The 30X30 initiative is a national pledge for law enforcement agencies to increase the number of women in their ranks to 30% representation by the year 2030. This movement within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department represents an intentional effort to promote female representation in our agency focusing on recruiting, culture, advancement, and retention. Many agencies have adopted this initiative and CMPD formally made a pledge to participate in October of 2021.
Diversity
Information on the 30 by 30 initiative
How has CMPD incorporated the 30 by 30 initiative into its recruitment efforts?
Since the pledge, the CMPD Recruiting Division has incorporated the 30X30 pledge into all of its recruiting efforts. For example, CMPD has launched two specific recruiting events aimed to attract women to our organization. On March 8, we held our first women-specific recruiting fair on International Women’s Day.
In addition, we have plans to hold another event on September 12, or National Police Woman Day. Additionally, we are focusing our next event for college athletic programs, or Cops and Cleats, by inviting only athletic teams to the CMPD Training Academy. As always, we take special interest to any females attracted to CMPD at any of our traditional recruiting events, such as college visits, career fairs, military base invitationals, community events, and testing sessions at the CMPD Training Academy.
How do we currently rank in female officers compared to other agencies?
Generally speaking, CMPD is slightly ahead of the national average of 12% female representation in law enforcement. In 2022, CMPD reported 14% of our officers are female and the Recruiting Division is making every available effort to increase that number in subsequent years leading up to 2030.
What is our goal?
30% female representation within CMPD sworn officers by 2030
Are we close to reaching the goal?
This question is subjective; however, our organization is encouraged to be ahead of the national average of women in law enforcement positions.
Our Efforts
What are our efforts to recruit diverse candidates?
Recognizing the need to fully represent the communities we serve, CMPD strives to hire from all areas, backgrounds and cultures. In the past year, we have added or enhanced several events aimed to be inclusive in our recruiting strategy. The efforts include, but are not limited to:
- CMPD Recruiting Division’s “Divine 9” recruiting campaign in 2022, focusing on specific events at historically African-American fraternities and sororities.
- CMPD attends the annual AAPI Dragon Boat festival, and searches for other events to attract our Asian-American Pacific Islander communities
- Charlotte PRIDE festival
- Latin American events such as the Cuban American festival
How/Why is diversity important to CMPD?
CMPD must strive to remain an organization that reflects all ethnicities, cultures and orientations that make the City of Charlotte a rich and diverse city!
CMPD makes concerted efforts to connect with members of the Spanish-speaking community.
CMPD launched its Spanish Facebook page in January 2021. The page serves as a subsidiary of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, and shares the latest information about hiring, employment, and general department announcements.
CMPD offers a 5% incentive for employees who have proficiency in Spanish, Yoruba, Vietnamese, Chinese-Taiwan, Chinese-PRC, Arabic, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Somali, Hausa, Japanese, Korean, Ukrainian, or Russian. Those qualified can also earn a 5% bonus for having an Associate’s Degree, 10% bonus for a Bachelor’s Degree, and ten paid holidays per year.
Training officers can also earn up to $89,107 with a four-year degree and applicable second-language experience.
