Central Florida police whiter than where they serve
Figures reveal a wide margin despite efforts taken by local agencies
Despite initiatives undertaken by local law enforcement agencies to increase diversity, the largest police forces in Central Florida are still whiter than the communities they serve — by a wide margin, in some cases.
In the city of Orlando, where recent marches against police brutality and racial inequities drew thousands of people, 37% of residents are white, but about 60% of Orlando Police Department officers are, according to Census and state data. Black residents account for 24% of the city’s populace but 14% of its police.
The figures are similar at agencies throughout Central Florida, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis, which compared population data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to figures from an annual report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
In interviews, the leaders of police agencies in Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola counties acknowledged difficulties in their efforts to attract a diverse workforce.
“Traditionally, it has been a struggle to recruit minorities,” said Orange County Sheriff John Mina, who was OPD chief for four years. “And … we can’t make people become deputy sheriffs. We just have to do the best we can to [offer] benefits and salary and to continue to be out there in the community spreading our good message that it is a noble profession.”
In 2019, 63% of the agency’s sworn deputies were white, while 19% were Hispanic and 13% were Black. That doesn’t reflect the population of unincorporated Orange County: 39% white, 33% Hispanic and 19% Black.
Major agencies elsewhere in the state are also whiter than their communities: The Tampa Police Department’s officers are 69% white; the city is 45% white. In St. Petersburg, 73% of officers white, as are 61% of residents. The Miami-Dade Police Department, covering an unincorporated area
that’s 71% Hispanic and 11% white, is 61% Hispanic and 16% white.
Experts who have studied the issue say that, while it is important for a police force to reflect the community it serves, diversity by itself is not a cure-all. Institutional bias can also influence officers of color, said Wayne Logan, a criminal law professor at Florida State University.
“They’re in the same institutional environment facing the same pressures to stop individuals,” Logan said. “They may sublimate their concerns to fit in with this wider culture.”
It’s hard for outsiders to get into law enforcement in Central Florida, said Orlando-based civil rights attorney Natalie Jackson. Local police departments hire family members, and it’s not unusual to see siblings or parents and their children working together, she said.
“It’s the brotherhood of police, but they’re actually brothers,” she said. “Because there’s so much nepotism in police departments, if everyone there is white, you’re going to hire other white people, and that’s what happens.”
Orange
After being elected sheriff in 2018, Mina hired former OPD deputy chief Mark Canty, who is Black, to serve as his second in command at OCSO, believing that “not only is it important to recruit diversity, but it’s also important to promote diversity throughout the ranks.”
“He’s also from Pine Hills, from the area, and that was by design,” Mina said. “I thought it would be important to the community that they had someone that represented them.”
The Sheriff’s Office works with the African American Council of Christian Clergy to host careers fairs, recruits from historically Black colleges and universities, and advertises in minority-run publications like the Orlando Times and Watermark, among other efforts to increase diversity at the agency, he said.
It’s not just among deputies that diversity is an issue. Among the agency’s leadership, the gap is wider: 71% of the agency’s 86 sworn personnel who are ranked lieutenant or above are white; 17.4% are Black and 10.4% are Hispanic.
Mina said it’s important to consider the racial makeup of the entire agency, not just deputies. Adding in dispatchers, crime scene investigators and civilian roles, he said the agency is 42% white and male.
Still, he said it can be difficult to recruit minorities into a career in law enforcement if they’ve had negative experiences with police or only see them in their communities when there’s crime. That’s why community events like barbecues hosted by the agency can help build trust, he said.
Orlando police Chief Orlando Rolón said he noticed a decline recently in Black applicants, for which he initially faulted his recruiting department. But after speaking with Randy Nelson, a researcher and law professor at Bethune-Cookman University, he determined the numbers had more to do with a lack of encouragement in Black families for children to pursue a police career, as well as negative portrayals of police on social media and in the news.
“So it’s not because there is a lack of recruitment to try to bring individuals into the department, it may be because there’s a lack of interest,” Rolón said.
