Circles in the map below are scaled according to the number of sworn officers in each police department. As shown in the blue legend at bottom, the shade of each circle indicates the size of the race gap between the police force (sworn officers) and the population; the darker the circle, the larger the gap. General population demographics are sourced from the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau; police force demographics are based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics' police force questionnaire from 2007 (see below the map for additional notes and methodology).
Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown last August, was one of 50 white officers on Ferguson's 53-member police force. That's in a city with a two-thirds black population.
The wide race gap between Ferguson's police force and its community is not unusual. A recent New York Times analysis of 2007 government survey data on local police demographics found that hundreds of police forces across the country are more than 30 percentage points more white than the communities they serve.
This is no exception in many Bay Area cities. In our own analysis of data collected from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics' police force questionnaire from 2007 -- the most recent comprehensive data available -- at least 10 cities in the region have police forces that are more than 30 percentage points more white than the general population of the communities they serve.