Breaking Rank (24 page)

Look, I'm not blind to gender differences. I believe that men,
as a group,
are physically stronger than women. I believe the average male is more
comfortable with violence. If the job consisted of pumping iron and sparring ten rounds a shift I'd go with men. But there's a lot more to police work than getting physical. Police work demands analytical reasoning, maturity, judgment, excellent interpersonal communication.

For single mothers, the challenges of a police career can be staggering. Some single-mom cops (and single dads) work nights so they can be with their children during the day. That means trying to sleep while the kids are home, arranging for nighttime child care, getting someone to watch their children when they go to court, or to department-mandated training or firearms qualification shoots. Or when they find themselves working overtime on a last-minute pinch. For those working days, a more convenient schedule for most parents, the problems can be just as bad. I realize it's often hard for parents in other occupations to get out of work on time to pick up their kids at day care. But if mom (or pop) is in the middle of a homicide investigation or on the front lines of a barricaded-suspect incident she may be unable even to give caregivers a call to let them know she's going to be late. Or just
how
late.

It's rare today for a male cop to intentionally refuse to back up a female cop; I believe we've turned that corner. But women officers continue to suffer men who “protect” them when they neither want nor need protecting. There's also the male cop who believes he can handle field situations better, who insists on providing his female colleague a tutorial in the finer points of police work.

For police work to become more attractive to women, basic changes must take place. Those chiefs who still live in the Dark Ages have got to go. Replace them with enlightened leaders, preferably women.

Make sure clear standards of equitable treatment are in place, and check often to see that those standards are being met—at every level of the organization.

Tailor recruiting campaigns to attract women candidates. Send women officers into every school in the city, starting with the elementary grades. Create opportunities for girls and young women to get acquainted with female police officers. Invite them to picture themselves as cops.

Conduct familiarization and training sessions for teens and young women. Let them know
everything
about the job. The inconveniences, the risks, the inevitable heartaches, as well as the extraordinary challenges, deep satisfactions, and the fun of being a cop.

Ensure that there are adequate restroom and locker room facilities for women officers.

Establish a child care program, replete with a department- or city-run 24/7 facility. Staff it with people who are sensitive to the schedules and other demands of police officers. Such a program could be open to others who work “odd” hours in order to help with financing. It might also be “privatized” in order to achieve similar economies. Progressive chiefs are family-friendly leaders. They understand how emotionally taxing it is for their cops, male and female, to concentrate on the demands of the job while worried about the safety and welfare of their kids.

Inoculate women recruits in the academy against the “conformity” pressures they'll surely face when they graduate. Let them know they're not alone. Help them understand, and give them skills to confront, those “traditional” officers who persist in inappropriate behavior. Make sure male recruits are included in this instruction—it helps them understand their own responsibilities. And be sure to hand all recruits a list of numbers they can call to report breaches of policy—or violations of federal law.

For the male who sits back, crosses his arms, rolls his eyes, and suggests that women should make the coffee or sweep out the command van? Bring out the two-by-four. If that doesn't work, show him the door. For the cop who thinks it's funny to call women “split tails”? Forget the two-by-four.

CHAPTER 11

SEXUAL PREDATORS IN UNIFORM

S
GT
. H
ARRY
P
AUL
H
EATHERINGTON
,
SDPD's background investigator, settled into the one chair in our tiny living room. Dottie and I sat on the couch and listened to his lecture on the “Three Bs”: booze, bills, and broads. A few drinks was all right, kind of expected, but get shitfaced and embarrass the chief? You're toast. And if the department received even a single letter from a creditor? “Well, you can kiss your shiny new badge goodbye,” said Heatherington. Okay, okay. But what about the broads?

He waited until my nineteen-year-old wife went off to the kitchen for coffee refills and slabs of chocolate cake. Then he leaned forward, put his face up to mine, and said, “You a cockhound, Stamper?”

“A . . . a . . . what?”

“A cockhound. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

I'm afraid he did. I'd just embarked on the most exciting career imaginable, my thoughts riveted on helping people, busting bad guys, preventing mayhem. What did my
sexual
habits have to do with anything? It was beyond my comprehension that a policeman would even
think
about screwing himself out of a job.

My naïveté didn't last long.

