Most Detroit police officers don’t live here, and most new recruits aren’t Black

The Board of Police Commissions (BOPC) got a rundown on residency and recruits on Thursday that showed most sworn officers don’t live in the city, and most new police recruits do not look like Detroiters.

Residency not required

A hot topic over the years has been what percentage of police officers are Detroiters. For decades, Detroit had a residency requirement for all city employees, including the police. That went away in 1999 when the state passed legislation outlawing residency requirements.

In January, just 22.5% of the Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) 2,496 sworn officers lived in the city, DPD Human Resources Bureau Director Katrina Patillo told the board. In comparison, most of the 690 civilians (63.3%) who worked in the department — from 911 operators to tow truck drivers — lived in the city in January

Commissioner QuanTez Pressley asked why the resident percentage is low for sworn officers but high for civilians.

Patillo said she is not certain why, but added, “On the civilian side, there are certain points that you can receive that go towards the hiring process if you reside in the city of Detroit.”

However, on the City of Detroit’s careers website, the job application to become a police officer also includes a Detroit residency credit.

Recruit demographics

The presentation did not cover demographics for the whole department, but included information about race for the 127 students currently in the DPD Recruitment Academy . Forty-seven percent of police academy recruits are Black — much lower than the 77.8% of Detroit residents who are Black . And while 12.2% of city residents are white , 33% of recruits in the academy are white.

In questioning Patillo about the percentage of Black recruits, Commissioner Linda Bernard pointed out “the number of African American recruits we have is less than what our demographic indicates it should be.”

Bernard then asked about any incentives to increase the percentage of Black recruits, but Pressley moved the meeting forward without the question being addressed.

Outlier Media reached out to Patillo to get an answer to this and other questions, but the department said it would need more time to respond.

What we didn’t hear

Last week, Outlier reported Bernard’s attempt to add unelected former and current BOPC staffers to the Policy Committee. Pressley told Outlier he was checking with the board’s legal team about whether that is allowed. Neither Pressley nor Bernard have responded to our requests for an update.

Ahead for the BOPC

The meeting also gave us a taste of what’s coming up in future BOPC meetings.

An in-depth presentation on DPD’s budget is planned for the Feb. 22 meeting .

Also, the board’s chief investigator, Jerome Warfield, said his department is developing an internal projdetroit-police-officers-residency-new-recruitsect called the “timeliness initiative” to work through its backlog of complaints . Warfield said his office will explain initial findings at the Feb. 27 Citizen Complaints committee meeting .

Detroit Documenters Matt Schonert and Nathaniel Eichenhorn contributed to this story.

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