Justice Department: Police Departments

justice department: It suggests that police departments eager for a more diverse workforce should be open to hiring applicants with past drug use or criminal records instead of automatically screening them out, according to Metro News. The lack of diversity among law enforcement agencies has become an urgent concern in recent years amid signs of strained relations between police departments and minority communities.A scathing Justice Department report last year on the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, raised concerns that the police force was overwhelmingly white even though the city was majority black. The report, from the Justice Department Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, examines the challenges to diversity in law enforcement and singles out individual agencies it says have taken innovative steps to encourage the recruitment of minority officers. The Obama administration Task Force on 21st Century Policing, meanwhile, recommended that agencies promote diversity in race, gender and cultural background as a path toward better relationships with their communities."One of the issues that can have a big impact on is whether law enforcement agencies reflect the communities they serve, whether they look like the communities they serve," Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates said Wednesday in announcing the report release. That percentage, though higher than it was 30 years ago, still means that minorities are underrepresented in law enforcement in many communities, the report said. The report cites a 2013 survey from the Justice Department Bureau of Justice Statistics showing that racial or ethnic minorities make up about 27 per cent of full-time sworn officers in the more than 12,000 local police departments across the country. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.