Maine City’s Police Turn to Somali Immigrants as Diversity Grows
From the Mogadishu market to the women in brightly colored veils walking their children to school, Maine’s second-largest city shows the signs of the growing Somali-American community that is making its mark on the former New England mill town.
One place in Lewiston where that growing diversity is not evident is the city’s 82-member police force, but Chief Michael Bussiere aims to change that amid an intense national debate over race and policing.
With about a quarter of his officers due to become eligible to retire in the next few years, Bussiere has begun reaching out to the region’s 7,000-strong Somali population, including many who arrived in the United States as refugees from the East African country’s long civil war.
“We have to think about who is living here now and who’s going to live here 10 years from now. We need a department that is reflective of the demographics of the community it serves,” Bussiere said during an interview at his office.
At first glance, Lewiston, a city of 36,000 people that spent decades struggling through job losses from mill closings and a shrinking population, may seem an unlikely place for such a rebirth given that Maine is among the whitest U.S. states.
According to U.S. Census data, however, 8.7 percent of Lewiston’s population identifies as black or African-American, a rate higher than any other city in the state and more than seven times the 1.2 percent state average. ...
Notice how Reuters defines Lewiston's "rebirth" as thousands of destitute Africans being dumped onto the social services of a "struggling" old mill town that has already been through the wringer, without any evidence of an economic rebirth.
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