New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said that he would like to hire more black police officers, but that it's difficult because so many black men have criminal records.
"We have a significant population gap among African-American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them,"
Bratton told the Guardian in an interview.
Following recent controversies over alleged police brutality by white police officers toward black citizens, police departments are working toward hiring more nonwhite police officers.
However, Bratton said that budget issues, tense relations with minority groups, as well as a historically discriminating policing tactics make that goal difficult.
Following the "unfortunate consequences" of "stop, question and frisk" situations, the "population poll is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been," Bratton told the Guardian.
A federal judge struck down the "stop and frisk" policy in 2013, calling it a "policy of indirect racial profiling," adding that it led to a number of "blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white." However, the
2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals removed that judge from the case saying that she "ran afoul" of the judicial code of conduct in her ruling.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik recently said that the
"stop and frisk" was successful and that there has been an increase in violence since the practice was ended.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio officially stopped the controversial policy when he took office in January 2014.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.