It is argued that increased employment of Latino officers will enhance policing in Latino communities based on assumptions that Latino officers share a common ethnic identity and have positive attitudes toward Latino community members based on identification with the coethnic communities they police. These assumptions, however, remain largely untested. Through interviews with 100% of Latino police officers in a large midwestern city, this study investigated the officers' ethnic identification and attachment to the Latino communities they police. Contrary to public policy assumptions, although most expressed a strong Latino identity and community attachment, many did not, and a small number self-identified as exclusively "White/Anglo."
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.