VOICES : Factors Affecting Police, Fire Ethnic Mix

The ACLU has me confused. Recently, they published the results of a study they conducted which showed that the ethnic makeup of San Gabriel Valley police and fire departments for the most part do not match the demographics of the communities they serve.

The departments in question, it was said, were not “representative” of their communities and thus could not provide adequate services. The inference seemed to be that police and fire departments were purposefully failing to recruit, or intentionally excluding, qualified women and minority candidates for law enforcement or fire service jobs.

For the record, if this is occurring, I for one stand with the ACLU. To intentionally eliminate qualified candidates based upon their gender or ethnicity is illegal, as well as morally and ethically corrupt.

What the ACLU might not have taken into consideration, however, are the following facts:

* Most of the communities in the San Gabriel Valley are relatively small, making the recruitment of “representative” candidates more difficult than, say, in the city of Los Angeles or Long Beach.

* Not everyone wants to become a police officer or a firefighter.

* Nor are all who apply qualified for appointment. Of the hundreds of people who apply for these positions, many fail written examinations, physical agility tests, psychological and physical screenings or background checks--standards set by the professions and the state of California.

Of necessity, police and fire departments are very particular when it comes to whom they entrust firearms, the powers of arrest, or paramedic and firefighting responsibilities.

At some stage, departments must make a decision. Do they accept the qualified applicants they have from within their geographic areas, even though they do not meet the ethnic breakdown of the most recent census, or do they pass these people over and continue to recruit over a much wider area?

What often happens is that departments begin to struggle among themselves over who can more quickly hire the qualified female and minority candidates that are out there, and that forces others to expand their recruitment efforts throughout the county, and often all over Southern California, ignoring highly qualified people in their own communities.

Yet another of the ACLU’s recent complaints was about the LAPD and that too many police officers live outside the city of Los Angeles. How can you increase the number of police officers and firefighters who live within the communities they serve if you are forced to recruit far outside the city boundaries in order to satisfy a politically correct agenda?