More blacks on police force doesn't mean less brutality Calls to diversify ranks have brought economic opportunity for decades, but don't surpass training and accountability.

James Forman Jr. | Opinion contributor

In recent years, everybody from protesters in Ferguson, Mo., to former president Barack Obama has suggested we hire more African-American officers to help heal the rift between hurting black communities and seemingly out-of-touch police forces.

But there is little evidence that diversifying police departments reduces excessive force. The relationship between an officer’s race and his or her behavior toward black citizens has long been examined, with inconclusive results.

Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie summed up the research well when he wrote, “Just because an officer is black ... doesn't mean he’s less likely to use violence against black citizens.”

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King (senior) once made the call

The demand for more black officers has deep historical roots. Speaking at Atlanta’s Morehouse College in 1947, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., protested the fact that a city with 100,000 black citizens had no black officers. The Atlanta Daily World, the city’s largest black newspaper, agreed, calling the lack of black police the city’s top civil rights issue. When King’s campaign succeeded, forcing the city to hire its first eight black officers, Atlanta’s mayor compared the cops to Jackie Robinson, who had just broken baseball’s color barrier. Before a huge crowd welcoming the new black recruits, Mayor William B. Hartsfield told the officers that they should “do the kind of job that Jackie did in Brooklyn.”

Two decades later, as police violence against black citizens fueled riots and protests, civil rights leaders renewed the push for more black police. In 1968, the Black United Front, a coalition of civil rights activists and black nationalists in Washington D.C., demanded the “immediate prohibition of all-white police patrols in the black community.” Marion Barry (who would become mayor years later) agreed. In 1969, Barry got into an argument with police over a parking ticket. He ended up hospitalized and jailed. When he emerged from jail, bandaged and bloodied, he told a crowd of over 300 protesters: “This shows me that black people need to control the nation’s capital police department. The police are like mad dogs.”

By one measure, King and Barry succeeded. The police departments in Atlanta and D.C. are now highly diverse.

And while most departments across the country are still majority white, the share of minority officers has nearly doubled over the past three decades.

Cops still struggle with dual roles

Why hasn’t police diversity made more of an impact on how minorities are treated? Part of the answer lies in unexamined differences between those who demanded more black police and those who became police. King was typical of the civil rights advocates who argued for police integration. One of the city's most prominent black citizens, King's focus was civil rights advancement. For most new recruits, police work was a chance to advance up the economic ladder, not a new front in the civil rights struggle.

In addition, while King had suggested that black officers would “represent” the race, not all of the new recruits shared that mission. In 1969 in Prince George’s County, Md., just outside of Washington, one black officer remarked: “Sometimes I will be cruising down a street, and a group of black teenagers will yell, ‘Hey soul brother!’ So I get out and explain that I’m not their soul brother or their friend, I’m a policeman.”

Comments from and efforts by modern-day civil rights leaders, like those who protested in Ferguson and cities affected by police violence around the country, show that the tension between black cops and black leaders is still strong. And black officers continue to wrestle with conflicting identities. Last year, after five Dallas police officers were killed, Lt. Thomas Glover, president of the Black Police Force of Greater Dallas, said, "We are expected to do whatever is necessary to be that officer of the law 24/7. We are also expected to be the African-American brother, father, uncle, cousin, pastor, deacon, 24/7, too. And that makes a grueling task."

Black law enforcement officers have long faced this additional challenge. It boils down to a police culture that demands loyalty to blue over black. When Chicago police officer Renault Robinson formed the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League in 1968, he met unrelenting hostility from his mostly white supervisors and colleagues, culminating in anonymous phone calls threatening his wife and children. Robinson pressed onward, but others decided the price of resistance was too high. Glover acknowledged that the code of silence remains an obstacle for black officers today.

"When you complain about misconduct in many instances," Glover said, "you are labeled as a troublemaker, you're a radical."

Does this history mean that we should abandon the effort to hire more black officers? Not at all. But we should be clear about our goals. We must separate the police reform imperative from the economic one. On the economic front, police jobs are good jobs, and African Americans should get their fair share. Black officers' claim to those jobs shouldn’t require proof that they will perform differently, or better than their white counterparts. In turn, once we realize that changing the racial composition of the force won’t alter police behavior, we can focus on things that will — including training, supervision and accountability for all officers, of whatever color.

James Forman Jr., a professor at Yale Law School, is the author of a new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Follow @JFormanJr on Twitter.