The Brockton Police Department, serving a city of roughly 100,000 people that is now 42.3 percent Black or African American and 11.1 percent Hispanic according to U.S. Census data, currently has a total of 37 percent of its officers identifying as minorities. Currently, all six police captains at the department are white males. There are no black lieutenants.

BROCKTON — Before he was a police officer, Ernest Bell said he came home for a weekend as a 21-year-old college student to watch his cousin play football for Brockton High School. He later went out with friends to a bar, where he said he was falsely arrested for an incident he had nothing to do with and was then berated by a racist cop who called him the N-word.

“If you ever felt racism, especially if it was that blatant, even if it happened 20 years ago, it’ll never leave you,” said Bell, now a detective for the Brockton Police Department, after becoming a police officer in 1997. “The cop came out and called me and two other guys all types of names. It was one of the reasons I wanted to become a police officer.”

Much has changed for the better since then as the department has become more diverse, said Bell, one of 70 racial minorities who now serve on the Brockton Police Department, which currently has a total of 189 sworn officers. At the time of the false arrest, on trespassing charges that were later dismissed in court, minorities on the Police Department were few and far between, with about a handful on the force at that time, Bell said.

Bell said that when he graduated from the police academy he made a required student speech, vowing not to put up with any racist behavior among fellow police officers. And Bell said he confronted that very officer who hurled racist abuse toward him during his weekend home from college, a Brockton police sergeant who was later fired, after another incident of racism involving the false arrest of a Cape Verdean businessman in 2007 led to a discrimination lawsuit against the city.

“I wasn’t going to let it slide,” said Bell, who is African American and Cape Verdean. “Everything seemed to come to light. The incident he got released over was a racial incident. I said something about it. He confronted me on it. I said, ‘You’re a racist. You know you’re a racist.’”

The Brockton Police Department, serving a population of roughly 100,000 people that is 42.3 percent Black or African American, 11.1 percent Hispanic and 1.6 percent Asian, according to the most recent U.S. Census data, currently has a force consisting of 37 percent minority police officers.

Of the 189 sworn Brockton police officers, according to information provided by the city, 54 officers identify as Black or Cape Verdean (28.6 percent), 14 are Hispanic (7.4 percent) and two are Asian. There are 121 white men and eight white women working for the Police Department, accounting for 68 percent of the Police Department. Overall, 10.5 percent of the department's officers are women, including nine Black women and three Hispanic women.

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Bell, who graduated from Brockton High School in 1985, said it's a stark difference from when he joined the force 23 years ago, when 12 to 15 officers were minorities.

"Back then, I could go to roll call and not see another minority," Bell said. "I wouldn't see another Black person."

More recently, Bell said there's been shifts staffed by all or nearly all minorities. Bell said recently he and three other people of color were on a housing patrol together.

"I was joking around, I said, 'Hey lieutenant, it looks like you have the Soul Patrol here," Bell said. "To a lot of the younger officers, it’s normal. To me, I notice it because when I got on, it wasn’t like this."

Bell said it's important to have a police force that reflects the diversity of the community because they understand the culture of the residents they are dealing with and have a sense of familiarity. In recent years, Bell said the department has recruited more officers with fluency in the various foreign languages spoken in the city, which has diversified the department.

But Bell said it's not all just about police being of the same race as members of the public, but rather about being immersed in their community and willing to learn. In that regard, Bell said it helps that many Brockton police officers, including white officers, grew up in the multicultural city, which has large Cape Verdean, Haitian and African American populations.

Bell said it's also inspiring for minority children to see people of color in professional roles and leadership positions.

"If they see a Black police officer, they can see themselves doing it," Bell said. "It’s just as important with judges, teachers and small business owners."

During a recent appearance with the mayor, Police Chief Emanuel Gomes said that the city has taken strides to become more diverse, to reflect demographic changes in the city over the past few decades. Gomes said he's proud to say Brockton has one of the most diverse police departments in the state.

"We've made the department look like the community that it serves," Gomes said. "The Brockton Police Department, as I tell people, is a reflection of Brockton."

Gomes, a white man who came to Brockton as an immigrant child from Portugal, said one area for improvement the department is trying to address is getting more minorities in supervising roles.

