Both Deputy Police Chief Gary Sparks and I had a glancing recollection of each other from some previous encounter. We just couldn’t remember when, what or where.
Finally, an hour into the conversation this week, the Douglasville lawman smiled, leaned across the table and said, “You wrote about it when they fired me.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. Back in 1995, Douglasville police were partying and some got beer-buzzed and started streaking. Sparks was neither nekkid nor drunk, but his higher-ups were upset that then-Lt. Sparks did not report the naughty pranksters to superiors.
The city action against Sparks was obviously overbearing, and he was rehired.
But during that controversy, I noted that the 50-officer force went from 2 percent black to zero percent black in Sparks’ absence.
“We’d like to have more black officers, ” the city manager said at the time. “We try to select the best people who apply. We’ve made efforts in the past to recruit more minority applicants.”
A generation later, it still seems like old times.
I was out in Douglasville last week talking with Sparks and Chief Chris Womack because the city recently got the dubious distinction of appearing on a New York Times map labeled: “The Race Gap in America’s Police Departments.”
One of the eight cities plotted on the map was Douglasville, which was noted as the Georgia department having the biggest differential between the percentage of whites in the population and on the police force. The 59-point gap was among the highest in the nation. In Ferguson, Mo., the gap was 55 points.
(Douglasville’s differential would be about 50 points if you didn’t count the four Hispanic officers as white.)
There’s a strong belief in many quarters that police have an easier time building trust when they reflect the makeup of a community.
Today, 11 of Douglasville’s 91 full-time cops are black. But the city has changed drastically since 1995. Back then, it had 15,000 residents, about 15 percent of them black. Today, there are more than 32,000 residents, and, according to the 2010 census, 56 percent are black and 33 percent white.
Womack is well aware of his workforce. In fact, he almost got run off the job by his bosses in July for telling the truth about the $36,100 starting salary. The chief was frustrated by attrition in his troops and told the Douglas County Sentinel, “You want a major league all-star team, but want to pay college-level salaries. It just doesn’t fit and they find agencies that will pay for their skill set.”
The problem of hiring and retaining black officers exists nationwide. The reasons are many and varied. Black candidates have many police departments, as well as employers in other fields, seeking them. But young black men are prosecuted more vigorously for drug and other offenses, leaving stains on their backgrounds. And education levels are different.
Back in 1995, one of the Douglasville City Council’s two black members said the department’s two-year college requirement washed out a lot of black applicants.
That qualification still remains. (It can be offset with military or other police experience.) Both Womack and Sparks defended the tough Douglasville standards.
“We’re doing our best to make our department mirror our community,” said Sparks. “But you don’t want to start cutting your corners or lowering your value system; sometimes you just don’t bend. An arrest will knock you out. How are you going to arrest someone if you have the same (arrest on your record)?”
He went on: “We still want people with integrity and character. If they have a little college or have a little military (experience), then they have seen other cultures.”
The force has hired three new officers who are black, but that is simply replacing three more who have left.
“When you get an African-American officer who’s sharp and up-and-coming, you have people fighting for them,” said Womack, who has been with the department 25 years, two years less than Sparks. They said MARTA continually raids their department for recruits, as do other metro departments.
Cedric Alexander, who is the public safety director in DeKalb County and president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said he’s been in policing for 30 years, “and it’s been an issue longer than that. Sometime the community changes demographically faster than your force.”
Background checks knock out many young black candidates, he said. “None of us will argue there’s a disproportionate percentage of young African-American men who go to jail,” Alexander said. “Does that create a challenge? Yes. But it just means you have to cast a wider net.”
Sparks and others in Douglasville are casting that net. Decades ago, Sparks was one of the first black students to integrate Douglas County schools. This week, he was heading to a historically black college to peddle the benefits of his force to potential recruits.
Sparks and Womack said they try all sorts of community outreach programs to connect with residents. They knock on doors, have a Saturday morning Youth Against Violence program, citizen ride-alongs, citizen police academies, all sorts of ways for people to see the humans behind the uniforms.
It’s a tough slog. Who knows, maybe in another 20 years, the department will be up to 20 black cops.
About the Author
