Police Dept. Works To Expand Diversity

The city of Huntsville said that 19% of its sworn officers are minorities, an increase of 5% during the past 5 years.

Najahe sherman.

We want to begin tonight with waay 31's sydney martin ... she joins us live outside huntsville police headquarters.

She worked to learn more about how the department is working to attract people to careers in law enforcement.

Huntsville police department said diversity is a top priority and told me it's always working to recruit people of all races and cultures.

Officer paul nordan, huntsville police recruiter, "we are actually working hard to build diversity in the department to make the department reflect the city and the diversity in the city of huntsville."

Huntsville police officer paul nordan is the department's full time recruiter... and he told me he works to bring a diverse group of officers to the police academy.

The department currently has six hundred and sixty-two employees.

Of those employees one hundred and 82 are women, and 24 percent are minorities.

Officer paul nordan, huntsville police recruiter, "this is the community these officers are going to serve.

We want them to be embedded in the community.

We want our citizens to feel comfortable with the officers that are serving them."

Nordan told me the current academy has a diverse group of cadets- and they're all committed to becoming officers.

Officer paul nordan, huntsville police recruiter, "if you want to be a law enforcement officer in this day in age.

You're doing it for the right reasons.

You're doing it because you want to do this kind of work.

We're getting more quality maybe not as much quantity."

He explained the department has an 18-week-long academy that has even higher thresholds than the alabama peace officers standards and training.

That attracts people from not only the tennessee valley but also all across north alabama.

Officer paul nordan, huntsville police recruiter, "the academy is designed to stress them mentally physically obviously this is a stressful job.

We want them to be able to react better and more professionally in situations where they may be under mental and physical stress."

The department gave us a full breakdown of its diversity among sworn officers and civilian employees.

We also got a statement from police chief mark mcmurray about his efforts to make the department more diverse over the past few years... you can find all of that our website at waay tv dot com.

Live in huntsville sm waay 31 news.