How has affirmative action for blacks and latinos worked out in general? Why would any society want competent police in the first place?<\/p>\n
John Lott writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n \nWill 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.<\/p>\n …While the U.S. Department of Justice states that the appropriate …Even more controversial are accusations that in increasing … 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\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2019s …Changing tests to employ a greater percentage of blacks can make it …Asians had a greater deterrent impact on crime. More Hispanics and …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…<\/p>\n …The effectiveness of different types of police officers …The variables explaining rape provide very little evidence that the …In conclusion, the results for assaults on officers are consistent … Overall, the results imply that consent decrees raise crime … 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. <\/p>\n …A massive experiment has been conducted with law enforcement These changes in the composition of police departments have been accompanied by changes in the organization of police departments. Some of these changes\u2014such as an increasing movement away from single officer patrol units\u2014is 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.<\/p>\n The evidence contradicts that recent claims concerning the John Lott writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Some argue that these criteria were not important in picking officers, or that intelligence tests are culturally biased \u2014 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n REPORT<\/a>: <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can\u2019t hire them,\u201d Bratton said in an interview with the Guardian.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s goal of racial parity.<\/p>\n Bratton blamed the \u201cunfortunate consequences\u201d of an explosion in \u201cstop, question and frisk\u201d 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 \u201cpopulation pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been\u201d.<\/p>\n The application process to join the NYPD includes, among other things, a complete criminal background check.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cdisrespect for the law\u201d could result in disqualification.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n New York Times<\/a>: 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.)<\/p>\n In a statement posted on the department\u2019s website last month, in which he sought to clarify his remarks about African-American recruits, Mr. Bratton said that while \u201cyoung men with felony records do reduce the available pool of black police candidates,\u201d the \u201crecruiting challenge stems much more from problems with our own recruiting system.\u201d<\/p>\n The hiring process can take four years or more, Mr. Bratton said, leaving applicants who are unfamiliar with the system feeling adrift and discouraged.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How has affirmative action for blacks and latinos worked out in general? Why would any society want competent police in the first place? John Lott writes: Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more … Continue reading
\ntesting procedures nearly eliminate disparate impact while improving
\nmerit hiring (Gottfredson, May 20, 1997),11 critics of affirmative
\naction in policing argue that these tests lower reliance on important
\ncognitive skills. According to a 1993 survey of twenty-three large
\npolice and sheriff departments (conducted for the Department of
\nJustice and Nassau County, New York), the cognitive portion of
\npolice tests have been completely removed in three cases in an
\nattempt to increase minority recruitment. Even the remaining
\ntwenty had reduced their emphasis on cognitive skills, with all the
\nrespondents indicating \u201cthat adverse impact was considered when
\ndetermining the selection process\u201d (Dunnette et. al., April, 1993, p.
\n18). Using this survey to help justify its decision, Nassau County
\nremoved all cognitive tests except for a reading comprehension test,
\nwhich is graded pass-fail and requires that \u201capplicants had to score
\nonly as well as the bottom 1% of current police officers.\u201d The
\nLouisiana State Police replaced a cognitive exam with a test that
\ninitially contained six parts: three personality, one biographical, and
\ntwo cognitive, but later threw out one of the cognitive sections to
\nfurther reduce the impact on minorities (Price, June 13, 1997).12
\nAfter spending \u201c$5.1 million to have consultants develop unbiased
\nexams, only to have minorities fare poorly again,\u201d Chicago moved to
\na heavily weighted seniority system for promoting police officers and
\na lottery system for hiring firefighters (Spielman, 1996, p. 16).13
\nSome academics have charged that the new tests are consciously
\ndesigned \u201cto work little better than simply picking applicants at
\nrandom\u201d so that the pass rate is the same across different racial
\ngroups (Gottfredson, May 20, 1997 and October 24, 1996). If
\nminority applicants with low cognitive skills are hired and if these
\nskills predict how good of a police officer a candidate would be,
\npreferential treatment adversely affects the effectiveness of police
\ndepartments. Indeed, some extreme claims have been made about
\nthe importance of cognitive skills. Expressing concerns about the
\npoor English skills of new police recruits, a Washington Post
\neditorial (1993, p. C8) claimed that: \u201cBetween 1986 and 1990, 311
\nof the 938 murder cases the D.C. police brought to the U.S.
