Diversity Academy

Article
By Mark Reynolds
Journal Staff Writer

Posted Jul. 24, 2016 at 9:01 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — State Police Sgt. Kenneth Jones is a tall, sculpted athlete who embodies the culture of pushups, leg-lifts and runs at the Rhode Island State Police Training Academy.

He’s familiar with stiff-backed young men and women standing at attention, waiting for his command.

But this isn’t the actual academy. This time, Jones, who is black, is helping 19 young people, many of them minorities still in school, develop their physical conditioning.

The students are near the end of the state police-run "diversity academy" — a new recruiting effort to help young people, particularly minorities, learn about police careers and experience a taste of academy life.

Since this first-ever diversity academy began more than six weeks ago, a tableau of violence involving police officers and minorities — including assassination-style killings of police officers — has deeply concerned many Americans who care about the safety of people in city neighborhoods and the police officers who patrol them.

The diversity academy trainees, between 15 and 30 years old and hailing from all walks of life, couldn’t have picked a more interesting time in history to get to know the state police.

For state police Col. Steven G. O’Donnell, and Lt. Darnell Weaver, who runs both programs, it's a situation that illustrates the importance of bringing more minorities to the rank-and-file.

And from their perspective, the numbers aren’t great: 187 of Rhode Island’s 220 state troopers are white.

"The department should reflect the community it serves," says Weaver. "As a minority myself," he says, "we can do a better job."

Says O’Donnell: "They’re out there. It’s on us to find them."
address biases, including racial biases, and how to keep them from undermining good law enforcement decisions and practices.