Racial Diversity in Policing: Do We Need More Asian American Police Officers in Response to the #StopAsianHate Movement?

• Author: Helen H. Yu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00910260221074971
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00910260221074971

Public Personnel Management

2022, Vol. 51(3) 291 –308

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00910260221074971

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Article

Racial Diversity in Policing:

Do We Need More Asian

American Police Officers

in Response to the

#StopAsianHate Movement?

Helen H. Yu1

Abstract

The rising nationwide concerns about violence targeting Asians have highlighted the

scant research on Asian American police officers. This article aims to (re)introduce

this important dialogue and calls for a commitment from other race and social equity

scholars to extend the discourse on racial diversity in policing. Using data on race

and ethnicity compiled by the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative

Statistics survey, this article compares data from the largest 100 cities ranked by their

respective Asian population percentage with the percentage of Asian police officers

from those same cities to examine Asian diversity in policing. Analysis reveals that all

the cities with the exception of five were underrepresented by Asian police officers,

and that more work needs to be done by these police departments if they hope to

reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

Keywords

Asian American, racial diversity in policing, #StopAsianHate, symbolic representation

Violence against Asian Americans is not new. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—

initially designed to suspend Chinese immigration for 10 years (although not repealed

until 1943) and impede the naturalization of Chinese migrant workers due to eco-

nomic, social, and cultural tensions—generated hundreds of riots and purges that left

thousands of Chinese laborers and their families dead, wounded, or displaced (Pfaelzer,

1University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, USA

Corresponding Author:

Helen H. Yu, Associate Professor of Public Administration, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2424 Maile

Way, Saunders Hall 631, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

Email: helenyu@hawaii.edu

1074971PPMXXX10.1177/00910260221074971Public Personnel ManagementYu

research-article2022

292 Public Personnel Management 51(3)

2007). In addition, the passage of Executive Order 9066 (1942) at the onset of World

War II authorized the arrest of nearly 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese

ancestry—an estimated 62% of whom were native-born U.S. citizens—and their sub-

sequent internment at 10 isolated prison camps due to racist and prejudicial war hys-

teria (Anderson, 2020). Furthermore, after the Vietnam War, refugees from Southeast

Asia faced routine hate, and in 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was mur-

dered by two Detroit autoworkers who thought Chin was Japanese, during a period of

economic decline that was partially blamed on the rise of the Japanese auto industry

(Mineo, 2021).

More recently, the Atlanta-area killing spree on March 16, 2021, that killed eight

people—six of them Asian women—coupled with countless attacks against Asian

Americans as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., “kung flu” and “China virus”

rhetoric) represents the latest and a rising nationwide concern about violence targeting

Asian Americans. In fact, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 32% of

Asian adults feared someone might threaten or physically attack them, and 81% said

violence against them is increasing, far surpassing any other race or ethnic group who

said the same (Ruiz et al., 2021). Accordingly, the Center for the Study of Hate &

Extremism (2021) found a 149% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 alone,

although the overall hate crimes regardless of the targeted identity dropped 7% in that

same period. These statistics are problematic because research has also shown that

Asians distrust law enforcement and may be afraid to report hate crimes (Thorbecke,

2021).

The latest violence in Georgia has renewed the #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate

hashtags that have taken over social media. However, the spokesman for the Atlanta-

area shooting investigation—Captain Jay Baker from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s

Office—stated in a press conference that the killings were “not racially motivated”

and that the White suspect (Robert Long) “was pretty much fed up [and having] a

really bad day” in response to the shooter’s motives (Kornfield & Knowles, 2021),

prompting further outrage across the globe due to the dismissive tone against the Asian

American community. The racial and cultural insensitivities were unmistakable,

resulting in Baker’s subsequent removal from the domestic terrorism, murder, and

hate-crime investigation (Kornfield & Knowles, 2021).

But should we be surprised? According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2020),

the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office employs 276 full-time sworn law enforcement

officers (i.e., deputies) and they have zero Asian American deputies. If the Cherokee

County Sheriff’s Office had any Asian American deputies, would the outcome be any

different? That is more difficult to answer, but in light of the changing landscape of the

general population—for example, Asians are the most diverse and fastest growing

racial group in the country (Colby & Ortman, 2015; Gibson & Jung, 2002)—every law

enforcement agency must do better to reflect the diversity of the communities they

serve. However, there is scant research on Asian American police officers, with public

administration being no exception. This study aims to fill this gap.

Using data on race and ethnicity compiled by the Law Enforcement Management

and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, this study compares data from the