The Marietta City Council review of the city police and fire departments’ diversity recruitment policies last week revealed 11 percent are female officers while the city’s population is 50 percent women.
As for blacks, “We’re close enough to being reflective of our population that we’ve never had a problem,” Marietta Police Chief Dan Flynn said.
“Federal agencies pursue our minority officers,” he added, citing the recent resignations of five black males, all detectives, who went to better jobs.
Flynn said the department has an intern program with Kennesaw State University that is about 50 percent minority, job fairs, a recruiting website at JoinMariettaPD.com, a Police Explorers program with most of them minorities and a Public Safety Academy at Marietta High School in which all are minorities.
For the fire department, a Fire Services Class is under consideration for Marietta High School for the department to hire graduates at 18.
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