By TOM HAYS
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — When the shooting stopped and help arrived, the NYPD patrolmen found lying wounded in the darkness were wearing the nametags “Timoshenko” and “Yan.”
One officer was born in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. The other was born in the U.S. to a seamstress from Hong Kong.
The backgrounds of Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan — victims last week of a brazen traffic-stop shooting that killed Timoshenko — reflect unparalleled recruiting efforts and demographic shifts that have made the 35,000-officer New York Police Department, the nation’s largest police force, also its most internationally diverse.
A 1,103-member police academy class that graduated earlier this month was a United Nations of law enforcement: 264 of the rookies were born in 48 foreign countries, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Albania and Burma.
The police rank-and-file in big cities like Los Angeles and Miami “don’t have that kind of diversity, not close,” said Jason Abend, executive director of the National Law Enforcement Recruiters Association.
The influx of recent immigrants has changed the face of a department historically dominated by officers of Irish, German and Italian backgrounds. Recruitment in past generations largely consisted of sons following fathers onto the job.
Today, the NYPD has about 40 officers assigned full-time to recruit from all corners of the city and its immigrant communities. It has budgeted millions of dollars for advertising and hired a top Manhattan firm, the Bernard Hodes Group, to mount a campaign that emphasizes diversity. Advertisements have appeared in ethnic newspapers like the Russian daily Novoye Russkoye Slovo, The Korean Times and Haitian Times.
Diversity on the police force is “necessary to serve a diverse community. It builds trust,” said Deputy Inspector Martin Morales, head of the NYPD’s Recruitment Section.
One goal was to make the force mirror the city it serves. Officials say that over the past five years, about 35 percent of applicants have been white, 28 percent Hispanic and 27 percent black — a breakdown nearly matching that of the city overall. A 2005 academy class became the first that was less than half white.
The current force overall is about 55 percent white, 24 percent Hispanic, 16 percent black and 4 percent Asian.
The department also has cultivated a corps of bilingual officers. Its job application asks aspiring officers to review a long list of languages — including Kurdish, Pashto and Cambodian — and check off which ones they speak fluently.
Along with an abundance of Spanish- and Italian-speakers, there are more than 400 officers and civilians employed by the department who speak about three dozen other languages, officials said. Many have been given counterterrorism and community relations assignments.
Officers “literally speak the languages of the communities they protect,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
The commissioner said he also believes the department has been “the beneficiary of so many new citizens who consider becoming a New York City police officer the highest expression of patriotism and citizenship.”
Timoshenko, 23, could have been poster cop for NYPD’s version of the American dream. The Belarussian immigrant came to the United States with his parents at age 7 and settled on Staten Island. He played on the lacrosse team in high school.
Timoshenko later enrolled in the City College of New York but dropped out and entered the police academy.
“I tried to convince him to pursue other careers, more lucrative,” said a friend, Dmitri Levin. “But he was dead-set on being an NYPD officer.”
After going on patrol in a Brooklyn precinct about a year ago, Timoshenko had made 15 arrests, three for felonies. He was riding in a police car driven by Yan in the early hours of July 9 when they ran a license-plate check on a BMW sport utility vehicle.
After discovering the plates didn’t match the SUV, they pulled it over and approached it from either side. A blast of gunfire from the vehicle struck Timoshenko in the face; Yan, 26, was hit in the chest but was saved by his bulletproof vest.
Timoshenko died five days later. Three occupants of the car have been charged with murder.
At a wake this week, the fallen officer’s body was clothed with a dress uniform he had worn last year at his academy graduation. The casket was graced with an American flag and a Russian religious icon.