PHILADELPHIA — The number of black and Latino Pennsylvania State troopers is at its lowest point in 10 years, a newspaper reported.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that over the last decade the number of black troopers declined by 42 percent, partly because of lagging recruitment and a wave of retirements.

The percentage of minorities started to drop at about the same time a federal judge ended oversight of the organization's hiring practices in early 1999 and continued to drop, the review showed.

In the past few years, the large classes of minority troopers hired in the 1970s and 1980s have begun to retire. As a result, the agency has fewer black troopers than it had in the 1990s.

The agency has 228 black troopers, five percent of the force. Blacks make up 10 percent of the state's population.

According to figures provided to the newspaper by the state police and the U.S. Justice Department, the force is 92 percent white, an increase of five percent since 1997.

State Police Commander Jeffrey Miller said there is a commitment to reversing the trend with aggressive recruiting of black and Latino officers.

"Our numbers look as bad as they possibly could look," Miller said.

The numbers caught members of the state legislature's black caucus by surprise. They say they were never informed of the drop-off in the minority ranks.

"A reduction like this is completely unacceptable," said State Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Phila. "It isn't right."

Legislators say they will push for a change.

"It's gone largely unnoticed. It cries out for a remedy," said Rep. James Roebuck, D-Phila.

The state police had the largest decline of minority officers of any large agency in Pennsylvania, according to police and Justice Department data.