HBCU Looking to Make A Change In Helping Police Recruit More Black Officers

Tyrese Davis, 22, is the first man in his family to attend college, so his acceptance on Jan. 6 to Lincoln University was a huge step forward. It meant he was one step closer to creating a future for himself in the midst of the pandemic’s economic turmoil. However, it came after months of protests following the death of George Floyd, and on the same day, insurrectionists invaded the United States Capitol, where police were found to be on both sides of the law.

Davis was concerned about criticism from his community as a Black man from Baltimore, where outrage over the 2015 death of Freddie Gray is still simmering. “I didn’t want to let it be known that I was joining a law-enforcement academy,” he explains. “I  didn’t want to be frowned upon.”

But when the academy opened on Jan 19, in Jefferson City, Mo., where Davis lives on campus, he didn’t tell his friends back home, despite the fact that he was part of the first police class at an HBCU. After learning that police in Rochester, New York had arrested and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old Black girl, Davis got tired of hiding his fantasies from his friends and started posting images of himself wearing body armor and practicing at the gun range on Facebook.

“It’s my career, not their career,” he says. “I want them to realize that I’m going to make a change. That’s what we need right now.”

According to research, he is right. Historically, the majority of police officers in the United States have been white and male. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 72% of local police officers were white and nearly 88% were male in 2016. Around 64% is white and male, with about 11% being black—a profile that has remained relatively unchanged since 1997. According to a new study published in the journal Science in February, Hispanic and Black officers use force less often than white officers, especially against Black people, demonstrating that diversity can enhance police treatment of minorities.

However, nearly a year after the uprising against police brutality and institutional racism began, police departments are finding it more difficult than ever to hire and retain officers, particularly those of color. Fewer people are applying for the job, and more veteran officers are retiring or dropping like flies, putting public safety in jeopardy as crime levels rise in big cities.

“People are resigning because they’ve had enough,” says Troy Harris, the police chief of West Lafayette, Indiana. “There’s a cloud over law enforcement.”

Between July and December 2020, Harris’ agency, which serves 86,000 people, saw a 75% decrease in applications and saw six officers retire or leave the 50-member force. According to the police chief, only one of the 37 applicants that year was African-American. “If we can’t keep up, it’ll be a burden and a significant problem,” Harris says, fearing he’ll have to reassign community outreach officers to fill patrol shifts.

At the Aurora, Colorado agency, at least 87 people resigned, retired, or were fired from the Police Department in 2020, compared to 54 the year before, after the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain. In the first 40 days of 2021, twenty more officers left the department, at a time when the city is seeing a dramatic rise in major violent crimes such as assaults and robberies.

“There’s no pretty picture down the road,” says Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. He says homicides and assaults are “going through the roof” but that his agency is “probably the most understaffed” in the nation, with less than one deputy for every 1,000 residents. “It’s pretty grim,” Villanueva says.

According to the BJS, the number of full-time sworn officers in the United States decreased from approximately 725,000 to 701,000 between 2013 and 2016. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) surveyed 63% of police leaders in 2019 and found that the number of people applying for police officer jobs has decreased over the last five years. During that time period, 41% of respondents said their officer shortage had gotten worse. According to the PERF survey, job applications have dropped by around 50% in Seattle and 70% in Jefferson County, Colorado.

All of this was before Floyd’s death when police became the focal point of the country’s largest-ever sustained social-justice mobilization. The Capitol breach added to the feeling of impending doom. According to the news and commentary website The Appeal, at least 39 representatives of US law enforcement departments from 17 states attended the protest. One of them was a top recruiter for the Kentucky state police, according to reports. At least six Capitol Police officers have been suspended with pay, and 29 more are being investigated for their conduct, according to officials.

It’s no surprise, then, that some Black Americans view police work as a negative experience. According to a 2018 survey of more than 770 U.S. criminal-justice students conducted by the University of Southern Mississippi, 28% of Black respondents said their family and friends would oppose them being a patrol officer. Cultural stereotypes and family objections, according to police officers, are significant barriers that discourage recruits of color from applying. And, while law enforcement is one of the few remaining paths to the middle class that does not require a college diploma, the tens of thousands of dollars paid by some police academies can be prohibitive, particularly when there is no guarantee of employment.

As Davis applied to Lincoln, he was lucky to have the love of his family, but their warnings lingered in the back of his mind. “My mom always tells me, ‘You’re entering a Caucasian world,’ and she just wants me to be careful,” he says.

Davis is one of eight African-American students in the academy’s inaugural class of 11, which also includes two African-American women. Christopher Cade, a 37-year-old state parole officer who signed up for the $6,000 course after watching too many demoralized cops leave the profession, is one of the white students. He claims that “no one wants to do the job anymore.” It inspired the military veteran to step into their shoes. Cade says, “I enjoy doing the right thing when nobody is looking, not many people are willing to do that.”