He said he’s encouraging school resource officers to talk to kids about the profession. The agency also added a new youth outreach coordinator and has programs like the Dueling Dragons boat team and Operation Positive Direction mentoring program to engage with young people.
Within the agency, Rolón said promoting sergeants is especially important, as it’s the first step for officers to rise through the ranks.
But in 2019, 70% of OPD’s 84 sergeants were white men; 10 were Hispanic men and five Black men. Seven of the 84 were white women, one was Hispanic and one was Asian. No Black women held the rank in 2019.
Rolón, who became the city’s first Hispanic police chief in 2018, noted the make-up of his highest ranking staff, deputy chiefs: Of the four, one, Eric Smith, is Black, another, Jose Velez, is Hispanic and two are white.
“The ideal situation is that the entire agency is a reflection of that,” Rolón said. “… Nothing can happen overnight. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to build a program so that all the key components are met, in order for you to build that, it takes years.”
Change has to start with commanding officers, not just the rank-and-file, said Anthony Chapa, executive director of the national Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association.
“It’s the command staff where we’re going to have a change in culture,” Chapa said. “We have to make the reform from the top down. If we make the reform from the bottom up, it’s going to take us a lifetime.”
Seminole
In 2012, the Sanford Police Department was 68% white, 17% Hispanic and 15% Black. That’s the year Trayvon’s Martin killing, which would eventually give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked upheaval in the city’s police department.
It prompted the ouster of then police-Chief Bill Lee after the agency declined to arrest the 17-year-old’s killer, civilian neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was later charged with murder by a special prosecutor but acquitted at trial.
The current chief, Cecil
Smith, agreed that having a police force as racially diverse as its city helps build trust, but stressed that other qualities of an officer can be just as important, like being community focused.
“I’m not looking for the biggest, strongest, fastest guy or girl,” he said. “What I want is someone who has the ability to mature, who is going to listen to what the community is saying, who is going to be compassionate when they are dealing with people, especially in stressful situations.”
The Sanford Police Department advertises at historically Black universities and has offered a sponsorship program in the past to put cadets to through the police academy for free.
Still, while 41% of Sanford’s population is white, 57% of its police officers are. The city is 26% Black; the force is 14% Black. The agency’s police are 25% Hispanic, roughly in line with the city, which is 26% Hispanic. White officers hold five of the 10 highest-ranking positions. Three, including the chief, are held by Black members and two by Hispanic employees.
As the public and police examine how law enforcement needs to be reformed, Smith said he’d like to see more people who want to change the profession join it.
“One of the best ways to make those changes is to be a part of change, and to become a part of the police department,” Smith said.
Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma agreed that law enforcement should represent the diversity of the population served, adding that trust between an agency and a community is formed over years or decades.
SCSO sends recruiters to college campuses to widen the array of potential hires, Lemma said. He also cited having a deputy at each school in the county, which Seminole had before state law required it, as helping to connect with young people who could pursue a career in law enforcement.
“They may be the firstgeneration to serve as a law enforcement officer,” Lemma said. “The history of our country and the history of law enforcement has recently, over the past several decades, has become more diverse.”
But as of 2019, eight in 10 Seminole County deputies were white, though the county’s unincorporated areas are about two-thirds white. Hispanics account for 18% of the population, but 12% percent of deputies. The community is 8% Black compared to 6% of deputies who are Black.
Capt. Cornelius Blue, who oversees the Seminole Neighborhood Policing division and frequently sits on the agency’s hiring board, said it’s important to not just hire a white or black deputy, but someone who understands the community.
“I would say we’re doing a great job,” Blue said.
Jackson, the civil rights lawyer who was among the team that represented Trayvon’s family, agreed that diversity isn’t just about race. Departments should also look for diversity of thought and socioeconomic background, among other things, she said.
“You won’t really get to the issue of solving racial problems if we just stay on the surface and talk about diversity in terms of skin color,” she said. “You might have an officer with different skin color, but they have the same ideology as you.”
