‘Not on my watch’, say too many male officers, even in this day and age. ‘How’s she going to scale the 6 ft. wall?’ ‘Back me up in a clutch?’ ‘What if she gets pregnant?’ .... And worst of all on the tired litany of doubts, ‘What if she freezes under fire?’
No matter the mountain of studies showing female officers perform as well or better than their male colleagues. The male police establishment has mostly stuck by it’s guns and prejudices. The result, ten years into the 21st century? Females make up only 12% of our nation’s police officers, and the number is declining.
But sometimes the most irrefutable proof is in the pudding. And in the last few weeks, in separate incidents, three female police officers and two civilian teen girls have given us precisely that kind of proof, and more.
On November 5th, at Ft. Hood, in what Lt. Gen. Robert Cone called, “an amazing and an aggressive performance”, Sgt. Kimberly Munley daringly stopped the massacre in progress. With soldiers falling and bullets flying, Sgt. Munley rushed up to within feet of the shooter, confronted him, and opened fire, her bravery saving countless lives. Sgt. Munley is 5 ft. 4 in. tall, 120 lbs, and the mother of a 3-yr-old daughter.
So much for ‘freezing under fire’! Except to mention that this line of judgement has always been the manly measure of worth. Good police work is really so much more.
On August 23rd of this year, despite a history of more than 60 parole office contacts and 30 police contacts*, Phillip Garrido remained free as a bird to carry on his alleged crimes that began 18 years before with the kidnap and rapes of 11-yr-old Jaycee Dugard. But on August 24th, female Univ. of California police officer Allison Jacobs and specialist Lisa Campbell collared Garrido anonyimously out of the daily flow of the crowd, even though neither of the women knew anything of Garrido or his record.
According to Officer Jacobs, during that chance routine contact with Garrido, she just had a sense that “something isn’t right”. And police specialist Campbell agreed; there was a vacant “robot stare”, she says, in the eyes of the two little girls Garrido had with him. And working from those two observations alone, and a concern for the girls’ safety, the two women ended Garrido’s reign of abuse in a day; a bit of police work every bit as stunning as bravery under fire.
The fact is, in the course of their careers most cops never once fire their guns outside of practice. But a cop’s keen alertness to sense ‘something wrong’, the ability to read the subtle signs in a child’s eyes, can day-after-day save more lives and stop more crime than any once-in-a-lifetime heroic act. But police recruiting committees and training academies don’t much go for that girly stuff. They’d rather stick to their guns and the 6 ft. wall that serves hiring teams so well for weeding women out.
And how about those two civilian teen girls in Richmond, California; the one who dialed 911, and the other who talked to the 911 operator? What makes their simple act so heroic is that the girls made that call from the ‘no snitch’ zones of Richmond where the mere act of calling the cops can get you seriously hurt or killed.
On that night of October 24th in Richmond, for over two hours a 16-yr-old girl had been beaten, robbed, and gang raped to unconsciousness by up to a dozen young men while a crowd of up to 20 onlookers stood by and did nothing. At one point on the 911 tape, one of the girls, Maggie Vargas, can be heard saying to the operator, “...no one wanted to call the cops, so we decided to call.”
It’s not surprising that it was girls who made the call. More often than not it’s the females who are calling out the crime and corruption at all levels of the community; from board rooms to the streets. It’s a brave and daring thing to do anywhere, but nowhere more so than in the “no snitch” zones of the hood --- or out from under the ‘blue code of silence’ that keeps police culture locked into it’s Nneanderthal mentality.
The world desperately needs more women cops! So here’s one more for good measure.
On July 3rd, 2009 still-should-be police officer, Debra Hartley, now ex-police officer, set out on foot from her home in northern Pennsylvania to walk 225 miles to the White House. After complaining about sexual harassment from male officers in the police department where she worked, Hartley’s superior officers responded to her complaints the way police brass around the country respond to so many other female officers’ complaints. From the chief on down, they piled on with more sexual harassment and drove Debra off the force.
Debra couldn’t win justice for herself, so she trekked the distance to the White House to spotlight the rampant sex discrimination in law enforcement that dooms the careers of so many other good female officers, and robs our communities of the immense benefits women bring to policing. Don’t let Debra’s walk be in vain!
- Find out how many females are on your police department! And how many hold positions of rank!
- Read about the proven benefits women bring to law enforcement at the National Center for Women in Policing at www.womenandpolicing.org
- Educate others!
- Encourage girls to consider a career in law enforcement!
- Insist that your community leaders end the male control of police power!
|
