Lower Ratio of Black Police Hires Probed

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams and several city lawmakers are questioning why the proportion of blacks among police recruits dropped last year to 7%, less than half the department’s hiring pattern in recent years, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times.

“What the hell’s going on here?” demanded Councilman Nate Holden, who said he first asked the chief about African American recruitment when he visited a Police Academy graduation this spring and noticed few black faces. “That’s rolling back the clock.”

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In a June 12 memo, Williams raised similar concerns: “I am requesting an explanation of why the minimum percentage of blacks was dropped from 15%, as was the rule for the past several years. Who made this decision, when and why?” the chief wrote. “It was my understanding that there had not been any official ruling to change any of the minimum percentages for the various identified and targeted groups.”

Assistant Chief Frank Piersol, to whom the memo was directed, said that the LAPD staff is preparing a detailed analysis of the recruitment situation and that he does not yet know why the level of black recruits has dropped so drastically.

“It could be a procedural thing, it could be a systemic thing, it could be a societal thing--it could be many things,” Piersol said. “The driving force is to try to do the right thing and get the best people on the department . . . to make sure that we do everything legally, ethically and morally that we can do to make sure we reflect the community we work in.”

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Pat Patterson, chief of police hiring in the city’s Personnel Department, said the number of African Americans entering the academy has stayed steady, but their percentage of the total has dropped since the city stepped up its hiring last year, jumping from 70 recruits per class to 90.

“We’ve always had a surplus of other ethnic groups,” he said, noting that it has historically been more difficult to recruit black candidates. “Now, we have to hire more people, so we’re picking up those others.”

According to a 1981 court order, LAPD was supposed to aggressively recruit blacks, Latinos and women in an effort to make the department reflect the diversity of the region’s overall work force. That consent decree set a goal of 22.5% of each recruit class being black until the department’s ethnic makeup reflected that of the labor force.

In fact, the department has exceeded that goal. Currently, 14% of the LAPD’s sworn staff is black, compared with 8.9% of the labor force cited in the consent decree (the labor pool statistics come from the 1990 census).

Because of that, the city attorney’s office said in a January memo that there may no longer be justification for favoring African Americans and that continued hiring preferences might not be defensible in a reverse discrimination lawsuit. City officials said African Americans now being hired have lower average scores on police entrance exams than whites or Latinos.

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Whites also make up a larger percentage of the police force, 52%, than their 44% of the region’s work force. Other groups, however, remain behind: The LAPD is 28.5% Latino, 4.2% Asian and 17% female, according to department statistics. That compares with a labor pool that is 36.5% Latino, 10.5% Asian and 43.3% female.

“It’s a very delicate balancing act,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee and is a member of the Personnel Committee. “The overall goal of wanting our police force to represent the population makes very good sense. The difficulty in having percentages is if you stay with one percentage of one group, is it hurting another group?”

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Still, Chick and other key lawmakers said the fact that the number of African American recruits has exceeded the goals of the consent decree does not mean their recruitment level should drop, noting that attrition could soon reduce the percentage of black officers on the force. They pointed out that the city still has a strong affirmative action policy that encourages hiring and promotion of minorities and women.

“It would be foolhardy to back away from African American police officers in this city,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who also sits on the Personnel Committee. “To do [so] is only sowing the seeds of further distrust of the Los Angeles Police Department, which serves no one’s interest.”

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg promised that the Personnel Committee, which she chairs, will conduct its own review of the recruitment patterns.

“A drop by 50% is a dramatic drop. . . . I want to know why,” she said. “African Americans, people of color in general, and women are not represented throughout the ranks. Even when you are close to parity, if you cut off the flow, very quickly you lose ground.”