Osceola
Osceola County’s Hispanic population has exploded over the last 20 years, making up 55% of residents in 2018 compared to nearly 30% in 2000 — the largest increase in the country, according to a Pew report.
Law enforcement diversity has not kept up.
The city of Kissimmee is slightly more than twothirds Hispanic. In 2019, 37% of KPD officers were Hispanic, up from 28% in 2015. As of this month, it’s nearly 43%. In 2019, KPD was 46% white, while Kissimmee is about 19% white.
Keeping up with the demographic shifts is a challenge, KPD Chief Jeff O’Dell said. While Osceola’s Hispanic population had been growing for nearly two decades, that accelerated drastically when thousands of Puerto Ricans fled there after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island.
“It’s hard to change over a police department that fast,” O’Dell said. “I feel like we’re in a fantastic position and our goal and our recruiting strategy is to get as close to those numbers and represent our community as [quickly as] we can.”
O’Dell said the agency has been more deliberate during its application process to consider diverse candidates.
In 2018, Walter Muñoz became KPD’s first Hispanic captain, and, in March, O’Dell promoted Camille Alicea as the agency’s first
Hispanic female captain. The agency’s other deputy chiefs and captains are white.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office has shifted more slowly. While roughly half of the population of unincorporated Osceola is Hispanic, the agency’s deputies were 23% Hispanic in 2016, 28% in 2019. As of last week, the figure was 31%, agency spokesman Maj. Jacob Ruiz said.
There are 43 Spanishspeaking patrol deputies and at least one is required to be assigned to a squad in order to avoid language barriers, Ruiz said.
“Because of what already exists, that us-versus-them mentality, [changing that] really starts with the agency being proactive and reaching out their hand and building relationships with the community,” said Ruiz, the highest-ranking Puerto Rican the agency’s history.
Researchers working with the Chicago-based Invisible Institute recently released a working paper that found Hispanic officers who speak Spanish make significantly fewer stops and arrests than Hispanic officers who can’t speak Spanish. Researchers found that those non-Spanish speaking Hispanic officers stop Hispanic civilians at higher rates than white officers.
“The community may feel better when they call someone to their house and that person comes up to the door and speaks Spanish” Chapa said. “If there are neighbors complaining about others having a quinceañera in their front yard, that’s where an officer could say, ‘All right, let’s give her saludos [regards].’ That’s how you de-escalate.”
Jacinta Gau, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida, noted that studies struggle to accurately capture Hispanic attitudes toward law enforcement, because Black and white Hispanics are typically lumped into the same category.
“At this point, we sadly know very little about the attitudes and experiences of Hispanic civilians,” Gau said. “… [Treating being Hispanic or Latinx as a race] only muddles up the situation because what if somebody is Black and Hispanic? What do they mark then?”
Lake
In Lake County, 89 percent of deputy sheriffs are white. The unincorporated areas of the county are 78% white. Black residents make up 6% of the unincorporated county’s population, but 2% of deputies.
A lot of it comes down to finances and the ability to hire more people, said Sgt. Fred Jones of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. But through job fairs, speaking at events and other community outreach the agency has improved its diversity, he said.
“I’ve seen us make progress and I’m proud of that,” he said.
Lake County is home to the only police agency in metro Orlando that, as of 2019, was 100% white: The Astatula Police Department, which polices a city that’s 26% Hispanic, had 10 officers, all white.
Research on the effects of increasing police diversity is “kind of all over the place,” said Delores Jones-Brown, of the University of New Haven’s Department of Criminal Justice and founder of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Some studies suggest an increase in officers of color reduces complaints against police, while others show officers of color use more or as much force as white officers, Jones-Brown said.
Departments that reflect their communities’ racial demographics still see issues with excessive force. Those on the receiving end of that force are overwhelmingly Black, Jones-Brown said.
“You can’t look at diversity as a panacea for the problems in policing,” Jones-Brown said.