Diversity and inclusion in local law enforcement have been slow to arrive in the Med City.

It wasn’t until 2004 that the Rochester Police Department hired its first full-time African American police officers and the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office has yet to have an African American sheriff’s deputy working patrol. In 1992, the Rochester Police Department hired its first full-time Asian American officer and first full-time female officer.

But Chief James Franklin said he is working to make the department one that is reflective of and responsive to the community it serves.

When he started as chief, Franklin said, the department had 22 women and people of color, or about 16.5 percent of the force. With the hiring of 10 new officers who began earlier this month, Franklin said the number has moved to 19.3 percent women and people of color.

Mayor Kim Norton, who is Franklin’s direct supervisor, said the two have had very candid discussions about minority hiring, community safety, outreach and engagement from the day she took office.

"Hiring the best candidates is always the top priority, as it always is, but there are top quality candidates that are out there that are of color, that are women, or that are from a different cultural background," Norton said.

Including white women among diversity numbers can be problematic, though. W.C. Jordan, president of the NAACP’s Minnesota/Dakotas Area State Conference, notes that white women are part of the majority white population.

"They are not a minority," Jordan said.

The value of a diverse workforce is reflected in a broader array of abilities among the Rochester Police Department’s staff, which, for example, among 17 of its employees has the ability to speak 11 languages, including Spanish, American Sign Language, Somali and Hmong.

"I think there is strength in diversity. It strengthens your organization," Franklin said.

In policing diverse areas, knowing how to interact with different members of the community can mean the difference between solving a crime or leaving a victim feeling left without help.

"If you are a cop and you can’t talk to the community, you can’t solve crimes, you can’t prevent crimes," Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said. "You don’t know what is wrong if you can’t speak their language."

Before becoming commissioner, Harrington was the Chief of Police for Metro Transit. During his tenure, Harrington guided the department through a growth spurt and a large increase in the department's diversity. Harrington said that when he joined, the department’s police force was 5% people of color and women. By the time he left, he said, that number grew to 50%.

"I was hiring classes of 20 to 30 people a year because transit was growing rapidly," Harrington said. "The Green Line was coming on-line, the A Line, the Red Line -- there were a bunch of new lines and I needed to have enough cops to staff those lines. It made the opportunity to increase diversity rapidly much easier because we were growing the department."

That type of change isn’t as easily achievable in departments where the vast majority of hiring is a result of attrition. Harrington doesn’t see increasing diversity in law enforcement as a hopeless situation.

"For some people, no matter how fast we do it, it won't be fast enough," Harrington said. "And for others -- and a lot of folks I know are change-averse -- the fact that we are doing the change makes them nervous, too."

But shrinking candidate pools aren’t unique to the field of law enforcement and emergency response. Across industries, employers are having a harder time filling vacancies. Bringing in a workforce that looks more like the community it encompasses is also a struggle across industries, including the Post Bulletin.

Franklin says the police department has changed questions as part of its hiring process to make evaluations more character- and integrity-based than experience-based. He said the change allowed hiring officials to take a look at people at a more in-depth level and then elevate those they felt would add that value.

"Diversity is not just something that is the right thing to do or a nice thing to do," Rochester Fire Department Chief Eric Kerska said. "Diverse recruitment is essential for our survival when you just look at pure numbers."

When Kerska joined the fire service more than two decades ago, he said it was 100% white and 100% male. In the last decade or so, the department made some "slow but steady progress" but has since stagnated, Kerska said.

Of the department’s 110 employees, including support staff -- eight are women and two are people of color. Six of the eight women are firefighters.

"We want more. That is pretty much it," Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson said. "The struggle is attracting the people that represent different communities in the community. That is always the difficult part. It is not an easy job, whether it's the law enforcement side or the detention side."

Of the very limited diversity the department has, most if not all has been in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center. Torgerson said that to his knowledge, the sheriff’s office has never had an African American patrol deputy. The department has interviewed minority candidates and has had those candidates on its hiring list, but the candidates chose to go elsewhere before they could be offered a spot.

"In a couple recent cases we had spots available and they still chose to go elsewhere," Torgerson said.

To work at the jail, there are fewer education requirements and many see it as a starting position while they pursue higher education with the ultimate goal of becoming a sworn officer.

Diversification is not in itself a solution. Adding officers of color, women or those from different religions, isn’t the only step.

"Just because we add those people into existing systems does not mean that they will be successful in those systems or that the systems will change just because they are there," said Dee Sabol, executive director of the Diversity Council. "Diversification is just a state. The word diversity just means that lots of different elements are present. You also have to practice inclusion, which is an action. How do you prepare your systems and your police force or your law enforcement cultures for that change in personnel?"