\nattorney\u2019s office\u2014roughly a third\u2014were dismissed. . . . One local
\nprosecutor says many D.C. cases were thrown out because
\nprosecutors couldn\u2019t read or understand the arrest reports [written by
\nthe police].\u201d14 <\/p>\n
\nminority hires police departments have lowered standards in
\nscreening out those who might be predisposed towards corruption.15
\nFor instance, in Chicago, while black officers make up 26 percent of
\nthe sworn police force, the African-American Police League claims
\nthat they accounted for \u201c85 percent of the [corruption related]
\nsuspensions and firings by Internal Affairs during the last two years\u201d
\n(Martin, June 20, 1997, Pg. 4). The league attributes this high rate
\nto blacks being singled out by a \u201cracist\u201d police department.<\/p>\n
\nmurder rate would have risen by 16.4 percent.<\/p>\n
\nmore difficult to screen out lower quality candidates generally,
\nincluding whites and other racial groups. Independently of the
\nconsent decree, the size of the change in black employment may
\nthus proxy for changes in the level of standards used to hire
\nemployees in general. Similarly, changing promotion rules which
\nfavor seniority over achievement can affect morale and incentives
\nacross all categories of police officers.<\/p>\n
\nAmerican Indians did not tend to increase crime by the magnitude
\nshown by hiring additional black officers.<\/p>\n
\nlies more along racial than gender lines, though there are notable
\nexceptions for Asians where males are associated with fewer crimes
\nand females more. Murder divides along racial lines, with more
\nwhites (both males and females) coinciding with lower death rates,
\nbut the reverse being true for blacks and Hispanics. In all but a few
\nof cases, more blacks and Hispanics are associated with higher crime
\nrates.<\/p>\n
\ngender of the police officer affects this crime differently. <\/p>\n
\nwith women being physically weaker than men. Criminals are more
\nlikely to attack if they believe that an attack will successfully allow
\nthem to escape. Consistent with the hypothesis, mentioned in the
\nintroduction, that female officers have a shorter time to react to
\nperceived threats because they must make a decision before they
\ncome into physical contact with the criminal, there is some
\npreliminary evidence that male officers are more likely to avoid
\nshooting civilians. Interestingly, the reduction appears to be greatest
\nfor black male police officers.<\/p>\n
\nrates independently of the changing racial or gender composition of
\nthe police force. For both violent and property crimes, there is
\nevidence that consent decrees matter because they alter the behavior
\nof the existing police force.For property crimes, the quality of the
\nnew hires produced by consent decrees also appears to matter, with
\neach additional year that the decree is in effect raising property
\ncrimes by another 1.7 to 1.9 percent. Increasing the number of black
\nofficers on a police force independently of the length of time that
\nthe consent decree has been in effect is associated with increased
\nviolent crimes, though the inclusion of Hispanics and American
\nIndians together with blacks to examine minorities as group
\nproduces a much smaller and not statistically significant effect.<\/p>\n
\nduring the last couple of decades, with more minority and women
\nofficers being hired. But does increasing the number of minority and
\nwomen police officers raise effectiveness by drawing on new
\nuntapped abilities, or are standards lowered too far in order to hire
\nlarge numbers of minorities and women? I have argued here that the
\neffect depends upon the type of crime. The evidence for rape is
\nmixed, with most results implying essentially no difference between
\nmale and female officers, though some estimates indicate that the
\nactual changes in the composition of police departments helped
\nreduce the number of rapes. However, for all other crimes, more
\nblack officers lead to more crime, not less. This does not say that
\nthere are not large potential benefits from minority and women
\npolice officers, but only that the particular new officers that have
\nbeen hired have costs that outweigh the benefits. On net, the
\ncurrent policies appear to be costing American cities at least $5.4
\nbillion per year in additional victimization costs.<\/p>\n
\ndifferential dangers facing minority and white police officers. While
\nblack officers are most likely to die from accidental deaths, black and
\nwhite male officers face the same probability of being killed by
\ncriminals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n