American Police Agencies Losing Diversity

After a heavy defund-the-police push and a surge in violent crimes plaguing cities across America, some cities are seeing a significant decline in the number of black officers in their ranks and are having difficulty recruiting young black men and women.

The New York Police Department noticed a 14 percent drop in black officers since 2008. The total dropped from 4,162 to 3,598 this September. Similar declines have taken place in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago. 

"It doesn’t surprise me. It’s unfortunate that we have actually hit this point in American history where if you think about it, since the 90s, we have been on this community policing push where we have been trying to increase our ranks of diverse officers in our communities. It only took five years for the BLM movement and the defund police movement to reverse that whole process," said Texas congressional candidate Tre Pennie told " Fox & Friends ."

The former Dallas police sergeant spoke about recent conversations with young llack men about joining the police force.

"I got a group of young African-Americans getting off of the bus. I was trying hopefully thinking they were going to be excited about engaging the police. One of the guys said to me I’m not going to talk to no ‘racist police.’ I got to talking to the young man. I pulled out my I.D. and I told him I was police for 22 years. And I broke that ice. And he got excited these kids were so excited to see that I was a police officer," Pennie said, encouraging police agencies to engage with more young people in their communities.

Former NYPD detective Dr. Oscar Odom agreed with Pennie, suggesting increasing more recruitment at historically black colleges and universities, and through the military.