Jan. 11, 2023 Aiming to further diversify a department that already mostly reflects its community, Madison’s Police and Fire Commission voted Monday to stop requiring credit checks of prospective police officers.
By Chris Rickert Source The Wisconsin State Journal (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
MADISON, Wis. — Aiming to further diversify a department that already mostly reflects its community, Madison’s Police and Fire Commission voted Monday to stop requiring credit checks of prospective police officers.
In a Dec. 7 memo to the commission, Madison Police Capt. Tim Patton wrote that “employers routinely utilize credit reports as an indicator of how candidates handle responsibilities and the extent to which they may be in financial distress.”
But in Madison the checks, which cost the city a total of about $700 in 2022, “are not being used in any meaningful way,” Patton said, and “in the limited cases where the reports have proved actionable, the history revealed a history of unpaid child support that served to inform the direction of the background investigation in some way.”
In addition, the checks could create an “unintentional barrier for potential applicants,” with special emphasis on multicultural candidates and women, he said.
“Per our research, multicultural populations have disproportionately lower credit scores due to discriminatory practices that are rooted in systems of institutionalized racism,” he said. “While some might argue that people need to just ‘work hard’ and be responsible, many people of color struggle in part due to disproportionate incomes and opportunities. The impact of credit checks therefore, potentially present a disparate negative impact on multicultural candidates.”
Patton said the move to end the checks stemmed from a conference put on by 30×30 — a national effort to increase the percentage of female law enforcement officers to 30% by 2030.
With a commissioned workforce that is about 29% female, the Madison Police Department already effectively meets that goal, according to the department’s 2021 annual report, the most recent available. Nationally, only about 12% of commissioned law enforcement officers are women, according to 30×30.
Madison police officers have also long been a more diverse group than other law enforcement agencies and, with some exceptions, reflect the community they serve.
About 9% of commissioned officers are Black, for example, while census figures show the city’s Black population to be about 7.4%. Hispanic people make up about 8.7% of Madison’s population and about 7% of MPD officers. At the management level, Madison has a Black chief, and the 18 people who lead the city’s six police districts include four Black men and five women.
Asians appear to be the least represented racial or ethnic group in MPD; they make up about 9.5% of the city’s population but only about 3% of the city’s police force. Patton said the department is not asserting that institutional racism against Asians is why the force has a disproportionately low number of Asian officers.
Stark racial and sex disparities do exist in arrests, with Black people making up about 42% of adults arrested in Madison and women about 27%.
Patton said ending the credit check is not part of an attempt to bring the percentages of Black officers and arrests of Black people closer.
“In our analysis, given the lack of actionable information, the cost of running the reports, and the possibility that we may miss the opportunity to meet a great candidate, we chose to request the change to the PFC’s process,” Patton said.