Abstract
Previous studies testing the percentage minority-police force strength relationship have left out many important variables from their analyses and rarely tested more than one minority population. This study attempts to correct for many of the weaknesses of past studies in this area and also tests the impact of two new minority variables on police force strength: percentage Asian and percentage Native American. Two-stage least squares regression was used to analyze data from all 1,083 U.S. cities with a 1990 population of over 25,000, as well as 114 cities with a population over 100,000 in 1980. This study found that none of the other minority populations had as consistent an impact on police strength as did percentage Black, which had a consistent curvilinear and occasional positive impact. This suggests that percentage Black may have a unique impact on police strength that is not matched by other populations.
