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Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity

Maple Heights police officers with a driver stopped for a traffic violation. The department has only two black officers out of 35.Credit...Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times

MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — The population of this working-class Cleveland suburb has gone from nearly all white to two-thirds black since its mayor declared more than 35 years ago that he did not know “what a minority is.” But its police and fire departments have not kept pace: The Maple Heights police force today still has only two black officers out of 35; the fire department is 100 percent white.

Maple Heights is far from unique. Across the country, police departments still struggle to hire and retain minority candidates — in some cases despite great efforts, in others because of a lack of initiative. But now, the problem has taken on new relevance since the fatal shooting of a young black man last month in Ferguson, Mo., where just four of the 53 police officers are black, according to the police chief.

Nationwide, the total number of minority police officers has risen, but they remain heavily concentrated in larger cities, with the numbers falling off sharply in smaller ones, like Ferguson and Maple Heights.

Data from a federal survey of police departments in 2007, analyzed for The New York Times by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, found that nearly 400 departments, most with fewer than a hundred officers, were substantially whiter than the populations they served. In these departments, the share of white officers was greater than the share of white residents by more than 50 percentage points.

Ferguson and Maple Heights are about the same size, just over 20,000 people, and in both, the black population has surged in recent decades. Both cities have white mayors and largely white political leaderships. And both police departments have fallen far short of reflecting the communities they serve — even as some of Maple Heights’s neighboring police departments have achieved much higher levels of diversity.

Critics point to the lack of racial balance in police departments as evidence of systemic racism. But experts say the experiences of the two towns illustrate the obstacles to achieving diversity in law enforcement, even for departments that have made it a priority.

“I see all these pundits come on the Sunday talk shows and say: ‘Of course you can hire more black people. Of course they’re not trying,’ ” said Nelson Lim, a senior sociologist at the RAND Corporation’s Center on Quality Policing who has consulted with departments in Los Angeles and San Diego. “But it’s very, very, very difficult.”

There is little hard evidence that diversity correlates with better performance, in part because it is difficult to control for complex variables and to know which outcomes, from crime rates to brutality cases, to measure. In fact, one study of a Florida police department found that black officers were more likely than white to use force against black suspects.

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In 1977, Maple Heights agreed to increase minorities in its police and fire departments. But officials did not follow through.Credit...Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times

A review of court cases going back to the early 1990s revealed only a handful of civil rights or excessive-force cases against the Maple Heights police, two of which involved a white officer who is no longer with the department, and none that involved a fatality like the shooting in Ferguson.

Still, it is an accepted tenet of community policing that when departments reflect the communities they serve, they have an easier time building trust and defusing, rather than escalating, tense situations.

In Maple Heights, some residents said they would like to see more black officers, while others said that it was the attitude, experience and training of the officer, not race, that mattered. Chris Turney, a home renovator who lives with his wife and two daughters, said it was more important for officers to live in the city. All but one do not.

“The police come here, they do their jobs, they don’t try to get to know anybody,” said Mr. Turney, who is black. “The police don’t wave.”

Other residents drew a contrast between police attitudes in Maple Heights and neighboring Bedford Heights, where three-quarters of the residents, and nine of 28 police officers, are black. “Bedford’s not going to do you like Maple,” said Carlos Walker, 41, who is black. “You have to do something real stupid for Bedford. Maple, soon as they get behind you, you sweating.”

In her 11 years as an officer in Bedford Heights, Detective Ericka Payne, who is black, has often provided backup on calls in Maple Heights. “There are definitely differences in the ways the departments interact with the outside community,” Detective Payne said. “We try to be a little bit more community oriented. Because we are a little bit more diverse, we understand those dynamics and maybe have a little bit more ease dealing with that.”

Several Maple Heights officials said the diversity of the police and fire departments had never been a major issue. It is hard to find qualified candidates of any race, said John C. Popielarczyk, who has been with the Maple Heights Police Department since 1990 and the acting police chief since May.

Maple Heights, devastated by the foreclosure crisis, has fallen on hard times, and the police force has shrunk. And with most officers staying on the job for 25 years, Chief Popielarczyk said, the opportunity to hire is scarce. Of eight recent hires, two were black. One, the chief said, was fired for cause before his probationary period ended.

The department has advertised in minority newspapers and changed the private company that administers its Civil Service exam in hopes that more minority candidates would pass, he said. But he added: “The real goal of the department is to provide qualified officers who are competent and can provide quality service regardless of race. I don’t think people really care about the color of the officer that responds; they care that the officer responds quickly, is effective, treats them well and is respectful.”

