It’s not just Ferguson: US cops are less diverse than the people they police

* “… nationwide it appears the Hispanic share of the population is about 50 percent bigger than the Hispanic share of local cops.” VL

By Danielle Kurtzleben, Vox

One of the more infuriating stats to come out of the situation in Ferguson is the racial breakdown of that city’s police department. Just under 6 percent of that city’s police officers are black, compared to two-thirds of the city’s residents.

As it turns out, minorities are underrepresented nationwide among local cops, though not nearly to the degree they are in Ferguson. According to the most recent data available from the Justice Department, local cops were substantially less diverse than the rest of the population as of 2007. Only one in four local police officers identified as something other than white compared to just over 1 in 3 Americans who identified as something other than white non-Hispanic (the Justice Department appears to treat white and Hispanic as entirely separate groups in its data).

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[Photo by peoplesworld/Flickr]