While Wilmington police academies continue to attract candidates from diverse backgrounds, the demographics of the department has remained largely unchanged since police Chief Robert Tracy took the helm in 2017.
A Delaware Online/The News Journal comparison of 2016 demographics of the 300-plus member police force to a breakdown of today’s police officers shows the percentage of employees of color continues to hover at 35 percent, while the number of women on the force increased slightly during Tracy’s time in office from 12 percent to 15 percent.
“Our goal is to continue to recruit candidates from a diversity of racial, ethnic and gender backgrounds to help ensure our department continues to steadily become more reflective of the community we serve,” Tracy said in an emailed statement. “I am proud of the progress that has been made under the leadership of Inspector (Charles) Emory and Captain (Anthony) Bowers. An additional area of progress is the number of female officers that our department has – coming in around 15% for our department, which tops the national average of 13% across all US law enforcement agencies.”
Diversity in the Wilmington Police Department has been a flashpoint for City Council members, particularly Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo, who has pushed department leadership to provide a plan for attracting minority candidates to the force and suggested that its recruitment efforts should include a specific group responsible for attracting those candidates.
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During a council Public Safety Committee meeting last March, Congo suggested leadership should reconnect with former city Mayor Dennis Williams to find out what he did to make the department more diverse, remarking on how Williams made it a public priority.
“The last class, they don’t have enough minorities in my eyes,” he said of the police academy class that graduated in April 2021. “Obviously, we have to do something different. I want our future conversations to center around what are we going to do differently to make it happen? How do we regroup and make minority recruitment a priority?”
Wilmington is a majority-minority city where nearly 60% of the population is Black or African American and 10% are Hispanic or Latino. White people make up about 36% of the population.
The 100th police academy attracted 131 applicants, with over half of the candidates identifying as a minority, but as recruits progressed through the application process and training, the numbers dwindled. Ultimately, 19 recruits graduated, seven of whom are minorities.
Congo has pushed police leadership to craft a written plan for how the department will attract more minorities, and this year, he successfully led an effort to vote “no confidence” in Tracy’s abilities as police chief.
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Congo has said he continues to hear from officers of color who remark on a lack of diversity in upper management and in the police force in general, and that the environment can be hostile for some employees. Other council members have reported the opposite, saying the officers of color they’ve spoken with are happy with the efforts Tracy has made.
Recruiting diverse candidates has become more challenging due to public sentiments toward police, said Emory, who oversees the Wilmington Police Department’s recruitment, human resources, training and other personnel matters.
Incidents of police brutality against people of color have sparked protests across the country, with residents demanding accountability and change in law enforcement agencies.
“There are a lot of different reasons. One is the scrutiny from the public and the perception. Two, a lot of people think it’s not an admirable position,” Emory said. “Because of things that have happened, it’s gotten harder.”
Police departments throughout Delaware, and across the country, still do not adequately reflect the populations they serve. Significant change and progress in these deeply rooted institutions doesn’t happen overnight, police reform experts say, and possible policy or legislative adjustments may be needed.
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The community also plays a part, said Dr. Alfred S. Titus, Jr., an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York Police Department officer. More people of color from the community applying to be a police officer and wanting to be the change is critical to a department’s efforts to diversify, he said.
“The more diverse the department is, the more opportunity for us to see minorities in these higher ranks. That’s what’s happening in the NYPD. We are starting to see a lot of women in high-ranking places,” Titus said. “We just got an African American female police commissioner, and there are a lot of moves and things being done to diversify the higher ranks. It’s happening, but it just takes time.”
Prior police leadership
Before Tracy joined the Wilmington Police Department, the agency faced criticism over its internal operations ranging from officers in the police union and state officials, with the latter group stepping in to examine how the department allocated law enforcement resources and approached policing.
When former Mayor Williams took office in 2013, Wilmington was experiencing record levels of gun violence.
He pledged to overhaul the force, hiring two former officers Williams knew from his days as a city police detective in the 1980s to assist, appointed the first female – Christine Dunning – to police chief, and transferred officers out of special units like community policing to the patrol division to have more officers on the streets.