The acting fire chief, James Castelucci, said much the same, adding that one promising black candidate withdrew when his current employer offered him more money.

The obstacles to diversity are many, Dr. Lim, the sociologist, said. Candidates usually must pass written tests, physical agility tests, psychological tests, polygraphs and background checks, some of which can have a disparate impact on minority candidates. Qualified black candidates are sought after not just by competing police departments, but also by employers in other industries. And some police chiefs have cited a negative attitude toward law enforcement among blacks that hinders recruiting.

Police departments have tried all kinds of remedies, from personal trainers to help with physical fitness tests to tailored recruiting. (A RAND survey found that women were attracted to the good salaries in policing, blacks to the profession’s prestige and Asians to the excitement of the job.)

But many small departments lack the resources, or the will, to conduct an exhaustive review of their hiring practices. In Maple Heights, job candidates are ranked by how well they score on the written exam, earning bonus points for factors like previous training, military experience and city residency. For each opening, the candidates are considered one by one, in order of their score.

Some nearby suburbs like Bedford Heights and Cleveland Heights — where about 40 percent of the residents and 22 of 102 officers are black — do things differently. The chiefs of both departments said officials were allowed to consider the top 10 candidates on the list, which helps them hire more minority candidates. Both chiefs said their cities took an aggressive approach to diversity as early as the 1970s.

Cleveland Heights has two types of officer positions, one that requires a Civil Service exam and a college degree, and a lower tier, called basic patrol, that does not. Once a basic patrol officer is hired, the city will reimburse tuition costs, and many eventually earn a degree and work their way to the upper tier.

The diversity of neighboring police departments poses a challenge to cities like Maple Heights, Dr. Lim said: “If the leadership, if the police chief, is dedicated to getting more diversity in the work force, how hard is it to figure out how the other department is doing such a good job?”

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Frank Ross said he did not accept the city’s explanations for having few minority police officers.Credit...Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times

Asked why Maple Heights considered only one candidate at a time, Chief Popielarczyk said: “We’ve always done it that way. My understanding is that that’s how we’re supposed to do it.”

Some Maple Heights residents have tried to persuade the city to hire more blacks, forming a committee called the Maple Heights Citizens for Change. In 2012, Elaine Stone, a committee member who runs a blog called the Maple Heights African American Gazette, was digging around and discovered a long-forgotten affirmative action agreement, signed by the mayor, a citizens’ committee and a representative from the federal Justice Department in 1977.

In that deal, Maple Heights, at the time about 96 percent white, agreed that within three years minorities would make up at least 4 percent of its police and fire departments. But it soon became clear that the city was less than fully committed to this goal.

“I figure we’re all minorities,” the mayor at the time, Emil J. Lisy Jr., told reporters when he was criticized for failing to live up to the agreement. “The first thing is to find out what a minority is, and I haven’t figured that out.” Federal officials threatened to withhold $500,000 in funds, but backed down after the mayor submitted a 65-page response.

When Ms. Stone learned about the agreement, she contacted Frank Ross, the only surviving signer of the document. Mr. Ross was a teacher in his 20s when he came to Maple Heights, at a time when real estate brokers steered black customers to a part of town called Presidential Row. He now lives 12 miles away, but agreed to go to meetings of the committee, where he suggested that the group call the Community Relations Service of the Justice Department, the same office that helped broker the earlier deal.

Though new discussions were opened between the city and the service, which provides mediation and training to governments, residents feel the talks have stalled. Neither the mayor nor the Maple Heights legal director returned calls for comment for this article, and the service does not publicly discuss its work. Participation by local governments is strictly voluntary.

Ms. Stone said economics, not overt racism, had kept the police and fire departments largely white. “There was white flight, but people were trying to hold on to their jobs,” she said. “I can understand you don’t want to give up that job.”

Mr. Ross said apathy among black voters was partly to blame for the situation. But he does not accept the city’s excuses.

“They’re telling me in 40 years they can’t find any African-American policemen?” he said. “Forty years later — it’s very emotional for me. Forty years later, I’m still dealing with the same thing.”

A correction was made on 
Sept. 12, 2014

An article on Wednesday about the struggles of small police departments to hire minority officers misstated part of the name of the parent organization where Nelson Lim, who discussed the issue, is a senior sociologist. It is the RAND Corporation, not the RAND Institute.

How we handle corrections

Richard A. Oppel Jr., Susan Beachy and Archie Tse contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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