NORFOLK, Va. — Editor's Note: There was an error in the graph for the online video of this story. The video has since been removed.
Police officers serve and protect their respective communities. They're also intended to reflect the makeup of those same communities.
13News Now requested police officer demographics data from across the seven cities to show how close the region's departments are to achieving that mission and matching the demographics of that respective city.
Portsmouth maintains the highest percentage of Black officers among its ranks, with Virginia Beach coming in at the lowest. However, the central theme among all the cities is that each locality still maintains a Black officer percentage lower than what that respective city's population is.
Black officer percentage of department vs. percentage of city:
- Portsmouth: 30% (Department) and 52% (City)
- Hampton: 27% (Department) and 50% (City)
- Norfolk: 22% (Department) and 41% (City)
- Newport News: 20% (Department) and 41% (City)
- Suffolk: 20% (Department) and 41% (City)
- Chesapeake: 15% (Department) and 30% (City)
- Virginia Beach: 8% (Department) and 19% (City)
“It’s extremely difficult to investigate a group of people you don’t understand," former Hampton Police Chief Mark Talbot said, who has since been named the new Chief for the Norfolk Police Department, taking over a department that's seen interim leadership since the retirement of former chief Larry Boone.
"Race itself is not as valuable as the shared life experience of living close to the people who you’re trying to serve. When you come from the same neighborhood and you understand how things work in that particular neighborhood and the suffering, at much greater rates than other members of the community or in other locations. When you have an intimate understanding of how someone's life can contribute to trauma, depravation, and poverty and how all those factors can ultimately result in violence... when you share those experiences it helps to not only build relationships, but frankly, solve cases.”
Based on previous 13News Now reporting, six of the seven cities have increased their percentage of Black officers and police personnel by at least one percentage point:
Demographics compared to 2020:
- Portsmouth: +4%
- Hampton: +2%
- Norfolk: +3%
- Newport News: +3%
- Suffolk: +1%
- Chesapeake: +1%
- Virginia Beach: +0%
“I think the struggle has been -- and what everyone has seen -- it’s hard to focus specifically on diversity recruiting when we’re struggling to get quality individuals inside to bolster our staff," Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate said in a prior sitdown with 13News Now.
Neudigate also shared how the occurrence of high-profile police-involved acts of violence makes minority recruiting even harder.
“We’ve partnered with HBCUs, but you’re seeing not just in our minority communities that there is a lack of interest in this profession. The national narrative causes us challenges, people don’t want to be a part of this. It's not just hiring and recruiting, but retention," he said.
