Published June 22, 2010

After I wrote about hiring more Sgt. Homer’s, Elaine Driscoll of the Boston Police Department sent me some valuable demographics about the city’s ranks.

“The Police Commissioner has the most diverse command staff in the history of the Boston Police Department,” she said in an e-mail.

Here is BPD data on ethnicity and gender within its sworn ranks:

And BPD data on ethnicity within command ranks — that is, people at sergeant rank or higher:

The data show that blacks make up a quarter of the command ranks and that Asians and Hispanics are beginning to make inroads, as well, after being virtually invisible in the force for years.