By Maria Nagle
The Pantagraph
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — After nearly a year focused on hiring more minority and female police officers, the makeup of Twin City law enforcement agencies remains, by a large majority, white male cops.
Only one woman has been added to the local officer ranks since the departments’ lack of diversity was raised last January at a “Breaking Barriers” public forum.
The female officer was hired by the McLean County Sheriff’s Department, bringing its number of female officers to two; there are 48 male officers. All are white, said Sheriff Jon Sandage.
The percentage of minority and female officers for Bloomington, Normal and Illinois State University police departments did not change despite concerted recruitment efforts over the past 10 months.
Bloomington’s 121 officers include 112 (93 percent) white males. Normal’s 80 officers include 68 (85 percent) white males. ISU police’s 27 officers include 18 (67 percent) white males.
“We’ve lost three people since February, but the actual number of minority and female officers is the same. So it’s the status quo,” said J. Gary Sutherland, whose duties as Bloomington assistant police chief of professional standards include training, recruitment, testing and hiring of new officers.
The local departments use various means, including social media, to recruit minorities and women to participate in their testing. They’ve posted hiring notices at universities and colleges and with church groups and civic organizations; advertised in publications and media outlets, used Internet sites and posted hiring notices in stores that service or cater to diverse populations.
“I think we had to be more diligent about reaching out to the community and using other resources to help get those qualified applicants,” said Normal Police Chief Rick Bleichner.
Recruitment fliers featuring Bloomington Police Chief Brendan Heffner, one of the department’s two African-American male officers, and Amy Keil, one of three female officers on the force, drew 15,000 hits on BPD’s Facebook page.
Local police agencies are not alone in their struggle to find qualified female and minority officers. Every department across the country is looking to hire for diversity — so everybody is recruiting the same group of people, said Sutherland and other chiefs.
And, regardless of race or gender, the recruitment poll is shrinking, added Sutherland.
“Look at the national outcry against police officers,” he said. “It’s a terrible time to recruit. You don’t have people storming down the doors wanting to be police officers right now.”
Hiring Process
BPD’s recruitment efforts resulted in 193 people, including 51 nonwhite and female applicants, participating in BPD’s last round of testing in late February.
But after each of the female applicants failed a physical agility standard, the department is looking at changing it.
“A physical agility standard that eliminates all female candidates, that’s clearly an identifiable problem,” said Sutherland. “It’s easy to rectify as long as the standard is the same for all applicants.”
The department should be able make that adjustment because the physical agility standard it was holding everybody to is higher than the one on the entrance examination of the Illinois State Police Academy, which officers must successfully complete as a condition of employment.
The standards for police training academies are set by the Illinois Training and Standards Board and are used by other law enforcement agencies, including Normal and the sheriff’s department.
“For us, we want to use the same test that the academies are using for admission because years ago we had a process that was different,” said Bleichner. “You would end up having someone who passes your process, but gets to the academy and can’t pass that.”
The local departments’ hiring processes are similar — though ISU’s department also is subject to the state’s civil service testing process.
Applicants who pass a series of tests — physical agility, written and oral — are ranked on a eligibility list by the total of their test scores and points for military service. They are considered for hire as openings become available. If offered a job, candidates must pass additional tests — typically a polygraph exam, background investigation, psychological evaluation and medical exam.
“We ended up with 17 people who were eligible to be hired out of that 193,” said Sutherland. “We have since hired four of those people and they are at the (Illinois State Police) academy. They are all Caucasian males.”
NPD Efforts
Normal has hired one white male officer since February, and is in the process of testing for additional officers.
“The last process that we’re wrapping up, it was right at 36 percent of the 298 applicants who were minorities and women,” said Bleichner. “We have 38 people, including 10 who are minority and female applicants, that we interviewed. The process is ongoing, so it doesn’t mean all 10 or all 38 made it into the (hiring) pool.”
ISU police department’s recruitment efforts were placed on hold until the state recently completed revamping its civil service testing process.
Meanwhile, through an intern program, the department found a replacement for an officer who left earlier this year.
“We replaced a white male officer with an individual who is a white male,” said ISU Police Chief Aaron Woodruff. “So our numbers remain the same because we haven’t had a chance to impact them yet.
“Ideally, we would have a department that represents our community, and our community is pretty diverse here on campus,” he added. “But it’s just a challenge getting people from different backgrounds here into the testing process.”
“We need to have the volume of people applying so that as we go through the process we have reasonable numbers when it comes time to get to the interviews and hopefully to the point of extending a conditional offer,” added Bleichner. “So it’s a numbers game, but we want to recruit the best people that we can.”
“It’s integrity and character issues that wash the most people out, and it doesn’t matter what their race or gender is,” said Sutherland.
“We ask tough questions,” he added. “Everybody’s got those little things that they don’t like to talk about and can be the eliminator when it’s time to be a police officer.”
Copyright 2015 The Pantagraph