In my first year I rode with a cop who spent half the shift trying to pick up nurses in the ER, carhops at Oscar's, or women who'd called the police to report a prowler. One summer night I drove into an elementary school parking lot and interrupted a veteran cop having his knob polished in the front seat of his police car. Over the years I would see it all: cops fingering and fondling prisoners, making bogus traffic stops of attractive women, trading freedom for a blow job with a hooker, making “love” with a fourteen-year-old police explorer scout, sodomizing children in a spouse's day care center.

And this: In 1986, on-duty California Highway Patrol officer Craig Peyer strangled a San Diego State University student named Cara Knott and threw her body off a seventy-foot bridge. Motive? She'd resisted his sexual advances.

Across the country cops continue to use their uniforms and their authority to pester and pounce on women. East Palo Alto cop Shawn Wildman lived up to his name when he fondled a domestic violence victim, then ordered her to expose herself; later, he stalked and harassed her. He was fired for that, and for groping a carload of young women. Frank Wright, a Suffolk County, New York, police officer gave female drunk-driving suspects on Long Island a choice: they could strip for him or go to jail. He pled guilty to two felony and two misdemeanor charges in federal court. A Texas cop, thirty-two-year-old Craig Ochoa, lost his job after he was found to have had sex with two teenage girls. Michael Benes was arrested for assault, aggravated rape, and aggravated sexual assault when he attacked a Nashville woman who'd called to report a vicious dog (he shot the dog). David Brame, Tacoma's police chief, had raped a woman he dated in 1988, using his service weapon to intimidate her (see
chapter 1
). Another Tacoma cop, thirty-nine-year-old Michael Torres, was recently charged with four counts of sexual assault on a minor—having won a staring contest with her, he claimed his spoils: oral sex from a seven-year-old.

Just how many cops are child molesters, sexual predators? Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck, in their 2002 report “Driving While Female: A National Problem in Police Misconduct,” present research they conducted by examining news media reports from 1990 to 2001. They found
hundreds
of such cases, but describe their estimates as “conservative.” Why? Because (1) they examined only substantiated cases that had resulted in criminal sanctions; (2) many victims of this form of police abuse are reluctant to come forward, citing humiliation and/or fear of reprisals; and (3) too many police departments do a lousy job of accepting and investigating citizen complaints (this is especially true in those organizations whose bosses believe they “know” their cops: “That doesn't sound like Jim. Why he'd never do a thing like that . . .”).

Every time a new case breaks, police chiefs and unions contend that the “overwhelming majority” of their officers would never abuse the badge in
this fashion, a truism I'm delighted to confirm. But sexual predation by police officers happens far more often than people in the business are willing to admit. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania recently ordered an investigation into 163 incidents of sexual misconduct within the state police, dating back to 1995. Fourteen troopers have been fired (though four, thus far, have been rehired, the result of appeals to a labor arbiter).

My cautious guess is that about 5 percent of America's cops are on the prowl for women. In a department the size of Seattle's that's sixty-three police officers. In San Diego, 145. In New York City, 2,000. The average patrol cop makes anywhere from ten to twenty unsupervised contacts a shift. If he's on the make, chances are a predatory cop will find you. Or your wife, your partner, your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend.

During my tenure as a police administrator, sustained allegations of sexual misconduct (a guilty finding) outnumbered proven allegations of racial discrimination on an order of fifty to one (only partly attributable to the unwillingness of police agencies to acknowledge their racists). “Racial profiling” is a ghastly problem in American policing, but sexual “mischief” is its nasty little secret.

Sexual predators in uniform are predominantly male, and overwhelmingly straight. Of the scores of disciplinary and criminal cases I saw in San Diego and in Seattle only two, one in each city, involved women or gay officers.
*

Heaven knows, there
are
temptations in police work, and I'd be lying if I say I hadn't been tempted. While still in the academy I stopped a fire-engine red TR-3 early one evening. It contained a luscious brunette whose lipstick and manicured nails matched her low-slung ride. I took her license, told her I was going to cite her for speeding.

“Oh, officer,” she purred. “Do you have to?”

“Yes, ma'am. I have to.”

“Are you
sure
?” She parted her lips, licked them, batted her big brown eyes.

“Can't we settle this out of court?”

I pursed my thin lips and shook my head. But she wasn't about to give up just because I wouldn't give in. She parted her legs and hiked her skirt to reveal panties in the familiar color, and she kept hiking . . . all the way up. I gawked, but took out my Bic and started writing. Over my ticket book I could see her long, tan fingers working the buttons of her silk blouse. I couldn't find the words to stop her—not that I would have necessarily used them. But when I handed her the ticket she clamped her legs shut and called me an asshole.