Research shows us that when people see themselves in authority or in positions of authority or power, they are more likely to respond in a positive way, Sabol said.

"That is true when children of color see educators of color, when people who are interacting with law enforcement see law enforcement officers and administrators who are people of color. That creates a different sense of understanding," she said.

But the issue of law enforcement and diversity is deeper than just seeing someone that looks like you.

"Because we have such a convoluted and complex relationship between race and law enforcement that when we don't have diverse officers -- not just by race and diversity but also by ability, religion, sexual orientation and sexual identity, every facet of human difference -- if those things aren't present in law enforcement (gender in the most simplistic sense) then we have a system that both creates the perception of perpetuating inequities and actually perpetuates inequities," Sabol said.

While African Americans, Latinos and American Indians make up about 11% of the state population, they make up about 51% of those in prisons or jails in Minnesota, according to data from the Prison Policy Initiative.

The community has to take action as well and not just expect law enforcement and government to change, Sabol said.

"As a community we need to step in those spaces too and demand that these conversations be held and facilitate them and participate in them and expect change out of them," Sabol said. "Expect action."

Sabol said there is still a distressingly far distance to go in terms of just diversifying what our law enforcement looks like. And yet, she said, she remains hopeful.

"I absolutely have faith in both our city law enforcement and our county law enforcement agencies," Sabol said. "I feel that they are both in transition in terms of acknowledging and addressing these issues and I'm 100% hopeful. I feel very positive that we are going to end up in a good place."

Recruitment key in diversifying staff

As industries nationwide struggle to find enough qualified minority and female employees, leaders in Rochester’s law enforcement community as well as the state level are looking at different ways to recruit staff.

In recent years, the Minnesota State Patrol has hosted events aimed at recruiting women and candidates of color. In December, the state patrol hosted a Diversity in Law Enforcement Information Session at Century College in White Bear Lake.

"The State Patrol just wants to make sure we reflect the communities that we serve, and that is by having all sorts of diversity throughout the state," Sgt. Troy Christianson said. "It makes for a better agency if you are represented by people ... besides just white males. We just want to make sure people are aware of the types of careers that are throughout the state patrol."

Attendees were able to learn about various positions the state patrol has, practice the physical test and get information about the Law Enforcement Training Opportunity, or LETO program, for job candidates who already have a two- or four-year degree in any subject. Those individuals get sent to classes to get post-certified to become eligible for the state patrol’s academy. It allows people who are looking for a career change to take steps to become a trooper.

"Right now everyone is struggling for candidates in law enforcement," Christianson said.

Of the 650 troopers in the Minnesota State Patrol, 60 are women, according to Christianson. Of a recent LETO class of 14 people, 13 were women or people of color, according to Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington. While it won’t change the complexion of the department overnight, Harrington said if efforts continue in that direction, the state patrol will eventually show a noticeable change.

The Rochester Police and Fire departments have started programs aimed at getting younger people on a path to their respective careers and hopefully to their departments.

In January, five young adults started as Rochester Police Cadets. The apprenticeship-like program is designed to give college-age students studying criminal justice or law enforcement paid on-the-job training and exposure to a police career.

Of the five cadets, three are women and one is a young man of color. Two were participants in the Minnesota Law Enforcement Explorer program in Rochester and two were interns for the department previously.

The law enforcement explorer program is a national association that is a sister organization of the Boy Scouts of America and is open to ages 14 to 21. The program runs September through May and shows young adults what a career in law-enforcement could look like, before they decide on higher education.

For the 2019-2020 academic year, the Rochester Fire Department started its first high school program. The class is offered through Riverland Community College and local public schools and is a combination of online coursework and hands-on experience.

At the completion of the program, students can take certification tests that would make them eligible to apply at fire departments right out of high school.

"We are going to continue to take other steps to get out to the broader community," Kerska said. "Before, the fire department didn't have to go out and seek applicants. We are going to have to do things differently."

Kerska said the department was making some changes to help reduce barriers to a firefighting career, which already requires individuals to fulfill three post-high school requirements.

"Some departments hire people with just a high school diploma and then as first step employees, they are then trained on the job. They receive their certifications on the job," Kerska said. "That is an increased cost. We have to budget for that. We are starting to look into what that would look like -- how we could bring people in without those certifications and then train people in-house."

One barrier the department is able to eliminate with fewer hurdles is doing physical fitness testing in-house rather than requiring candidates to take a national test.

