NCJ Number
83642
Date Published
Unknown
Length
0 pages
Annotation
The Dallas Police Department's chief recruiting officer and a black female police officer from Joliet, Ill., answer participants' questions regarding their experiences with equal employment opportunity programming.
Abstract
The Dallas Police Department is committed to the goal of representing the people it serves (i.e., a force comprising 25 percent blacks and 8 percent Mexican Americans). To this end, the Dallas recruitment program does extensive outreach in minority communities, processes minority applicants first, accepts candidates with arrest records, and allows new officers with only 1 year of college to complete the 2-year requirement while serving on the force. The officer delineates the chronological sequence of tests and training that a new recruit undergoes. These include a physical examination designed by a physical anthropologist, a psychological test battery currently being validated, a 13-page polygraph, and a physical agility test also undergoing validation. Because of the outreach effort, the cost of bringing one minority recruit into the police academy is more than twice as expensive as processing a white applicant. Questions relate the Dallas practices of excluding homosexuals and requiring a college background. The black policewoman comments on her experiences as the first female officer on the force in Jolliet, noting some initial hostility from male officers, her personal handicaps in being unfamiliar with cars and weapons, and the challenge of performing police work while retaining her feminity. The public has treated her as a novelty; her family has expressed pride in her choice of profession. There are now seven women on the Joliet force who work varied partrol assignments and come from varied backgrounds.