The New York Times continues its campaign to grease the skids under urban blacks so that there is nothing to dissuade inner city blacks from moving out to various nowheresvilles, such as Inkster, MI.

Police Chiefs, Looking to Diversify Forces, Face Structural Hurdles

By MATT APUZZO and SARAH COHEN NOV. 7, 2015

INKSTER, Mich. — When William T. Riley III became the police chief of this small city west of Detroit this summer, he found a department that bore little resemblance to the city it served.

Nearly three-fourths of Inkster’s 25,000 residents are black. Its mayor and all six City Council members are, too. Yet in a newly released Justice Department survey, it was listed among the nation’s least representative police forces, with 21 white officers and five black officers.

At first glance, the disparity made no sense.

“There’s no doubt in my mind we have good police candidates in this city. No doubt,” said Chief Riley, the first African-American to hold the city chief’s post. “How hard can it be? You’re telling me everybody here can’t be a police officer?”

Hopefully not.

Though the history of discrimination and segregation looms large over American policing, many police chiefs are eager to hire minorities yet face structural hurdles that make it hard to diversify their departments. Those issues vary by state and city, making any single solution particularly elusive.

In many cities, well-intentioned policies that were not meant to discriminate have become obstacles to hiring a diverse police force. In Inkster, Chief Riley found, a significant problem was something that seemed mundane: how training is paid for.

Other cities face rigid hiring processes that were intended to prevent elected leaders from handing out police jobs as patronage, but that now make it harder to shape the force to mirror the population.

In other words, let’s trash civil service reform because Diversity.

In Massachusetts, for example, state law generally requires that officer hiring be based on a Civil Service test that is administered only once every two years. Military veterans who pass are given preference, a policy that exists in some form in many states.

Mr. Davis said that though he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on minority recruitment and generated strong interest in police jobs, he could not significantly increase the number of minorities joining the force.

While there is no evidence that police departments with representative populations are less likely to face claims of excessive force or discrimination, civil rights activists and police executives alike say it is important for these forces to resemble their communities. In cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, the wide demographic gaps between the police departments and the African-American populations have exacerbated tensions after racially charged protests over police actions.

Isn’t 43% of the Baltimore police force black?

The Justice Department collects national data on police demographics every few years, but the meaning of those numbers can depend on how they are viewed. Seen one way, there is no problem at all: African-Americans account for 12 percent of the population and 12 percent of officers in midsize and large departments surveyed, say figures from 2012 that were released in July.

But what’s the black percentage of criminals?

But that statistic masks a stark disparity in cities with large African-American populations. The overwhelming majority of cities where blacks make up at least 35 percent of the population have wide gaps — 20 percentage points or more — between the community’s minority composition and that of local law enforcement.

Sure, blacks make up 43% of the Baltimore cops, but they must make up 90% of the Baltimore criminals, so that’s a stark disparity.

… Large cities have advantages, in that they tend to operate their own academies and can recruit nationally. “We have more flexibility to go wherever we need to go,” the assistant chief said. But among the 50 largest departments, only three besides Atlanta’s — in El Paso, Miami and Washington — reflect the populations they serve. Most of the disparity in these departments comes from the agencies’ failure to keep up with growing Hispanic populations.

And nobody particularly cares much about Hispanics, so we only hear that that way down in the story.

But the push for more diversity comes at a time when many chiefs say they want to be more particular about whom they hire. College graduates, especially, are attractive candidates, as are people with language and problem-solving skills. Philadelphia recently began requiring 60 college credits and at least a C average for most new officers.

It’s called The Bell Curve. Read it.

Black cops with clean records and good test scores are a hot commodity. They have a lot of choices in where to work: a high-paying big city? A low crime exurb? Black majority suburbs don’t have much money and have moderate crime rates, so they get stuck with white cops, who, due to White Privilege, are, all else being equal, cheaper.

You’ll notice that there is no shortage of attention paid by, say, the New York Times to Inkster, Michigan when it comes to racial inequalities that could be said to be disadvantageous to blacks.

On the other other hand, the national increase in the death rate among middle-aged whites in 1999-2005 slipped the notice of practically everybody for a further decade, because what kind of disgusting maniac worries about white people?