Pitt’s lone Asian police officer reaches out

Pitt police chief Tim Delaney was looking for someone like Mark Villasenor to help round out… Pitt police chief Tim Delaney was looking for someone like Mark Villasenor to help round out his department.

Not only does “Officer Mark” like to chat with the students on upper campus — “The worst is when students go away for break or holiday. It becomes like a ghost town up here. I don’t like boredom,” he said — but he also holds a unique place on the staff.

Villasenor, a 38-year-old Pitt alumnus, is the only Asian-American officer in the Pitt police department and one of three in the area. Only one Asian-American police officer works for the city police, and only one works for the county sheriff’s department.

Delaney said he was searching for an Asian-American officer to “bring a representation that wasn’t there before” to the estimated 1,300 Pitt students who identify themselves as an Asian or Pacific Islander.

David Harris, a law professor who teaches about police behavior and regulation, said it’s common for police departments to try to recruit people based on their ethnicities. Police departments value people with certain language abilities or cultural knowledge because they help the department function more effectively, he said.

“After 9/11 for example, many police departments recruited consultants, professional and volunteer to help relate to the Muslim community.” he said.

Villasor added that, “A police force should represent the community it serves.

“I don’t think the city of Pittsburgh is doing a good job [recruiting],” Villasenor said.

City police Chief Nathan Harper said the city tries “to recruit across all ethnicities to create a diverse working police force of which to better serve and represent the multi-cultural population of our communities.”

According to the 2000 census, Asian people comprise 2.7 percent of Pittsburgh’s population.

Villasenor said one of his goals is to reach out to other Asian officers in the tri-state area, which includes Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. He attended a conference sponsored by the National Asian Peace Officers’ Association and hopes to create a chapter in Pittsburgh. The nearest chapter is in New Jersey, he said, and adding a local branch could help recruit more Asian officers and encourage people to host trade shows and career fairs here, he said.

“Young Asians are often pulled away from law enforcement by family members. There’s an ideology that Asians had to become doctors, lawyers or go into the computer field,” Villasenor said, adding that the message of officers’ association is that “it’s okay to be Asian and join law enforcement.”

Villasenor joined the Pitt police in August of 2008. He decided to pursue a career in law enforcement after 10 years working as a pharmaceutical representative for three different corporations. He said he did some “soul searching” before deciding to become a police officer.

“I wanted to make a difference in a way that I might become a positive influence in the Asian community,” he said.

At 37, Villasenor entered the Allegheny County Police Academy, where the majority of his classmates were in their 20s.

“It was mentally and physically exhausting every day,” Villasenor said. “People thought I was crazy to make a career change at 37 years old. Everybody thought that I was too old, but I turned their negative into a positive, and that’s what kept me going on every day,” he said.

The difficulty was rewarding in the end, said Villasenor.

“There is no typical day in law enforcement, so it’s not a routine that you go into the office from 8 to 5 and do the same redundant thing, day in and day out,” he said.

Villasenor graduated in 1994 from the Pitt’s College of General Studies with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. He earned his master’s degree in health services administration from Barry University in 1997.