By TIM FANNING
USFSP Student Reporter
When 20-year-old Melanie Bevan began as a patrol officer at the St. Petersburg Police Department in 1986, there were three rows of lockers in the women’s locker room. That left plenty of space for a Ping-Pong table, chairs and an ugly brown couch that’s still there today.
But the dynamic changed as Bevan worked through her career.
In 2013, she became one of three assistant chiefs, and by the time she left to become chief of the Bradenton Police Department in 2016, there were seven rows of lockers.
Between 1990 and 2018, the number of female officers serving St. Petersburg climbed from less than 12 percent of the sworn officer corps to 17.8 percent (99 of the 556 officers). The national average is 13 percent.
Some of those women went on to play larger roles in the predominantly male field of law enforcement.
“Now, more than ever, there are more female police chiefs nationwide,” Bevan said. “You can tell by interacting with various agencies that many of us are now ascending to the top of our departments.
“It’s only natural. We’re coming of age. Now we have the experience and the education to ascend to those ranks.”
But as the women who joined America’s police departments in the 1980s or 1990s retire, not enough women are applying to replace them, according to one nationally prominent female officer.
In fact, the number of women in the nation’s police ranks has not changed in almost two decades, according to Deborah Friedl, the vice president of the International Association of Women Police.
“Now we’re finding it harder to recruit and keep qualified female candidates on a nationwide scale,” said Friedl, who has spent 30 years with the Lowell Police Department in Massachusetts and is now deputy superintendent of police there, the first woman to hold that job.
Friedl also worries that the success of officers like herself and Bevan is an anomaly.
Around the country, about 10 percent of police supervisors and managers were women and just 3 percent of local police chiefs were women in 2013 (the latest data available), according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“We’re seeing fewer women enter the academy and becoming officers,” said Friedl. “With fewer women coming in, that means in about 20 years, we won’t see many women in the top decision-making positions. There are already very few women who hold those positions.”
For more than a century, the only police officers in America were men. (And in St. Petersburg, that meant white men; the department did not get its first black officers until the 1960s.)
Historical sources differ on the date, but the first female police officers did not appear until the first decade of the 20th century, and the first female patrol officers did not come until 1968 in Indianapolis, according to the National Center for Women and Policing. Portland, Oregon, was the first major city to get a female police chief — in 1985.
Critics of female police officers – usually men – complain that women don’t have the size and strength to be effective officers.
But female officers and their allies counter that women may be better communicators and problem solvers than many of their male counterparts. Studies and statistics also suggest that female officers are better at dealing with female crime victims, and they are less likely to use excessive force.
In its 115-year history, the St. Petersburg Police Department has never had a female chief.
Maj. Shannon Halstead is the only woman among the 12 uniformed officers in the department’s top echelon. In other leadership positions, there are five female lieutenants and six sergeants, compared to 10 male lieutenants and 43 sergeants.
Halstead, 41, began her career in the early 2000s when the department began a hiring surge of new recruits to replace those who were retiring. In her class of 24, there were eight women, she said.
“Really, about 220 or so officers we have in the department have only been hired in the last five years,” said Halstead, who became acting major of the Crimes Against Persons Division last year.
“That means we have a gap of fewer people in the middle. We have a lot of old dogs and tons of brand new people, but very few in the middle. There’s a whole generation of women behind me that won’t be able to fulfill these upper positions for another 10 years or so.”
There are many possible reasons why women aren’t entering police work in larger numbers, Friedl said. Although research shows that women can be just as effective as men, uneven hiring practices, selection processes and recruitment policies keep the number of women low, she said.
Applying to be a police officer can be a long, grueling process, Friedl said. She wonders if departments need to re-examine the testing process to determine whether there is a lack of interest among women or whether they are failing out of the process.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which called attention to police brutality, law enforcement leaders acknowledged the need to diversify their departments to reflect the communities they serve.
“But diversification usually meant adding more officers of color, not adding more women,” said Friedl.
An 11-member task force that President Barack Obama appointed following a series of serious incidents between police and civilians issued a final report in 2015 that called for police departments to hire more minorities – but not more women.
In fact, in its 10 pages of recommendations for improving police departments, the word “woman” appears only once – in a recommendation that police should not use physical-control techniques against vulnerable people, such as pregnant women.
“That was a missed opportunity to make a difference,” Friedl said.