TESTS, BACKGROUND CHECKS CAN THWART POLICE DIVERSITY
Data show Black applicants more likely to be rejected
COLUMBUS, Ohio
Racism trips up Black police candidates at the very start of the application process and later as they seek promotion, complicating efforts to make law enforcement agencies more diverse, experts, officers and Black police associations say.
Black applicants to law enforcement agencies are often filtered out early through racially biased civil service exams, accusations spelled out in multiple lawsuits over the years. And applicants are rejected thanks to criminal background checks that turn up drug and traffic offenses attributable to discriminatory policing, and poor financial histories that can stem from racial profiling, records and interviews show.
“Black and brown candidates — they’ll gig them on credit issues, they’ll gig them on minor brushes previously with law enforcement, they’ll gig them on what they perceive as attitude issues,” said Charles Wilson, national chairman of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers.
Black and Hispanic men have disproportionately high rates of contact with law enforcement at an early age, leading to records that often disqualify them from becoming police officers, said Ronnie Dunn, a Cleveland State University urban affairs professor.
Nationally, about 11 percent of officers in local police departments are Black, a percentage that declines the
smaller the community served, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics. Blacks account for about 12 percent of the U.S. population and are represented at much higher rates in big cities.
In Pittsburgh, a 2012 federal lawsuit alleged the city police department systematically rejected Black applicants at the outset of the process after background checks turned up traffic tickets or drug offenses. But the city didn’t disqualify “Caucasian applicants for entry level police officer positions who have committed offenses similar to or even more serious,” the lawsuit said. In a settlement, the city paid $985,000 to Black applicants rejected between 2008 and 2014
ast year, the U.S. Justice Department sued Maryland’s Baltimore County, alleging its written exams for
hiring police officers have discriminated against Black applicants for years. The county denies the allegation.
In Aurora, Colo., an internal analysis found Black police candidates struggle from the start of the recruiting process.
“This is what systemic racism looks like,” said Councilwoman Allison Hiltz, who requested city data this year that found just five qualified Black applicants were hired over a five-year period — 1.1 percent of total Black applicants, compared with 4.2 percent of White applicants.
The process is conducted by Aurora’s civil service commission, an independent city agency, which declined comment.
The recruitment issue isn’t one solely faced by police department applicants. Last year, Target settled a lawsuit brought by the NAACP alleging their company-wide back
ground check policies disproportionately disqualify Black and other minority applicants and employees from job opportunities due to unrelated minor convictions. The NAACP filed a similar lawsuit against Macy’s last year; a message was left with the company seeking comment.
Applicant screens like credit checks can provide some measure of a candidate’s responsibility, said Jacinta Gau, a University of Central Florida criminal justice professor.
“But that has to be taken with an understanding that Black Americans in particular have suffered decades of predatory lending, racist housing policies, predatory real estate practices, and that has led to disproportionately high rates of mortgage default,” she said.