How well do police forces represent racial makeup of their communities?

Nearly three quarters of more than 100 law enforcement agencies across much of the U.S. don't reflect the racial makeup of their communities, data supplied by the departments to Lee Enterprises shows.

As part of an investigation by Lee and Type Investigations, agencies were ranked based on the gap between the proportion of officers and leadership in the agency who identify as people of color and the percentage of people of color in the communities they serve. Of 105 departments that serve diverse communities, 76 under-represent their percentages of people of color by 10 points or more. Some have gaps of more than 30 percentage points. The largest gap, just more than 43 percentage points, is in Martinsville, Virginia.

READ MORE: 3 years after George Floyd's death, are local police as diverse as their communities?

Our guest today is reporter Karen Robinson-Jacobs, a member of the Public Service Journalism team at Lee Enterprises and a fellow at Type Investigations, who has been working on the story. We discuss the research process as well as the findings.

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About this program

Host Terry Lipshetz is a senior producer for Lee Enterprises. Besides producing interviews for this Behind the Headlines program, he produces the daily Hot off the Wire news podcast, co-hosts Streamed & Screened movies and television program and is the producer of Across the Sky weather and climate podcast.

Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Headlines, where we feature experts and journalists discussing a variety of topics. Nearly three quarters of more than 100 law enforcement agencies across much of the U.S. don't reflect the racial makeup of their communities. Data supplied by the departments to Lee Enterprises shows. As part of an investigation by Lee and type investigations, agencies were ranked based on the gap between the proportion of officers in leadership in the agency who identify as people of color and the percentage of people of color in the communities they serve.

Of 105 departments that serve diverse communities, 76 underrepresented their percentages and people of color by ten points or more. Our guest today is reporter Karen Robinson Jacobs, a member of the public service journalism team at Lee Enterprises and a fellow at Type Investigations who has been working on the story. We discussed the research process as well as the findings.

We are welcoming Karen Robinson Jacobs, an investigative reporter for Lee Enterprises and a fellow with type investigations. Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're reporting on? Absolutely. We are wrapping up a seven month investigation, looking at law enforcement in about 15 states and looking at them through a number of different lenses and to just sort of backtrack