But Williams’ approach wasn’t welcomed by everyone.
He encouraged aggressive tactics, like “stop and frisk,” and pulled out of county, state and federal task forces aimed at fighting the city’s crime. Before the close of his first year in office, Williams suggested he’d shake up the department’s leadership if violent crime wasn’t brought under control.
City officers pushed back, with the Wilmington Fraternal FOP Lodge #1 blasting Williams in a Dec. 2013 news release for using then-police Chief Dunning as his “scapegoat” for the rising gun violence. Most City Council members came to Dunning’s defense, and officials as well as the union called for Williams to stop micromanaging the department.
A month after Williams publicly stated his intentions to change police leadership, Dunning announced her retirement and Bobby Cummings, then an inspector, was elevated to interim police chief.
Cummings eventually was appointed by Williams as police chief, marking the second African American man to hold the position in Wilmington. Former Chief Sam Pratcher was the first, leading the department in the 1990s.
Roughly three months later, the police union voted “no confidence” in Cummings, citing concerns about his responses to proposed shift changes and residents throwing rocks at officers who responded to a fatal shooting.
The criticisms continued and Wilmington struggled to rein in gun violence, ultimately prompting the state to form a Wilmington Public Safety Strategies Commission to address perceptions of “misallocation of law enforcement resources” in 2015. The panel creation came after state legislators representing Wilmington and members of the business community pressed Democratic Gov. Jack Markell to step in.
That panel, through the assistance of outside consultants, released a blistering report in March 2015 that found the Wilmington department has a “respond-and-react orientation and structure” that focused on resolving calls for service rather than a proactive crime reduction approach.
The report also found the department didn’t sufficiently deploy officers in patrol and key investigatory functions, a problem highlighted in the number of unsolved homicides.
The document also criticized how city police responded to shooting scenes and gathered evidence, the way officers behaved and treated victims, and what the report described as inconsistent follow-up with prosecutors and other agencies.
Lastly, the panel criticized the department for lacking technology and systems to pursue data-driven policing strategies, approaches city officials later placed strong emphasis on for its next police chief.
Lack of ‘upward mobility’
Councilwoman Linda Gray said she doesn’t blame Tracy for a lack of diversity in the department, recognizing that law enforcement – once viewed as a desirable, lucrative, respectable career – has lost its appeal.
But city officers have told Gray that there is a lack of advancement and inequities within upper management, which she said needs to be addressed.
“It’s the lack of equitable treatment and upward mobility within the police department when it comes to diversity,” she said. “It just seems to be there is no room or opportunity for officers to move up.”
It’s a criticism the council president has repeated as well, but Gray noted those issues existed well before Tracy took over.
The percentage of officers of color who hold positions above patrol, which include corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains and inspectors, remains the same as 2016 at 31%.
Several of the ranks are based on years of service with the department, and officers are promoted as they remain with the department for a certain number of years. Those positions include corporal, senior corporal, master corporal and master sergeant, and officers automatically are promoted when they hit certain work anniversaries, as is dictated in the police union contract.
Officers seeking to obtain the rank of sergeant or lieutenant, however, must take exams – administered every two years – to be eligible for promotion. Based on what score an officer gets, they are placed in a so-called “band” that determines who gets first dibs on an open sergeant or lieutenant position. The chief must pick all the candidates out of the top band before moving on to the next pool to fill sergeant and lieutenant openings.
Officers promoted to captain or inspector are discretionary and ultimately up to the police chief, but Tracy noted during a council Public Safety Committee meeting Jan. 18 that an officer’s direct supervisor and the current inspectors also weigh in.
Police department spokesman David Karas noted that as officers are promoted to higher ranks, promotions are made to fill their prior positions. At times, those moves can leave gaps in the diversity of officers in those positions.
For example, current department demographics do not have any people of color as lieutenants.
“That is the result of Chief Tracy promoting all of the minority lieutenants to the role of captain or inspector over the past five years,” Karas said.
Tracy also addressed concerns over promotions during the council meeting, acknowledging that some units, like the criminal investigations division, are coveted positions and, as such, lack turnover.
