The Associated Press
NEW YORK — When the shooting stopped and help arrived, the police officers found lying wounded were wearing the nametags “Timoshenko” and “Yan.”
One 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 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 United States’ 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 49 foreign countries, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Albania and Burma.
The police officers in other big U.S. 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 into the job.
Today, the NYPD has about 40 officers assigned full time to recruit from all corners of the city and its immigrant communities. Its 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 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.
Timoshenko, 23, represented the NYPD’s version of the American dream. The Belarussian immigrant came to the United States with his parents at age 7. He 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 about a year ago, Timoshenko 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 did not 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 SUV have been charged with murder.
At a wake this week, Timoshenko’s casket was graced with an American flag and a Russian religious icon.