When U.S. Customs inspector Reta Grant made a $1 million drug bust a few years ago, she thought she would be in line for some kind of award, if not a full promotion.
Instead, Grant and her female partner received pats on the back from their male superiors, she says. “Had it been two men making the bust, they would have been promoted,” she insists. “My superiors were very disappointed that two females had made the arrests.”
While Grant has since been promoted, the Ft. Lauderdale customs agent said she still faces sexist attitudes from her male peers.
“Women still have a long way to go before we are accepted” in law enforcement, says Grant.
Indeed, female crime fighters, from the lowest-ranking officers to chiefs, say that, despite making enormous strides, they are still not treated as equals in law enforcement, and that has hindered them from rising to the highest ranks of the profession in greater numbers.
“It is still really an old boy’s network,” says Jacqueline Murrcommander of the Auto Theft Unit and one of the two highest-ranking female members of the Chicago Police Department.
Women were put on an equal footing in most police forces through 1972 amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Before that, most female officers were meter maids or assigned to work with children and female victims.
But after 1972, many forces adopted height and weight requirements and physical tests that effectively barred women from patrol. Most such requirements have since been defeated in court.
“To seek any change, women have always had to go outside the departments and get some kind of court decision,” says Inspector Julia Thompson, the highest-ranking female officer at the New York City Police Department.
Today, accusations of sexual harassment by senior male officers and charges of discrimination still surface. Although women have risen to prominence in many law agencies, there are still proportionately few females among the highest ranks of the profession.
Statistics are not available on the numbers of women holding senior law-enforcement positions nationally, although the International Association of Women Police estimates that fewer than 100 of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies are run by women.
“Discrimination is not something that just goes away with legislation,” says Donna Hansen, chief of police in Ft. Meyers, Fla. “True diversity in the workplace is the only cure for discrimination.”
According to the most recent data compiled by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, women accounted for 9 percent of all sworn police officers in 1991.
The figure was higher for urban departments than for rural agencies. In cities of more than 250,000 people, female officers made up more than 12 percent of all sworn officers, according to the FBI. In towns of 10,000 or fewer people, women accounted for 4 percent of all officers.
A similar relationship appears to exist in the promotions of female officers. A 1986 study by the Police Foundation, a non-profit think tank, found that fewer women rose beyond the level of lieutenant in smaller cities and towns than in large metropolitan areas.
In both instances, however, women were under-represented among the highest ranks in proportion to their numbers within law enforcement agencies as a whole, and certainly in relation to their numbers in society.
An independent study of the nation’s three largest police departments found that while they increased recruitment of female police officers, women were still among the lower ranks.
Women accounted for 16.7 percent of patrol officers at the Chicago Police Department at the end of 1991. But they made up 6.5 percent of all officers with ranks of sergeant and above.
In New York, women made up 14 percent of all officers, but 6.1 percent of all sergeants, lieutenants, captains and commanders. The Los Angeles Police Department scored lowest of the three, with female officers comprising 14 percent of the force, and 3 percent of the ranks above sergeant.
“We need more higher ranking women in law enforcement,” says Sean Grennan, author of the study and professor of criminal justice at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus in Brookville, N.Y.
“They are better bosses; while a man usually comes down hard on an officer for doing something wrong, a woman tells you what you did wrong and lets you learn a lesson,” said Grennan, a 21-year veteran of the New York City Police Department. He said a lack of promotional exams accounted for the low numbers of female officers in higher ranks.
The numbers may change as more women enter police forces, say experts. Women were recruited at rates three times those of male officers from 1988 to 1991. During that period, the ranks of women rose from 38,360 to 48,206 officers, a 26 percent increase. The numbers of male officers increased by 9 percent.
Female officers cite a host of obstacles hindering their rise to the upper echelon of law enforcement, including lack of seniority, infrequent promotional exams and a lingering environment of discrimination.
“Police departments across the country are sexist and racist; it’s still a real struggle,” says Thompson.
In a recent high-profile case, 10 female officers’ accusations of sexual harrassment led to the termination in June of a captain and the chief of police in Newport Beach, Calif.
According to the female officers’ filings with Orange County Superior Court last fall, the captain and chief, amid a long list of allegations, were accused of raping one female dispatcher after a police party. In a deal with the city, the two left the police force in exchange for dropping criminal charges.
“Newport Beach was not an isolated incident,” said Tamara Mason, Newport Beach representative of the National Organization for Women. “Police departments all over are hotbeds of sexually offensive conduct.”
Following the Newport Beach case, allegations of sexual harassment of female officers surfaced in Anaheim, Irvine, Redondo Beach and Los Angeles.
“Women are just now beginning to come forward because they are less fearful of retaliation,” said Bino Hernandez, of Law Enforcement Representation & Associates, a Laguna Niguel, Calif., legal firm that represented women in the Los Angeles and Newport Beach suits.
The infrequency of promotional exams also has slowed female officers’ climb through the ranks, says Grennan. The New York City Police Department, for example, has held only two exams each for promotion to sergeant, lieutenant and captain since 1979.
