Engaged reader and citizen Roch Smith asked me via e-mail:
"What percentage of GPD are African American? Latino?"
And while we are not the official custodians of that information, Jordan Green did get an answer to this very question during a recent spate of reporting.
A "snapshot" of the department obtained by YES! Weekly on May 8 verifies that, of 615 sworn officers in the department, 123 are African American (97 male, 26 female), about 20 percent.
Latinos make up 15 of 615 sworn officers, or 2.5 percent. All are male.
In all, minorities make up 24 percent of the sworn force — that includes blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans.
Just to put it in perspective, Greensboro itself is 39 percent African American and 6.5 percent Latino. Just over half of us -- 51 percent -- are white.
