The myriad calls for policing reform in cities like Cleveland, Baltimore, andFerguson have included initiatives seeking more racial diversity across the forces. All three of these cities have police departments that are much whiterthan the populations they serve. But would relations with communities of color really improve if there was more racial symmetry between police departments and the cities they work in?
Boston Police commissioner Edmund McNamara put this question to the test back in 1971, by creating an all-African-American unit within the city’s predominantly white force—one of the oldest police departments in the nation. Reporter Allison Manning wrote about the history of this “short-lived, very successful tactical police unit” for Boston.com.
Despite Boston police having a black cop on the force long before that was common in any city—Horatio J. Homer, appointed in 1878, years before Samuel J. Battle and Wiley G. Overton became the first black officers in New York City—race relations within the department had not smoothed by the 1970s.
[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...-police-unit/394259/]
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