Walsh touts police cadet program

Mayor Martin Walsh is touting the success of his police cadet program, saying it’s bringing more women and minorities into the department with an incoming class that is half female and half minority.

“A diverse police force is crucial to our public safety strategy,” Walsh wrote in a Medium post Wednesday. “It helps ensure that our men and women in uniform deeply understand the challenges people are facing in our neighborhoods. It helps ensure that they’re wellequipped to address these challenges in a way that leads to lasting, positive change. It also helps build trust between our police and the people they serve, so that residents feel safe coming forward and asking for help during emergencies.”

The next cadet class, which starts Monday, is made up of 12 men and 12 women. Of those 24 people, 12 identified as white, four black, three black Hispanic, three white Hispanic, one Asian and one Native American, according to the police department.

The paid cadet program is targeted at Boston residents between 18 and 25. If they complete the two-year program — plus all of the normal academic and physical tests required of every cop hopeful — they receive preference over others through the civil-service hiring process.

Police Commissioner William Gross and his predecessor William Evans both came to the department through the original version of the cadet program, which ran from 1979 through 2009.

It started up again in 2015, and has had two two-year classes since then, the first with 30 aspiring cops and the second with 35. Those classes were made up 31% and then 34% women and 69% and then 66% people of color.

Walsh, calling the the BPD “the best” department in the country in the Medium post, noted that 21 members of the latest class of sworn officers came through the cadet program.

The City Council recently passed legislation from Walsh that, with state approval, would create a similar program for the fire department.

Both the fire and police departments have taken flak over the years for remaining largely white and male in a city that’s made up of about 54% minorities. The police department’s sworn officers are 60% white men, 34% minority and 13% female, according to BPD data.

The fire department had risen to about 40% people of color about 20 years ago, but has since dropped off to about 28%, according to the city. There are only a handful of female firefighters in the department, which has come under fire recently with allegations of sexism, as outlined in a city-commissioned report earlier this year.