The small city I worked in is about 25 percent Black and recruiting Black people to be police is very hard for this community and it was not out of a failure of trying. Our city sent out our most qualified, charming, and charismatic officers (officers of color and women) all over in hopes of recruiting more people of color and women and found for a variety of reasons, the interest just was not there. These officers even when to Black churches and approached Black clergy members. At one time the city's Human Resource director pleaded with the local head of the NAACP for help and he more or less told her to pound sand. And I think Black males within the community often have to deal with being labeled a "traitor" or "Uncle Tom" if joining the police.
On top of all this, I've always felt that any officer could police any part of town and populace demographic regardless of race or gender if done correctly. But I do believe that when it comes to policing, on the surface and at the very initial start of a police/citizen encounter, citizens probably at first feel more comfortable with a person of the same race or gender, but only until that officer proves their character to the citizen. Also, I also believe that it does not take long for an individual police officer's character and qualities to become known to a community and those first impressions are very important to a community and its citizens.
I learned very early on that treating people well only benefits a police officer and I also have a strong belief in what goes around comes around. One time as a rookie and working in the poor section of town I had several encounters with this one very large Black male. Each time I treated him as a human being, even during a couple of domestic argument calls. Sometime after these calls, I was sent to a large rowdy party of boozing Black males, and not long into the call a couple of them started giving me shit and getting a bit hostile. At that point, I overheard some man telling these guys to knock their shit off and quit giving me shit because I was "cool" and "not that way" and out of the crowd emerged the male from the earlier calls. I would tell this story so many times to young officers to point out, we are mostly treated based on the way we treated other people.
I think when it comes to policing what White people really, really have to have beaten into their heads is just what Peter T alluded to and that is the person the police encounter will most likely base their reaction to any police encounter police in the past and because of the failure of so many police officers to treat citizens with dignity, it is each officer's responsibility to prove their character to citizens when encountered (I've always told people, my ideal officer and citizen contact is based upon how I would have wanted someone to treat my mother in an encounter - and sadly, I have known too many police officers that I would not have wanted to come into contact with my mother and this includes all races and genders).
Policing is a cultural thing, too. Again, as a rookie, I learned very quickly that there were different things officers could do or not do based on race. For example, I noticed a White officer could more easily tell a White citizen to "shut up" with little offense than that a Black person, but that a Black officer could mostly tell both a White citizen and Black Citizen to "shut up" with less resistance and offense (now, this does not include a person White supremacy leanings - these morons would of course be highly offended at being told to shut up by a Black officer). On a lighter note, Black female officers were the bomb and could get away with all sorts of verbal slights upon people - we had this one tiny Black female that could really cut a male down real quick and it was hilarious to watch this officer make a huge male shrink in stature just by raking him over the coals like an angry grandmother.
The main point is, to me anyway, good police officers are like locksmiths with those huge rings of keys on their belt that allow them to unlock almost any lock they encounter - the bad thing is too many don't want to take the time to select the right key to unlock the lock and instead want to reach for the hammer too soon.
My last comment will be these two points - police recruitment, testing and selection really must under go a major and fundamental change. Police testing is more about cutting through lists of names and whittling them down until applicants that meet certain criteria are left in the selection pool. I mean, in my time in policing, I have found the most effective, qualified, and successful police officers all have one thing in common: they know how to talk to people (which is really broader than what it sounds like).
And the second thing is much more difficult, but as a society, we need to define what we want from our police officers and what we want them to be and do (warrior, crime fighter, social worker, report taker, first responder, public servant, problem solver, et cetera).