Police Chief Gary Hill of Lincoln University hoped that when he had dreamt about the academy three years ago that he would attract students with the same mentality and drive.  There he encountered staff from his alma mater and interns from Lincoln University, who wanted to find a local location to learn about policing. “I thought, Lincoln has the resources, it has the students, the facilities. It would just be a great idea,” said Hill, who left the Sheriff’s Department to lead the Lincolns police force.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in 2020, more than 260 law enforcement officers died in duty, up 96% compared to 2019, and have died the most since 1974. COVID-19 caused more than half of those deaths.

According to the FBI, in the course of 2019, 89 officers, including 48 arrested and arrested, answered riot calls and investigated and stopped traffic, were killed in service. According to Blue H.E.L.P., over 170 U.S. law enforcement suicides were committed in 2020, and over 230 a year earlier as a non-profit to support PTSD, depression, and other issues of mental health.

Connecticut’s Stonington police chief, J. Darren Stewart said, “It takes a special person at this point to say, ‘Yeah, I want to do that.’”

Ti’Aja Fairlee knew as a child she was trying to become a police officer. She had been drawn to reading crime and mystery books and was fixed on police cars, although most of her interactions in East St. Louis, Ill were negative.

When she joined Lincoln University’s Police Academy, her family called her a “traitor” and so did strangers on the street.

The 20-year old says for a moment, “I felt like I’m betraying my dad.” Fairlee, however, thinks of the constant injustices which colored communities face every day and how she never met a Black and a women police officer. When last year’s Black Lives Matter exploded, she knew that the department needed more people who looked like her. “It pushed me somewhat to do better,” she says.

Hill pitched the idea for a police academy to Lincoln University’s current president, Jerald Jones Woolfolk, in 2018, and he immediately approved it. Hill then went about gaining the requisite state approvals as well as local support. Hill was concerned that social upheaval would stop students from enrolling when it came time to hire students in the middle of 2020. The exact opposite occurred. 27 students applied based solely on word-of-mouth and a few flyers. According to Hill, fourteen were denied admission due to financial and background-check problems, and two dropped out in January for personal reasons.

The class is held on evenings and Saturdays for 22 weeks. Students will learn how to use a weapon and when to use force, as well as how to respond to domestic violence and child abuse calls and cope with death on the job. Modern police academies have been chastised for their use of military-style training techniques, according to Hill. He claims that de-escalation tactics are covered in part of the program and that he personally vetted the teachers, who are all local law enforcement officers.

Because of their college education, academy preparation, and lived experiences, Hill believes Lincoln’s seniors will have an advantage over their rivals when they graduate from the academy on June 24 and pass the required state exam for a license.

“They need African-American cops,” says India Stelzer, a 21-year-old academy cadet from Hayti, Mo. “I’m hopeful I’ll be offered at least three jobs.”

Hill hopes that more of the nation’s approximately 100 HBCUs would soon follow suit. Many can’t because of state legislation prohibiting autonomous police academies from existing independently of official law-enforcement agencies; for example, Washington State allows police recruits to attend the state-run Basic Law Enforcement Academy. Hill says he’s currently working on establishing a branch of Lincoln’s police academy at Harris-Stowe State University, a historically black college in St. Louis. North Carolina’s department of public safety created a paid internship program for HBCU students involved in law enforcement after an executive order for racial equality in criminal justice was issued in 2020.

North Carolina’s recruitment manager, Dan Hill, says, “We’re forming a greater relationship with those HBCUs because now we have more of a presence and they know who we are.” Adding,  “They can see that we are a viable career opportunity for their students.”

Despite this, some of Lincoln’s students are concerned about their chances of success unless the way communities of color view police shifts. Stelzer, who has four relatives in the law enforcement sector, is concerned about being the only Black officer in her department and encountering prejudice both at work and at home. “It’s terrifying,” she admits. Fairlee is completely prepared for this, claiming that if she approaches the field with the attitude, “it won’t hurt as much” when it occurs.

Tyrese Davis hasn’t gotten nearly as much negative feedback from his peers since he stopped keeping his career aspirations a secret as he anticipated. He’s glad that half of the responses have been positive, and the other half have been neutral.

He is well aware that the path ahead will not be easy. Davis, who grew up in a predominantly Black Baltimore community, says he only encountered prejudice for the first time in 2017 since moving to Garden City, Kansas, to attend college. He claims that while shopping at Walmart, he was pursued to the checkout line and was pulled over by police for allegedly playing music too loudly in his vehicle. “It was really a shocker,” he says. Davis felt less than human and uneasy in his own skin as a result of his experiences.

He debated whether he really wanted to be a cop after the events of 2020, but Floyd’s death was the “gasoline to my flame,” he says. He considers everything he’s already done. Most of his high school friends didn’t go to college, but Davis is expected to graduate from Lincoln in May, where he has made the dean’s list many times and is a scholarship offensive tackle for the school football team.

He says, “I broke that recurring cycle,” adding,  “One young Black man can empower many other ones.”