Diversity Comparison of Local and State Law Enforcement Agencies - Statistics Project Example

Diversity Comparison of Local and Law Enforcement Agencies s Diversity Comparison of Local and Law Enforcement Agencies Introduction According to a 2014 survey by Diversity (2015), White officers account for 30 percent points higher than the community that they serve. The debate over the cultural diversity within law enforcement agencies in the country has gained prominence following the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a white policeman in 2014. The widespread protest which was fueled by the shooting of unarmed 18 years old black boy drew attention to the overwhelming disparity between the White majority and Black minority policemen in the law enforcement agencies. While Siegel (2010) noted that diversity highly improves the efficiency of the police force, the minority only makes a quarter of the police forces. Report by Siegel (2010) indicated that White majority account for 64 % of US’s population yet they make up 75 % of the members of the police force and black Americans account for 12 % of the force. According to studies by USA Today on police diversity from 2000 to 2010, minority officers were mostly concentrated in few cities. The research indicated that a third of the 111,000 black officers were concentrated in only 10 cities (Yamiche and Nick, 2015). The study further showed that extensive disparity in the representation of the minority within the agencies with respect to the community served. 80 out of 282 studied cities showed representation disparity of 10 % points for the black American. Some of the cities which had a disparity percentage point of 25 include Dayton, Buffalo, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Richmond, Kansas, and Syracuse. Alarmingly, the Hispanic population had the highest levels of disparity compared to the black Africans (Discover Policing, 2015). In more 37 cities, the disparity between Hispanic police and the population surpassed 25 percentage points. Furthermore, the study showed that racial disparity has majorly remained the same or increased within the law enforcement agencies from 2000 to 2010. Types of Enforcement Agencies At the local level, the study will focus on the following police departments, Richmond, Virginia and Dayton beach. The Richmond Virginia police department serves a population of 102, 000 residents with a geographical coverage about 32 miles along the shoreline. Richmond Virginia policing bureau comprises of the following divisions, patrol division, investigation division and youth service division. According to Siegel (2010) the Dayton Beach police department forms the largest municipal law enforcement agency within the commonwealth of Virginia. Some of the key divisions include uniform patrol, bikes unit, bomb squad, a helicopter unit, horse unit, K9 unit, Motorcycle, and SWAT. Unlike law enforcement at the local level, law enforcement at the state level entails numerous agencies which vary from one state to another. Florida department of law enforcement is a Florida state governed agencies which oversee seven regional operations centers in the state. Under the public safety service delivery, the agency operates criminal justice information services, Florida capitol police, professionalism program and business support program. As a US state law enforcement agency, Virginia state police jurisdiction covers the whole of Virginia State. The police department majorly constitutes three bureaus, the bureaus of field operations, the bureau of administrative and support services and the bureau of criminal investigations (Aguirre, 2003). On the other hand, federal law enforcement agencies jurisdiction is not limited by the state and thus are operational in every state. Some of the key federal law enforcement agencies include department of homeland security, central intelligence agency, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency and the Marshal Service (Yamiche and Nick, 2015) Diversity Ratios While it is apparent that there exists the disparity on the level of race and gender among police departments, different departments show varied extent of disparity between race and gender. Major trend indicates that the majority of the police officer are men and of Caucasian origin. In Richmond Virginia, African Americans constitute 53.1 % of the population while only 21.9 % of the county sheriffs are African Americans. With respect to the commonwealth of Virginia, the majority of police chiefs were whites accounting for 87.2 % and males accounting for 90.4 %. In terms of officers, the minority composed of 10.8 % and females were 9.7 % within the police departments in Virginia (Chappell, 2014). The percentage of minority and female nationally according to the survey was 24 % and 11 % respectively. However, according to a study by Aguirre (2003) in the majority of the police departments, 1 out of 4 police officers was a member of the minority groups in the US. In 2007, the number of employed minority police officers was 117 113 which was a 10 % increase compared to 2003 statistics. At the local level, the Black American police officers were 55, 267 representing a 5 % increase from those employed in 2003. Similarly, the number of Hispanic also increased by 16 % from the year 2003 to 2007 (Chappell, 2014). The Asians, pacific islanders, and American Indians accounted for 12, 564 officers in 2007. However, with regards to gender equality, only 1 out of 8 full-time sworn police personnel was a woman in 2007. The number of female local police officers stood at 55, 395, indicating 8 % increase compared to the 2003 statistics. According to Faull (2008), with a confidence interval of 95 %, race and gender changes for the period 2003- 2007 was insignificant at the local level. On the hand, the analysis of the federal law enforcement agency can only examine the extent of diversity without comparisons at the state or local level. