Police forces across the country are under the microscope in the wake of protests in response to the murder of George Floyd—and departments in Tampa and St. Petersburg aren’t exempt.
The Orlando Sentinel did a comparison of population data from the Census Bureau’s 2014-2018 American Community Survey and figures from an 2019 report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the results aren’t that surprising—Tampa Bay police forces are whiter than communities they serve.
“The Tampa Police Department’s officers are 69% white; the city is 45% white,” the Sentinel wrote. “In St. Petersburg, 73% of officers white, as are 61% of residents.”
Looking at the same set of data, The Tampa Police Department’s officers are 13% Black; the city is 23% Black. In St. Petersburg, 14% of officers Black, as are 22% of residents.
Those numbers are certainly disheartening for protesters and taxpayers calling for increased diversity in the law enforcement agencies that are supposed to protect and serve them, but it’s important to note that most experts agree that a police force which reflects the community it’s supposed to serve isn’t a panacea to the unfair policing and violence activists are making noise about.
“They’re in the same institutional environment facing the same pressures to stop individuals,” Wayne Logan, a criminal law professor at Florida State University told the Sentinel. “They may sublimate their concerns to fit in with this wider culture.”
And just last week, St. Petersburg Police Chief Anthony Holloway told WTSP that the issue of unfair policing really involves how officers are doing the work (the station also combed through demographic data at 22 Tampa Bay law enforcement agencies, finding that 14% of officers are Black).
“I don’t want to just put African American officers in an African American community, White officers in a White community,” Holloway told the station, before referencing the “Courageous 12” Black officers who sued St. Petersburg because Black officers could only patrol St. Pete’s south side and only arrest Black residents (Black officers were also disallowed to take tests to advance in rank).
In the 1970s, Tampa saw its own “Fearless Four” group of Black officers sue the city in a discrimination lawsuit that prevailed in federal court.
In 2014, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Tampa’s population was 46% white while white officers accounted for 70% of the force. Compared with numbers from the recent Sentinel analysis (“The Tampa Police Department’s officers are 69% white; the city is 45% white”), not a lot has changed.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reached out to a spokesperson for TPD to ask for figures that would dispute or confirm the Sentinel’s analysis, and the spokesperson sent back this report from May 31, 2020.
UPDATED: 06/25/20 4 p.m. Updated with figures from Tampa Police Department.
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This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2020.