Minority Police Applicants Concerns and Assessment of Occupational Roles

ARTICLE REVIEWED: Perrott, S.B. (1999). Visible Minority Applicant Concerns and Assessment of Occupational Role in the Era of Community-based Policing. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 9, 339-353. According Perrott (1999), recruiting minority officers has become an important focus in Western Democratic policing initiatives. In Canada, a variety of strategies have been implemented ensure that police officers representation is reflective of the social fabric. Although these initiatives aim at strengthening police-community partnerships (and also encourage workplace equity), studies conducted in both the United Kingdom and Canada suggest that many potential minority applicants remain reluctant join the police service. According Perrott (1999), for example, many African American youths are raised in an environment that results in suspicion of the police, creating major rifts between the two groups. The impact of this tension on minority recruitment has traditionally been assessed by researching attitudes toward the police service. An alternative approach understanding minority recruitment obstacles was put forward by Perrott (1999). Instead of looking at public attitudes toward police, Perrott (1999) surveyed 80 African-Canadian police applicants in an attempt document the obstacles that they perceive be existent with regard minority recruitment. The mean age of the subjects was 24 years with 95% of the subjects being 32 years of age or younger and the vast majority being male. The questionnaire was distributed over three separate sessions with three separate areas of interest. The first session was based on goals and obstacles and asked subjects rank order eight reasons why they would like become a police officer. The same technique was employed assess perceived obstacles regarding why a qualified African-Canadian may not want apply the police service. The second measure consisted of a 16-item Likert scale that assessed perceptions across a range of issues, including: police race relations, police attitudes compared other citizens, employment equity and police hiring practices, and job-related feelings of efficacy. Also assessed was the personal/group discrimination discrepancy (PGDD), a test examine the extent which disadvantaged group members perceive more discrimination towards their ethnic group than toward themselves as individuals (Taylor et al., 1990; Wright & Ruggiero, 1991). The 'across-perceiver' discrepancy (Perrott & Taylor, 1994) was also examined verify how close minority applicants felt the police were them and vice versa. Although the PGDD and across perceiver discrepancy measure have traditionally been employed as two separate and distinct assessment tools, they were used together in this case measure how perceptual discrepancies may hinder minority recruitment and encumber police race relations. The last measure employed a 30-item Right Wing Authoritarian scale measure predisposed authoritarianism tendencies in applicants. The results of the study provided a number of interesting findings with regard police recruitment of minorities. (1) Goals and Obstacles--The highest priority assigned by subjects regarding why they wanted become a police officer was to serve the community. Interestingly, the option of to serve the black community ranked 5th on the list in priority, while being a role model was deemed be the second most important consideration for becoming a police officer. Lower rankings were assigned excitement and prestige as motivators for becoming a police officer. Perceived obstacles joining the police service were divided into a number of major themes and sub-themes. The most profound obstacle ranked by the applicants consisted of concerns about prejudice at the level of police-community (i.e., dealing with racist officers). Thirteen of the 35 subjects who ranked this as their first concern were shown also have a general mistrust toward police officers or have developed a negative attitude towards officers over the years. …

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