Recommended Best Practices
Recommendation 10.3 Develop recruitment plans that reflect departmental missions and community priorities.
To attract officers with skills, experiences, and attitudes that align with their department’s mission, leaders should develop recruitment plans that include specific goals and milestones. If recruitment plans reflect community input, departments will build community trust and make the profession more appealing. Leaders should use employee referral systems, because community-minded officers are likely to recruit like-minded candidates whom they know closely; engage in face-to-face outreach, because it personalizes and demystifies what can be an intimidating process; and prioritize recruiting people of color, women, and individuals from other backgrounds underrepresented in policing. Specifically, departments should:
Prioritize recruiting applicants from historically underrepresented populations in the policing profession. Public perceptions of the police as an oppressive force, which have been reinforced by recent episodes of police violence in cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, weaken departments’ ability to recruit officers of color.[i]
Almost 75 percent of law enforcement officers are White, and almost 90 percent are male.[ii]Because “White males have historically dominated the ranks of local law enforcement …their children are more likely to view the profession, which often runs in the family, as a viable career.”[iii]Children from historically underrepresented groups, then, are less likely to view policing as a viable and honorable career path.
The underrepresentation of Black people, Latinxs, and other people of color weakens police-community relations. Department leaders should recruit and hire candidates who are service-minded and committed to working with residents to promote public safety and who come from and live in the communities they serve. Officers should represent their communities and be familiar with the cultures and traditions of the neighborhoods they patrol. Diversifying the force by race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, experience, and background will create departments that reflect communities — and will improve policing.[iv]
Departments can diversify applicant pools in many ways. They can collaborate with leaders in communities of color and reach out to institutions, such as historically Black colleges, universities, and churches, to recruit applicants of color. The Detroit Police Department, for example, reaches out to and mentors Black high school students to change negative perceptions about the police and to encourage them to consider careers in law enforcement.[v]
In Washington, D.C., an ethnically and racially diverse city, the Metropolitan Police Department created a program that encourages young adults between the ages of 17 and 25 to consider careers in law enforcement while earning college credit.[vi]The department also reaches out to young adults between the ages of 11 and 20 through its Junior Cadet and Cadet Explorers programs, which provide law enforcement-related educational and vocational experiences.[vii]
Departments should collaborate with affinity groups, such as associations of Black and Latinx officers, female officers, LGBTQ officers, Deaf and hard-of-hearing officers, and others to identify the challenges they face as police officers and to address challenges to attract more applicants from these groups.[viii]Departments can also hold focus groups with people from underrepresented groups to learn about their concerns, apprehensions, and challenges and better understand barriers to joining the force.
Focus recruitment messaging on community service. Messaging matters. It is vital to frame advertisements for careers in law enforcement in a way that attracts candidates who embrace community policing principles. Messages should emphasize that careers in law enforcement offer people a way to give back to their communities; they should not be framed around aggressive uses of force, such as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team deployments, arrests, and canine searches.
As the President’s Task Force Report notes, emphasizing public service and policing from a guardian approach will attract service-minded candidates.[ix]This can be done through campaigns that feature images and themes of officers who reflect a diverse array of backgrounds and are engaged in acts of public service instead of crime and police tactics.[x]
Seek communities’ input into the hiring process. Leaders should seek public input on hiring to ensure that it reflects community values. Some departments engage community advisory boards when hiring new officers; others work with community stakeholders to list the characteristics that describe ideal candidates (such as those who are service-minded, have sound judgment, and are respectful and compassionate).[xi]After recruiting a pool of applicants, leaders should identify qualified and competent candidates who align with their departments’ core values. Without community input, a department’s perception of the ideal candidate may not align with community values.
[i]See, e.g., Mike Maciag, Where Police Don’t Mirror Communities and Why It Matters, (Aug. 28, 2015), http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-police-department-diversity.html (noting that “[t]he longstanding perception of police as an oppressive force has hurt minority recruitment.”).
[ii]W. Dwayne Orrick, Best Practices Guide: Recruitment, Retention, and Turnover of Law Enforcement Personnel 5, https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/BP-RecruitmentRetentionandTurnover.pdf.; Yamiche Alcindor & Nick Penzenstadler, Police Redouble Efforts to Recruit Diverse Officers, USA Today, Jan. 21, 2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/21/police-redoubling-efforts-to-recruit-diverse-officers/21574081/.
[iii]Maciag, supranote 25.
[iv]See, e.g., President’s Task Force Report,supranote 2, at 16-17.
[v]Id. at 28.
[vi]Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement,supranote 1, at 28; Metropolitan Police Dep’t, Cadet Corps, https://joinmpd.dc.gov/career-program-page/cadet-corps(last visited Jan. 18, 2019).
[vii]Metropolitan Police Dep’t, MPD Launches Junior Cadet Explorers Program (Feb. 28, 2017), https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/mpd-launches-junior-cadet-and-cadet-explorers-program.
[viii]See, e.g., Metropolitan Police Dep’t, Affinity Groups, https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/affinity-groups(last visited Jan. 18, 2019).
[ix]President’s Task Force Report, supranote 2, at 11.
[x]The Model Police Officer, supranote 8, at 12.
[xi]See, e.g., Evan McDonald, Cleveland Police Recruitment Plan Says More Women, Minority Officers Needed to Reflect City’s Diversity, Cleveland.com (May 29, 2018), https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/05/cleveland_police_recruitment_p.html(noting that the Cleveland Police Department in 2018 implemented a recruitment plan as part of a consent decree). See alsothe Grand Rapids Police Department, which since 2017 has had a Police Policy and Procedure Review Task Force that substantively engages with the community on various issues, including recruitment practices. Grand Rapid Police Department, Police Policy and Procedure Review Task Force, (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.grandrapidsmi.gov/Government/Programs-and-Initiatives/Police-Policy-and-Procedure-Review-Task-Force.