In at least 50 cities with more than 100,000 people, the percentage of black police officers is less than half of what blacks represent in the population, reports USA Today. And Hispanic police representation lags even further, with less than half of their share of the population in at least 100 cities. The paper reviewed Census estimates from 2000 to 2010 to cull data about the racial and ethnic makeup of specific occupations in cities and counties.
The USA TODAY analysis found that minority officers are concentrated in a few metropolises. More than one-third of 111,000 black officers worked in just 10 cities. One of every four of 107,000 Hispanic police worked in seven cities. The cities with the widest gaps in black officers included Dayton, Ohio, Buffalo, Detroit and Cincinnati. In all but a few of the cities with the widest disparities for blacks and Hispanics, most saw the gap remain about the same or widen from 2000 to 2010.