference was stark: the suspect was 33 years old and 6 feet tall; the female sheriff’s deputy guarding him was 51 years old and 5-foot-2.
Similarly, the intelligence tests used to screen officers have produced different pass rates for different racial groups. To eliminate those differences, there has been a strong move to stop giving these tests over the last 30 years.
Some argue that these criteria were not important in picking officers, or that intelligence tests are culturally biased — or worse, that the screening criteria exist primarily to ensure that women and minorities are excluded from the profession. There is possibly some truth to this, but there is still the question about how far one goes to ensure that a police force mirrors the community it is protecting.
Some of these differences are fairly large. For example, in a study I published in 2000 examining the effect of affirmative action on police hiring, a comparison of male and female public safety officers found that female officers had 32 percent to 56 percent less upper-body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower-body strength than male officers.
In New York City, because the physical strength rules were so weakened during the 1980s, a former NYPD personnel chief complained at one time that many police officers “lack the strength to pull the trigger on a gun” and do not have the physical strength to run after suspects.
Part of these differences between men and women can be offset by changing technology and operating procedures. Cars can replace foot and bicycle patrols. Two-officer units can replace single-officer units, though these changes mean less contact between officers and the public and less area covered.
Officers can also be issued more protective gear. Indeed, my own published research finds these exact changes in police departments when hiring standards are changed for women.
We also see that as a greater percentage of a department is made up of women, the competition among men for the remaining slots increases and the average strength and size of men admitted actually rises, partly offsetting the weaker strength of the newer female officers.
Hiring more non-white officers is difficult because so many would-be recruits have criminal records, the New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said.
“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 said in an interview with the Guardian.
Police departments, responding to widespread protests against several high-profile police killings of black men, are boosting efforts to recruit more non-white officers. But budget restrictions, strained relations between police and minority communities and, according to Bratton, a history of indiscriminate policing tactics that disproportionately target black and Latino men complicate the department’s goal of racial parity.
Bratton blamed the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in “stop, question and frisk” incidents that caught many young men of color in the net by resulting in them being given a summons for a minor misdemeanor. As a result, Bratton said, the “population pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been”.
The application process to join the NYPD includes, among other things, a complete criminal background check.
Convicted felons are automatically disqualified from the NYPD applicant pool, as well as anyone guilty of a domestic violence charge or who has been dishonorably discharged from the military.
Summonses, however, do not automatically disqualify a candidate, though they are taken into account during the application process. For example, a summons for disorderly conduct would not preclude a candidate from being accepted into the force, but repeated convictions for an offense that demonstrates “disrespect for the law” could result in disqualification.
New York Times: Generations of New Yorkers have staked their middle-class dreams on passing the police test and getting through the long and sometimes bewildering hiring process. (Police officers earn a total compensation package of $90,829 annually after five and a half years. That does not include overtime.)
In a statement posted on the department’s website last month, in which he sought to clarify his remarks about African-American recruits, Mr. Bratton said that while “young men with felony records do reduce the available pool of black police candidates,” the “recruiting challenge stems much more from problems with our own recruiting system.”
The hiring process can take four years or more, Mr. Bratton said, leaving applicants who are unfamiliar with the system feeling adrift and discouraged.
White applicants, who are far more likely than their black counterparts to have relatives, friends and neighbors on the force, often know someone who can help navigate the bureaucracy. By contrast, many African-Americans end up dropping out of the application process, police officials say.
The statistics are stark: 55 percent of white candidates who pass the police exam get jobs with the department, according to figures released by the department last month. Of the African-Americans who pass the test, 9 percent get hired. Nine percent.
Some of those black men and women who passed the test may have been disqualified by medical or psychological issues or because they lacked the 60 college credits required, officials say.
