During the early 1960s, Balto said, internal initiatives to increase recruitment helped diversify the Chicago Police Department — an effort further bolstered by a 1973 discrimination suit filed by the city’s Afro-American Patrolmen’s League. “By the ’70s, the CPD wasn’t some beacon of diversity or even representative of the city’s demographics,” Balto said, “but it made strides for the first time in history.”
Law enforcement diversity may improve policing, study shows
