Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Law Enforcement:

Officer’s mission: Improve Metro’s diversity

Corrections Academy

Steve Marcus

Metro Police Lt. Andrew Peralta talks with recruits during training at the Las Vegas Metro Police Corrections Academy. Peralta is president of the National Latino Peace Officers Association, which promotes equality and professionalism in law enforcement.

As head of one of the nation’s largest coalitions of Hispanic police officers, Metro Police Lt. Andrew Peralta is a strong advocate for diversifying America’s law enforcement agencies.

For years, he has worked with leaders across the country to promote the integration of more minorities into predominantly white police ranks, an endeavor that became a national priority last year after a spate of controversial shootings involving unarmed black men and white officers.

Metro Police, which itself has grappled with accusations of racial bias, is among the agencies seeking to diversify.

Peralta, a corrections officer who has been a member of the National Latino Peace Officers Association for 15 years and became the group’s president last summer, spoke with The Sunday about what the agency had done and what it needed to do to achieve racial parity.

The National Latino Peace Officers Association is a large group, with 50 chapters nationwide. As president, what’s your focus?

Our main mission is to bridge the gap between juveniles and police officers to reduce racial tensions with police in predominantly minority neighborhoods. We mentor a lot of young children.

We also advocate for our members and for the promotion of more Latinos. Obviously, the Ferguson incident (in which a Missouri police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager) highlighted the need for departments to mirror their communities, so the staffing issue has come to the forefront lately. You see a lot of departments concerned about it now. It’s a huge problem in our chapters in Salinas, Calif., Houston, Texas, and North Carolina. And as the Latino community grows, it’s going to become more of an issue.

How does Metro’s diversity compare with other agencies nationally?

I would say we’re a little bit behind. When I first moved here, Metro was only 9 percent Latino. (Today, the department is 11 percent Hispanic, while Hispanics make up 30 percent of Clark County’s population.)

Latinos are still relatively new in Nevada, and I think that might be part of the problem. A lot of first-generation Latinos, at least, coming from Mexico, don’t trust cops. And they might be raising their children not to trust cops. That might be the reason we’re not getting the pool we want locally. The face of this city has really changed very quickly in the past 10 years.

Why aren’t more minority officers joining Metro?

We have to ask ourselves: Do Latinos want to be cops? Clark County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly holds classes talking about leadership and police with predominantly Latino high school students. What strikes me is when we ask them who is interested in becoming an officer, we’re surprised by their lack of interest. Last year, we had maybe eight students out of 200 raise their hands.

One of the things we’d like to see is for recruiters to come back to Metro. When the economy tanked, we lost almost all of them. Even if they’re not hiring, we’d like to see the recruit units expanding. It doesn’t have to be what it was before, but we at least need to have some Latino and African-American representation there.

If you can’t see yourself in the department and see someone who looks like you, it’s hard to believe you belong there. So we think that’s part of the problem.

Other than expanded recruitment, what else can Metro do to improve diversity?

There needs to be more opportunities for officers of different races to be promoted. To me, it seems to depend on whom you break bread with. If you’re African-American, you hang out with other African-Americans on the weekends. Same for Latinos, and I imagine it’s the same for white people. If you’re in a leadership position, if you just focus on the few who you hang out with, that’s who’s going to make it up there. My thought is leadership needs to look down the ladder.

What can your organization do to help?

Groups like mine need to step it up to find people to promote. The sheriff has been very open to promoting minorities, but a lot of them haven’t bothered to take the test needed to be promoted.

Latino officers have to do a better job at encouraging our own people to want to move up, rather than just be satisfied with a detective’s position and get comfortable, because it does take a lot of work and interest to move up.

Peralta currently is testing for a promotion to become a captain in Metro’s corrections division.

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