Second in a series
Re: “Culver City Cops: Models for America”
Where is Ferguson when you genuinely need it?
Here is a story with national, if not global, impact even though so far, no one has come calling.
Culver City has a police department that is a social-justice demonstrator’s dream.
Supposedly.
Although protestors have ignored even Justice Dept. findings of police innocence, surely Culver City’s example is a stunning model for activists fretting over the mix of sex and ethnicity and gender and whatever else drives them to march.
With police departments from North Carolina to Ferguson to Los Angeles under unrelieved siege, Police Chief Scott Bixby leads a 148-member department that is more diverse than the moderately diverse community of Culver City.
Here is a taste of numbers:
- 44 percent of the department is white, against 60 percent of Culver City residents.
- 14 percent of the department is black, against 9.5 percent of residents.
- 30 percent of the department is Hispanic, against 23 percent of residents.
The harshest critic of the police would be forced to applaud such numbers.
Mr. Bixby says the best part is that there was no deliberate attempt to build a department that was perfectly attuned to a sociologist’s ideal.
“We went out to recruit the very best, and we got them,” the chief said.
(To be continued)
