Ferguson police force lack of racial diversity is typical of all America's police forces.....

[Fred Sanders]

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119070/michael-browns-death-leads-scrutiny-ferguson-white-police

Ferguson’s Police Force Is 94 Percent White—And That’s Basically Normal in the U.S.

..................................

By Rebecca Leber

The Ferguson, Missouri police department has faced criticism for its response to an officer shooting dead 18-year-old Michael Brown—its riot gear, how it has protected the officer’s identity, and that it reportedly neglected a key witness to Brown’s death. And many of these critics, including Vox, Mother Jones, and the editorial board of the New York Times, have pointed out the lack of racial diversity of Ferguson’s police force: Ferguson’s population is 67 percent black, but African Americans make up just 5.6 percent of the police force. Consider this number in the context of St. Louis’ deeply segregationist and discriminatory history—today, the city is still the sixth-most segregated in the country.

...


But Ferguson’s police department is also more or less average in its diversity. A 2007 survey of local police forces across the country from the Department of Justice showed that the average for a city of Ferguson’s size—21,000—is an 87.5 percent white police force, and 5.6 percent black. The national average for all local police stands at 75 percent white.

[pennylane100]

1. It is certainly very important that police depts reflect the community they serve.

However, there is another very important criteria that needs to be observed in policing our communities. The people we arm and send out to keep us safe should be psychologically capable of handling this responsibility. Many of them are not.

The prolific videos that cell phones have provided show a scary vision of those that are supposed to protect us. Often they do not know the laws they are enforcing and if they do, they can ignore them with impunity. They can shoot and kill innocent people with no consequences. They are answerable only to themselves. This is a recipe for disaster unless we start changing the criteria for whom we hire and stop allowing them to investigate themselves when things go wrong.

[Fred Sanders]

5. The root of the problem is the failure of black voters actually voting, why are they disengaged?

[Cal Carpenter]

2. And regardless of 'diversity' on any given police force

the *systemic* racism in our so-called justice system trumps all of that. Police officers of all skin colors perpetuate this type of systemic racism.

The New Jim Crow.

[leftstreet]

3. +1

[Fred Sanders]

4. Even more scary, all forces of Ferguson's size have identical average racial diversity...are there

many more Fox News robots as chiefs of these police forces?