DOJ Report: Criminal Background Checks, Immigration Status Are Barriers To Law Enforcement Diversity

by William Teach | October 6, 2016 8:38 am

This is, um, well, just bat guano insane. The DOJ is utterly sincere in their, let’s call it “wackadoodle”, beliefs

(CNS News[1]) The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a comprehensive report[2] Wednesday examining hiring, recruitment, and retention policies with the aim of increasing diversity in law enforcement.

The report highlighted barriers to diversity within police departments, such as “the use of criminal background checks” which the researchers found “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants.”

The report also found that U.S. citizenship requirements “may prevent a considerable number of racial and ethnic minorities – many of whom have valuable foreign language skills – from being hired by law enforcement agencies.”

Well, of course they are barriers. Does it really need to be stated that they should be barriers? Should a non-citizen really be in charge of law enforcement? Should a convicted felon really be in charge of law enforcement? One would think that the Department Of Justice, that nations top law enforcement office, would be interested in law and order, but, they’re morphing into the Department of Social Justice.

The report opened with an analysis of EEOC labor force data, which “found that African-American, Latino, and Asian-American police officers were underrepresented relative to the local area population in a significant number of the departments analyzed. Using a statistical test of underrepresentation, the researchers found that within their sample, African Americans were underrepresented in 60 percent of the departments, Latinos were underrepresented in 41 percent, and Asian Americans were underrepresented in 31 percent.”

So what? Women are underrepresented in the NFL and STEM fields. Men are underrepresented in education and health sciences. Whites are underrepresented in rap music and the NBA, Blacks in heavy metal and the NHL. Go to a car dealership: how many women work there in sales? It all comes down to choice and capability. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to diversify a work force. Many police forces have been thrilled to be able to have more female officers, who can often deescalate situations, but, guess what? They still have to pass a background check. And they have to want to become police officers.

What if Blacks, Latinos, and Asians do not care about becoming officers in amounts large enough to be “represented”? Are we to force them? What if part of it is that they cannot pass a citizenship or background check? Sadly, it needs to be said “of course not.”

The use of criminal background checks, the report noted, “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants since, for a variety of reasons, individuals from those communities are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system.”

It added that “law enforcement agencies are undeniably justified in carefully vetting and investigating potential hires,” but “excluding applicants regardless of the nature of the underlying offense, or how much time has passed since an offense occurred, or without any consideration of whether the candidate has changed in the intervening period, can be a significant – and unwarranted – barrier.”

So, if someone is essentially committing crimes as a teenager and young adult, that should be thrown out or something. There wouldn’t be a lot of time passing between those time periods in a person’s life and when they would try to join law enforcement.

One has to wonder: while the DOSJ is whining about local, county, and state police forces, are they forcing the FBI and DOJ to hire people with serious criminal offenses in their backgrounds, or who are illegal aliens?

On the hiring of women in law enforcement, according to the report, “research has shown that physical tests may have a significant and unnecessary impact on female applicants when they lack a corresponding benefit or job-related need.

So now the DOSJ wants to add “physically unable to do the job” as a barrier to getting a job.

I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article, which doesn’t get any better when it comes to facepalming from what the DOSJ is stating.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[3]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[4].

Endnotes:
  1. CNS News: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/lauretta-brown/doj-report-barriers-hiring-diverse-police-force-include-citizenship
  2. report: https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/file/900761/download
  3. Pirate’s Cove: http://www.thepiratescove.us/
  4. @WilliamTeach: http://twitter.com/WilliamTeach

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