The PR Studio

“Many Jobs, One Career, Boston’s Future.” That was the slogan of a meaningful Boston Police diversity recruitment campaign launched in 2007 during my tenure as BPD communications director. The first-ever citywide recruitment drive was created as an urgent policy response to a drastic decline in applicant numbers, particularly minority candidates taking the state-administered Civil Service exam.

The multi-media, multi-lingual, community-involved outreach initiative successfully reversed an eight-year decline in the diversity of the applicant pool. At the time, the new recruitment policy was innovative for its extraordinary level of community engagement.  The strategy embodied the very essence of a community policing philosophy.

Under the leadership of then-Police Commissioner Edward Davis and with the strong support of the Mayor Thomas Menino administration, the department hosted multiple working sessions with community members to generate and analyze the long- and short-term goals of a BPD recruitment program. The group produced actionable recommendations, including a community-led definition of an officer’s role and function, neighborhood locations for on-site recruiting events, strategies to overcome cultural or language barriers, and the overall establishment of a police-community team approach to accomplish the list of identified goals.

Based on stakeholder feedback, the department created a non-traditional marketing campaign, depicting 11 racially and gender-diverse officers performing a wide variety of department operations, from walking a beat to photographing a crime scene to teaching local youth about martial arts. The ads also captured personal value statements from each officer about individual career motivation and a desire to serve the community.

Advertising was strategically placed in high-visibility areas and was translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole. The BPD Recruit Unit fanned out across the city from Fenway Park to South Bay to Bowdoin-Geneva, making the department’s pitch in search of diverse, community-minded individuals. The BPD enlisted community leaders as “Recruit Ambassadors” to facilitate community engagement and strengthen the program’s credibility. The community’s positive response was overwhelming.

According to a study conducted in 2010 by the Department of Justice, the BPD’s innovative approach to diversifying the candidate pool had four major results: 1.) The effort attracted more than 2,548 candidates to take the civil service exam in May 2007 and the highest enrollment since 2001. When comparing 2005 to 2007 applicant data, Black applicants increased 87% (392-735); Hispanic 98% (195-386); Asian 82% (45-82); and Native American 133 % (6-14).  2.) The campaign’s message was a high-profile reinforcement of the department’s values and commitment to cultivating a police agency reflective of the city it serves. 3.) The process was a critical exercise in strengthening police-community relations. 4.) The initiative was hailed by a prominent national think tank, The Performance Institute, as a management best practice.

It is worth noting that a Boston Globe story published in June 2020 noted the BPD’s historical struggles with achieving diversity but did not mention this important 2007 initiative. The omission was unfortunate because recognition of the policy’s success offers essential historical context to past and fruitful efforts made by the department to advance diversity at its most fundamental level. Its significant impact is relevant to how the city, the department, and the community might re-imagine a similar effort moving forward. Lastly, it is evidence of how the lessons of our past can pave the road to a more inclusive future.