He said the department was also working with the Diversity Council on ways to specifically target different communities within the area and introduce them to the career of firefighting.

Recruiting in places that themselves struggle to be diverse and inclusive likely means that law enforcement agencies aren’t going to find the variety of candidates they want.

Programs to increase diversity and inclusion exist in other police departments in the state. The St. Paul Police Department partnered with AmeriCorps to launch the Law Enforcement Career Path Academy. The program is geared toward individuals from low-income families and diverse candidates, the Pioneer Press reported . It provides funding for participants to get two-year college degrees, plus a stipend while they’re doing community outreach alongside the police department and preparing to become a St. Paul police officer, according to the Pioneer Press.

Diversity isn’t just limited to ethnicity, religion or gender.

"If every police officer that you have grew up in Rochester, graduated from one of the high schools in Rochester and they all went to RCTC and then became police officers, then the way they interacted with people here would be based on their experience and their education," NAACP Minnesota/Dakotas State Conference President W.C. Jordan said.

"When you bring a police officer here from California, from New York, from Texas, or from different parts of the country -- they don't have to be (racially) diverse, you can see but they bring a different set of experiences and education with them to come here."

For Jordan, who travels around the state in his role as NAACP president, Rochester law enforcement isn't doing it right, yet.

"I do have hope that it will happen," he said. "I think that there are things that are happening in Rochester that are going to change some of the thinking."

Jordan said it will take a combination of things to achieve that, including hiring people from outside of Southeast Minnesota. He says he hopes that more people would voice their concerns about it.

"We have to get away from the Minnesota Nice. You don't have to try and bring down people that are in charge here, but the numbers speak for themselves," Jordan said. "There is no way you could feel if you were someone that is Caucasian and you went to city and the Caucasian population made up 10% but you could only get 1% on the police department, would you really be satisfied with that?"

"And I think that people have to ask themselves that question," he said. "The Minnesota Nice piece will be 'They're really trying' and 'They are doing all they can do and they are doing the best they can.' No, they are not. More has to be done and we have to have more people that have plans and that are including people at the table who can help them if they don't have the solutions themselves."

Hiring diverse candidates not enough, promoting necessary too

Hiring diverse candidates is one thing, but promoting them to positions that have power to shape policy is another.

"There is a very slow turnover in the police department. Basically, you are waiting for people to retire or die to have a position in the police department," said W.C. Jordan, NAACP President of the Minnesota/Dakotas Area State Conference. "If you are not making any kind of strides to hire people of color -- it is going to be a slow drip. Then it will be discouraging."

Rochester Fire Department Chief Eric Kerska said seniority has zero to do with the fire department's promotions -- they are 100% competency-based.

Reflecting back on his experience with the Minnesota National Guard, Kerska said he learned through a study that building diversity within a department is a two-piece issue.

"You’ve got to get them in the door, which is more difficult if they don't see someone that looks like them," Kerska said. "But once you get them in the door, this is what the military learned: To keep them, to retain them, they have to see people at the senior levels that look like them."

Kerska said the solution the Guard found and what he believes would work for the department is one-on-one mentorship.

The Police Civil Service Commission recently accepted a new promotion eligibility list. It was the first time that Chief James Franklin had a hand in crafting the list.

"We have some excellent officers and we've had some wonderful promotions," Mayor Kim Norton said. "I've been really impressed with some of the people that the chief has put in leadership, but they are a less diverse group because that's the ranks from whom we have to pull, who have been here the longest and are now qualified to apply for the higher level positions."

Officers underwent a traditional law enforcement panel interview but were also interviewed by a panel of community members.

One of the questions that was asked of the candidates was, "What steps have you taken to identify and/or address race and equity issues that affect the delivery of police services?"

"Why is that important?" Franklin said. "It is important because specifically when we are talking about future leaders, the next generation, these race and equity issues are on the forefront of every chief’s mind across the country so we have to take a hard look on how we do business."

One of the members of the community panel was Joyce Gibbs. She and her family moved to Rochester in 1963. She said she was honored to be included and felt it was important for applicants to see the diversity on the panel.

She said it was important for community members to have a hand in shaping the future of the police department.

"If you don't have these opportunities, you are being excluded," she said. "If I chose to exclude myself, that's one thing. But if you choose to exclude me, that's another thing. I just think that a community should be inclusive of the people who are supporting it."

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This is part one of a two-part series looking at the diversity in City of Rochester and Olmsted County staffs. Part two will be published online Friday, Feb. 21. Both parts will be in the Saturday, Feb. 22, print edition.