Chicago, IL—In the very early 1970’s policewomen were
encouraged to integrate with policemen on routine patrol. Before then they only wore adorable little
uniforms like airline stewardesses of the day.
Skirts, high heels and they kept their little guns in their uniform
policewomen purses. They were viewed as
eye candy.
Policewomen searched female prisoners, changed diapers of
arrestee’s babies and were assigned to the juvenile division. Today there are very few policewomen
anywhere. The unisex term of police
officer has replaced any reference to gender.
For patrol they were put in what today is the unisex
uniform. The women essentially changed
into the policeman’s uniform. There were
some minor compromises for the tailor to accommodate the differences in the
policewomen’s bodies. Otherwise the
uniform is identical.
In Chicago during this period there were 14,000 sworn
officers and only about 90 of them were women.
The women were tested very rarely for that high paying job because they
did not want or need women.
Thousands of women would turn out for civil service policewomen
testing for a mere handful of job openings.
Despite the different duties the women were trained for things they’d
never do like traffic enforcement or routine patrol. State law required all sworn officers receive
the same training.
It was much more difficult for women to compete for
policewoman positions then men seeking patrolman’s positions. The women were smarter, better educated and
in so many ways better qualified. They
could type reports much faster, knew how to spell, punctuate much better then
the men. Some drove the squad cars like
Danica Patrick and for some reason women often performed better then men on the
firing range.
The original efforts at integration were considered an
experiment. Many expected the women
would fail miserably. In the end we
learned that there were worthless cops of both sexes and the same was true for
the exceptional ones. The experiment
proved a success.
Joe Wambagh the former LAPD cop turned author put one of the
best cop TV series ever on primetime.
That was Police Story. These
episodes vanished from TV and DVDs of the episodes never saw the light of day
but thankfully they are now available on the Internet.
Episode six, Collision Course was about the policewomen
patrol experiment. It stared Hugh
O’Brien and Sue Ann Langdon along with some surprising big named actors. This is one of my favorite episodes
ever.
This experiment was going on all over the nation and later
the world. Watching it today it seems a little silly but back then this was
really the way things were.
Sit back and watch a great episode of Police Story!
Comments
Robert Ellis was incredibly vicious, cruel and evil. Ellis was black and Hollywood will never accept that reality.
Jeff Pacocha