When Policing And Race Cross Paths In Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley, a region that attracts a diverse population from across the country and world due to its thriving tech sector, faces an existential question with real-world consequences: how might its mix of cultures change local policing?
Some recent history has created fertile ground for such a question.
In 2008, Palo Alto's police chief reportedly retired after a controversial order for officers to specifically stop African-American men. Last year, Stanford researchers found that Oakland police officers were more likely to handcuff, search and arrest African-American men than any other group. The Justice Department recently said the San Francisco Police Department disproportionately targets people of color. In San Jose, local media reported disparate treatment by police of African-Americans and Latinos — even leading to a federal lawsuit.
Overall, Bay Area residents are almost a quarter Hispanic or Latino, a quarter Asian, and markedly foreign-born (30 percent). More than 112 languages are spoken across the the San Francisco government. The region's technology-driven economy might continue pushing up those numbers; tech leaders are calling for more diversity in their predominantly white and Asian campuses. (Facebook did not reply to requests for comment about its diversity statistics. Both Apple and Google responded but said they do not provide further granularity than the demographic data on their diversity websites.)
