WaPo | The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson where the working-class, majority-black population has been clashing with law enforcement for the last three days has 53 commissioned police officers.
According to the city’s police chief, three of them are black.
These
numbers matter not just for the terrible optics of white officers
clutching tear gas canisters opposite black residents shouting back.
They speak to a fundamental problem rooted deep in history and driving
the perception of injustice in Ferguson today: This community isn’t
represented in its own institutions of power.
For many decades,
this was true in cities all over the country. Blacks were systematically
excluded from good government jobs, civil service roles and their most
visible ranks on police and fire forces — first through outright
discrimination, then through more devious means. Police and fire
departments in particular found all kinds of ways to block minorities,
inviting lawsuits and the repeated scrutiny of the Department of
Justice.