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been scrutinized over disparity claims and lack of diversity. According to Discover Policing (2015), African American accounted for 4.5 % of the special agents selected in the year 2014. The figure was down from 4.74 % of 2012 and 5.6 % of 1997. The trend was also similar for the other minority groups in the agency. The Hispanic accounted for 6.81 % for the year 2014 compared to 7.14 % of 2012 and 6 % of 1997. However, the agency impressively maintains its uptake of women for the year 2014. The number of women who joined special agent’s ranks was 2631, only less by five agents compared to the 2012 statistics. On the contrary, Asian agents had an increase, accounting for 4. 33 % up from 2012’s which stood at 4.18% (FBI Jobs, 2015). Despite the gradual growth and institutionalization of multi-racial agency, the minority groups within the agency only account for 1 % of the total numbers of agents. On the positive side, according to the just-released statistics, the percentage of minority within the agency increased to 29.09 % from 28. 91 % (FBI Jobs, 2015) Critical examination of the homeland security as federal law enforcement agency also indicated the lack of diversity in terms of the composition of race and gender. According to Discover Policing (2015) 14. 5 % of the total employees of the homeland security were African American while Asians were 4. 2 % and the pacific islanders accounted for 1.6 %. In terms of gender, women represented 33.7 % of the total employees. The assessment of the composition of the senior executives’ officers further showed that the minority still held fewer positions compared to the majority. African American held 8.5 % of the executive branch positions, Asians had 2.3 % and the Hispanic had 3.4 %. Comparison of women and men showed that women held 28.9 % of the executive branch positions. It emerges that, like the FBI, the department of homeland security has not effectively enhanced diversity within its workforce. It is apparent that women have fewer executives positions compared to men. Racially, the minority groups also lag behind in terms of their composition of the total workforce and constitution of the executive branch positions. The comparison of the state level and federal level law enforcement agencies indicated that the federal level has managed to institutionalize measure that at least aid in the attainment of diversity. At the state level, the diversity of racial disparity is highly alarming with the Hispanic community emerging as the most affected members of the community. The level of disparity at the state level further varies with police departments. However, statistics by Yamiche and Nick (2015) indicated that local police departments accounted for the highest number of disparity in the country. As earlier reported that for every 4 officers at the local police department, 1 one was African American or Hispanic. The result of the disparity has been a mismatch of police officers of the majority enforcing law within the community majorly dominated by the minority. In the long run, the extent of the disparity has given rise to profiling of offenders within the community leading to cases such of Michael browns case. Conclusion Based on the statics and survey conducted over the years, law enforcement agencies over the country have been characterized by disparity. Two of the major elements of disparity have race and gender. The majority which constitutes members of the white community and men dominate the law enforcement in the United States. While it has been showed that disparity cuts across local, state and federal levels of law enforcement, the local level accounted for the most extensive disparity of gender and race. References Siegel, L. J. (2010). Introduction to criminal justice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Faull, A. (2008). Policing diversity: An analysis of a diversity intervention and its effects on a South African Police Service station. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers. Aguirre, A. (2003). Racial and ethnic diversity in America: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. Discover Policing (2015). The value of workplace diversity in police / law enforcement - Discover Policing. Retrieved 13 March 2015, from http://discoverpolicing.org/why_policing/?fa=diversity Yamiche Alcindor and Nick Penzenstadler, U. (2015). Police redouble efforts to recruit diverse officers. USA TODAY. Retrieved 13 March 2015, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/21/police-redoubling-efforts-to-recruit- diverse-officers/21574081 FBI Jobs.(2015). FBI :: Our Diversity :: Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.fbijobs.gov/our-diversity/statistics.asp [Accessed 17 Mar. 2015]. Discover Policing (2015). The value of workplace diversity in police / law enforcement - Discover Policing. Retrieved 13 March 2015, from http://discoverpolicing.org/why_policing/?fa=diversity Chappell, A. (2014). Commonwealth of Virginia Law Enforcement Survey. Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. Read More