MINEOLA, N.Y. (WCBS 880) — A new Police Diversity Committee was put in place on Thursday in Nassau County to help review current hiring practices and recruit more officers from minority communities.
Nassau County Executive Laura Curran says a lack of diversity in the county’s police force has been an issue for several decades.
Currently, minority officers make up just 13% of the police department and Curran is hoping to change that with the new committee, headed by Bishop Lionel Harvey.
“We want to focus on new methods and strategies to reach more potential police officers from all our communities,” Curran said.
Harvey said he was compelled to join the committee after witnessing a large police incident involving no officers of color.
“There must have been about 25, maybe 30, police officers that came and they handled the situation. The comments that were coming from the people that were around was, ‘All these police officers are here but none of them are people of color.’ At that point in time, it really struck a chord with me,” he said.
Curran says the committee is made up of members from Long Island’s Black, Hispanic, Asian and Muslim communities.
The program, according to the county executive, will work with Nassau Community College to make sure minorities who want to take the police exam actually have the opportunity to take it.
“This committee brings together key stake holders with the mission of improving diverse city and county police hiring through three stages of the hiring process: that’s recruitment, that’s testing and that's training,” the county executive said.
The committee was announced after multiple Long Island officials called for Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder to resign after he told Newsday that many Black candidates do not show up for the police exam because they “come from broken homes.”
Ryder has already publicly apologized for the statement and Curran has refused to remove him from his role.
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