“In a department this size, there isn’t a lot of movement, so there are not a lot of openings,” Tracy said. “The reason we don’t see people leaving is because morale is good, and they don’t want to leave. As an opening happens, there is turnover. It’s not as fast and it doesn’t get us to where everyone would like us to be, but it is there.”
Police departments can’t simply clean house, replacing officers lacking diversity with minorities, either, said Titus, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“It’s not that simple, especially with the unions and rights and all of those types of things,” he said. “It’s very difficult because you don’t want things to go the other way where you look like you are being biased against non-minorities.”
The Wilmington Police Department was sued by three male officers in 2014 who claimed they were denied promotions because of their race, age and gender.
The three officers – two of whom identified as white and another as Hispanic – argued promotions for lieutenants and captains in January 2013 were not based on seniority or qualification, but instead on the mayor’s mission to increase diversity in police leadership. The lawsuits were settled in 2015, but no details were released.
There are ways that policies and procedures can be changed or added to lift up minorities, Titus said.
For example, some departments give additional points in recruitment and promotional exams to officers with diverse backgrounds, he said. Test preparation classes and physical exam coaching for recruits also can help, Titus added.
Moving forward
When 18 new officers graduated from the 97th Wilmington Police Academy in 2017, it was considered one of the most diverse classes in recent years.
Thirteen cadets identified as minorities, eight were African American and three were Hispanic. There were also seven females, according to News Journal archives.
The 101st Wilmington Police Academy is shaping up to be similarly diverse: Out of the 34 candidates currently in the running, 23 identify as a person of color. Sixteen identify as Black, six as Hispanic, and one recruit identifies with two or more races. The class also has eight female recruits, according to the department’s latest recruitment report released Jan. 1.
In late 2019, Tracy began issuing reports on recruitment efforts at the request of City Council. The reports, which are posted online, include information on what colleges and job fairs officers attend, other ways the Wilmington department gets the word out about job opportunities as well as demographic breakdowns on applicants. Leadership also meets with City Council to discuss those efforts further during committee meetings.
Inspector Emory, who leads the police academy, said the recruiting team is “very diverse.”
Officers with diverse backgrounds – both racially as well as experience-wise – speak with potential candidates, whether at a job fair or on the streets of Wilmington, Emory said. The team engages with historically Black colleges and universities and other diverse organizations to attract cadets and provides orientation and training resources to help candidates unfamiliar with the process successfully navigate testing, he said.
The department also does regular K-9 unit demonstrations at local schools and runs a youth police academy, Emory said. Officers engage with local churches and neighborhood and civic associations to connect with communities of color within the city, he said. Once a staple in the 1990s, the police chief also is reestablishing a cadet program to introduce children early on to a career in policing.
Tapping into minority religious organizations and churches to help get the word out and attract diverse candidates to a police agency has been successful for many agencies, Titus said. The department can show they understand the problem and are trying to make improvements, but they need the community’s help, he said.
Other creative approaches to attract candidates could include a tax incentive provided by local, state, or federal governments, Titus said. For cities where the cost-of-living may deter some people from opting to apply to a city police department, some agencies have developed their own housing for cadets and new police officers, he added.
Targeting current city residents as potential candidates is another approach police departments can take, Titus said.
Emory said officials are always examining the department’s policies and procedures to see if things can be adjusted.
There currently are no policies that give additional exam points to minorities, nor is there any legislation introduced that proposes changes to police department procedures.
Emory said his goal is to help potential candidates understand that “this is a great career,” and stressed that council members could assist with this endeavor by recommending recruits themselves.
“You can provide for your family. You take care of other people. You can’t get past every obstacle because whatever job, there will be an obstacle. That’s the way you have to look at it in policing,” he said. “Policing is a powerful profession and it’s so diverse because you are not just enforcing the law, there are time periods that you are a social worker, someone to talk to.”
Got a tip? Contact Amanda Fries at afries@delawareonline.com, or by calling 302-598-5507. Follow her on Twitter at @mandy_fries.