Currently, all six police captains at the department are white males. There are no Black lieutenants, out of the 14 working for the department. Of the 21 sergeants on the force, 17 are white men, three are Black men and one is a Hispanic man.

Gomes said a "historic" promotion occurred earlier this year when the department promoted Brenda Perez to lieutenant, who is Hispanic, making her the only minority in this rank and the first ever woman in the supervisory role.

"We're starting to see advancements into the rank structure, which will change the department even more," Gomes said.

In 2016, 2.5 percent of all supervising officers in the Brockton Police Department were minorities. The department now has 12 percent minority supervisors.

Mayor Robert Sullivan, who took office this year, said he wants to build on the more diverse police hiring accomplished in recent years.

"I'm very optimistic that these numbers can be better," Sullivan said of the police demographics. "We're statistically better than a lot of communities in the commonwealth. People have to realize some promotions are governed by civil service and exams. But I have a commitment from Chief Manny Gomes. We'd like to see the demographics reflect the city of Brockton."

Black police officers in Brockton date back to the late 19th century, when a Civil War veteran and Taunton native named Lemuel Ashport served on the force, said Willie Wilson, a local historian and author of an upcoming book called "The Black Brocktonians." Wilson said Ashport was a soldier in the Union Army as part of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, a unit that consisted of African American men.

It wasn't until 1929 when two more Black men were hired as police in Brockton, Wilson said. Then 30 years later, two others were hired, including Robert H. Torrence and Raymond W. Baker, who was celebrated with a massive retirement party in 1984 that drew legendary undisputed middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler and commendations from the Brockton chapter of the NAACP.

Darren Duarte, a former television journalist from Brockton who now works as spokesperson for the Police Department, said he worked at news stations around the country from the time he went to college in 1981 through 1994 before returning to New England, noticing how the city had become more racially diverse when he came back home. Duarte did a short documentary for WGBH that highlighted how the city's Police Department did not yet reflect that diversity.

"The Brockton I knew of 1981 looked a lot different than 1994 Brockton," he said.

In the past 30 years, the city has undergone a racial transformation. In 1990, nearly four out of five residents were white, but since then, nearly half of Brockton’s white population has left the city, according to “Changing Faces of Greater Boston,” a 71-page study published last year by the Boston Foundation. A large chunk of the city's Black residents — about 41 percent — are foreign-born, coming mainly from Cape Verde and Haiti, the report states.

Tony Branch, who has chaired Brockton's volunteer advisory diversity commission, credited former mayor Bill Carpenter for pushing for more minority hiring and making progress at the Police Department during the past five years. Branch said he believes the Sullivan administration is now carrying the ball. Branch said it was encouraging to see a group of new recruits made up of all minority officers sworn in earlier this year, but he also wants to see more people of color getting promoted, which requires additional education and civil service exams.

"As we move forward looking at civil service lists, we encourage minorities to apply," said Branch. "I think there's still work to be done. This city is majority-minority. We should be able to have a strong pool of applicants in the pipeline."

Ollie Spears, a community activist and former planning board member, recently had a meeting with Gomes to speak about police diversity, among other issues amid a nationwide reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality, sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25. Spears said "we definitely need to do better" to make the Police Department reflect the population it's serving, but there's been "a big improvement" over the last 10 years.

"I believe when the police officer looks like you, talks like you and walks like you, it helps in certain situations," said Spears, 45 years old. "Growing up, it was all white police officers. A lot of times growing up we’d get pulled over and harassed. A lot of them I don’t know if they didn’t understood us or didn’t care."

Spears said during his time growing up in Brockton, there was a widely respected Black police officer named Jake McGee, whose presence meant a lot to the Black community.

"He understood the community and people respected him," Spears said.

Councilor-at-large Moises Rodrigues, who was the first minority to serve as mayor of Brockton last year when he was appointed to the role following the death of Carpenter, credited the Police Department for building a large roster of bilingual officers. Rodrigues also said he wants to see more ranking officers of color, but said the department went from zero minorities in supervisory positions a few years ago to now five.

"I think by having a lot more officers that look and sound like us in the community, I think we'll have a better relationship with the police as we move forward," Rodrigues said.

Staff writer Marc Larocque can be reached at mlarocque@enterprisenews.com. Follow him on Twitter @Enterprise_Marc.