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CITY OF
BROOKLINE, MA
Mayor Joseph T. Geller
Brookline
Police Department Recruitment/Hiring
1. Briefly describe the structure of your
program.
The town of Brookline is a municipality in eastern Massachusetts,
surrounded on three sides by the city of Boston. We have a population of
54,000 people. The Brookline Police Department has 140 sworn officers. Our
officers strive to meet the Department's Mission Statement which
reads:
"To work in partnership with our citizens to ensure all people will
enjoy a high quality of life without fear of crime. To work together to
solve problems and provide the most responsive and highest quality police
service. To proactively prevent crime, maintain order, and apprehend
offenders in a manner consistent with the law."
Our values:
The Department subscribes to a set of governing values that state its
beliefs as a police organization. They are as follows:
- The most important asset of a police organization is its
personnel.
- Excellence for the members of the Brookline Police Department is
based upon fairness, integrity, hard work, and professionalism in the
performance of their duties.
- Commitment to providing the highest quality of professional law
enforcement with the goal of enhancing the quality of life within the
community.
- Build partnerships with citizens in order to ensure personal safety,
protect individual rights, protect property, and promote individual
responsibility and community commitment.
- Secure and maintain public respect in order to fulfill the
department's duties by acknowledging that the quality of life in the
community is affected by not only the absence of the fear of crime, but
also the absence of crime itself.
2. When was the program created and why?
Our Mission Statement is only a portion of the total efforts of this
department to meet the needs of our diverse community. As a result of a
population study conducted in 1996, we concluded that our police
department's diversity did not reflect the ethnicity of the community that
we serve. Therefore in 1996, we implemented the following recruitment
programs, which sought out qualified minority candidates.
- We have designated our Internal Affairs Lieutenant to handle our
recruitment efforts. The lieutenant has attended seminars sponsored by
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Human Resources Division, which
focused on recruitment issues in general, and minority recruitment
specifically. The lieutenant has distributed department information as
well as examination material to several local colleges, i.e., Boston
University, Northeastern University, Roxbury Community College, Newbury
College, Brookline High School, The Resource Center for Russian speaking
peoples and numerous public buildings. We have also printed information
in the Brookline Tab, Bay State Banner and other inner city
publications.
- For the past two years, members of the Community Service Division of
the Brookline Police Department have participated in "Career Day" in the
local schools and colleges with majors/concentrations in criminal
justice. We have participated in many community activities which have
enhanced the image of the Brookline Police Department such as Citizen
Police Academies, Martin Luther King Day events, Israel Independence Day
Celebration, Asian Heritage Day, Russian Day, Flag Day Celebrations, and
A Day of Dialogue. It is our hope that people will support our efforts
and realize that the Police Department is a great organization in which
to establish a career in policing. The Commander of the Community
Service Division writes a monthly column for the Brookline Tab,
imparting information about our agency to Brookline’s fifty-four
thousand residents.
- Because of these efforts, Brookline’s Police Department has recently
hired our most diverse recruit class of this century. Included in the
class of fourteen officers, was one African-American female, one
Hispanic male, one African-American male and one Russian male officer.
Three females were added to our department with this class.
- Departments, which are constrained by civil service law, should be
encouraged by our results. Departments should target minority candidates
and not sit back and wait to be approached by qualified minority
candidates.
3. How is the program financed?
We did not receive any funding from the US Department of
Justice.
For more information, please contact:
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