For County Police Force, Diversity Is Elusive

Numerous Obstacles Hinder Minority Hiring

Montgomery County police officers Mauricio Veiga and Kenneth Hahn started their careers pounding the pavement chasing bad guys.

But their latest assignments -- temporary stints in the department's recruitment office -- could hardly be described as cushy, paper-pushing jobs.

They're on the front lines of one of the department's priorities: diversifying the ranks of an agency that has had a hard time keeping up with the county's quickly changing demographics.

It's a tall order. With metropolitan police departments across the country struggling to fill their academies, agencies such as the Montgomery County Police Department have been hard-pressed to attract eligible candidates who can break through cultural and language barriers. They represent a fraction of the pool of applicants, so just a handful tend to make it into each police academy.

"It's always a struggle to find qualified candidates," Veiga said, outlining the numerous disqualifying factors that tend to stand in the way of all prospective Montgomery officers and a badge. "Those who pass the exam, we will generally lose them on the criminal background or drug use."

Then there's the citizenship requirement (permanent U.S. residents, legal immigrants who are not citizens, are not eligible for most law enforcement jobs in Maryland), the modest entry-level salaries in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country, the requirement for a college degree and negative stereotypes about law enforcement careers held by many immigrants.

"When I joined the police department, my grandmother was very anti my joining," said Veiga, whose grandmother was born and raised in Colombia. "It actually scared her. She told me in her country, that wasn't a good thing."

The county's police department, which has roughly 1,100 sworn officers, has just over 50 Latinos among them, about 5 percent of officers. Latinos make up 13 percent of the county population. In January, police recruiters received roughly 20 applications from Latinos, Veiga said. Three showed up to take the test. Two passed and went on to the academy.

Roughly 13 percent of the county's population is Asian, whereas Asian American officers make up only 3 percent of the police force, or 34 officers.

"The community really needs more Asian American officers," said Hahn, noting that the county's Asian immigrants are in some ways more challenging to reach out to than Latinos because of the number of languages spoken in the county's Asian community.

Like Veiga, Hahn, who was born in Korea, had some serious explaining to do when he told his family what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

"Within the Asian community, parents want their children to become doctors, lawyers, engineers," he said. "My father is a doctor, and he wanted me to become a doctor. When I told him I wanted to become a police officer, I had to talk to him for three days to explain why."