An Irish Cop With a Difference : Officer Doyle Has a Heritage of Moxie . . . and Compassion

“One day this guy on PCP came up to me, cursing. He reached for my badge but he grabbed my tie instead, and he started hitting me.

“I went to my Mace,” said Officer Adrienne Doyle, illustrating her life as a policewoman. “But it affected me more than it affected him, so I took out my baton and just kept swinging until he could be handcuffed.”

A four-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Doyle, 27, is tall, vivacious and assertive. With a master’s degree and promotions, she is paid $38,000 a year. Her LAPD assignments have ranged from routine patrol to narcotics to vice (where she pretended to be a street-corner prostitute). This is her story:

One time my girlfriend and I were watching TV when suddenly on the screen there was (Police Chief) Daryl Gates. He said the LAPD was required by law to recruit women--25% of the entire force by 1990--and he made a strong pitch for women to sign up.

My girlfriend and I sat there laughing. I mean, it seemed hysterically funny to us that anyone might want to be a cop. To us, cops were just jerks who write tickets and take people to jail.

But when I mentioned it to my mother, she said: “Adrienne, that would be the most wonderful thing in the world for you, because you have a sense of authority and you’re really great with people.”

I was very skeptical. The only “wonderful” thing I could see was the starting pay of $25,000 a year. I went in to learn more about it. The recruiters said I didn’t have to take a written test because I had a college degree, but there was an oral interview. I kept saying I didn’t know if I wanted to be a cop, and they kept asking me about my background.

What they found out, I guess, is that I have plenty of moxie, which is something I got from my mother.

I was born in Dublin, the second of three children. My father, like his father before him, was a lithographic printer. My mother was a housewife and caretaker of the children--a traditional role for women in Ireland.

But my mother is non-traditional in the Irish sense. She’s ambitious for herself and for her children. When she heard there were educational opportunities in America, the family moved here, settling in Burbank when I was 4.

My father found work as a printer. My mother looked around and noticed women held jobs outside the home. Her attitude was, “This is really the land of opportunity--isn’t it wonderful?” She signed up for real estate school, got her license and eventually became quite successful at selling real estate.

Her independence influenced me from the time I was a little girl. She tells me I stood there with my hands on my hips, at age 4, and said: “I will wash my hair myself.”

She Does Get By

Being independent and stubborn doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in terrific financial shape. My condo cost $108,000. I paid $20,000 down and the balance is carried at 10 3/4%. This means a huge balloon payment is due in 10 years, except that at some stage I plan to refinance the loan. Right now I pay $800 a month on the mortgage plus $400 a month homeowners’ fees.

I’m also repaying, at the rate of $200 a month, educational loans that helped me to get through school. So I can’t live lavishly but I do get by. I don’t use credit cards. I always try to pay cash. When I need some mad money, to go on a little shopping spree, I’ll take an off-duty security job; one time that involved tossing drunks out of a bar.

Even when I was very young, my mother encouraged me to be independent and to work part-time. At 12--I was tall and claimed to be 16--I was hired as a stock girl at a shoe store in Laurel Plaza, working weekends and a couple of nights during the week. After a year or two I was promoted to cashier and then to sales.

In high school I took a class in psychology and the subject really grabbed me. I had no motivation toward the physical sciences or business subjects. I only wanted to deal with people--and to keep working.

During my school years I had many different jobs. Once I was a waitress--for 20 minutes. The job ended when some guy snapped his fingers and said, ‘I need some coffee.’ I said, ‘Fine, here it is.’ I handed him the pot and walked out. My attitude is: I give respect and I demand respect. You might wonder how I could work the streets as a cop, in situations where people spit in your face. I guess the answer is that my maturity level went up.

Worked Nights at UPS

After two years at (Los Angeles) Valley Junior College, I transferred to UC Irvine. Two girlfriends and I shared a house in San Clemente, studied at UCI and worked nights for United Parcel Service.

At UCI I majored in social ecology, which is an interdisciplinary program embracing criminal justice, psychology and sociology. During my senior year, to fulfill an internship requirement, I worked as an intake counselor for an Orange County methadone maintenance clinic.

How innocent I was! An intake counselor interviews drug addicts to see if they are eligible for the county-sponsored methadone program. When I began, I imagined all the clients were there because they wanted to shake the heroin habit.

The rescuer in me was ready to put everybody on the methadone program. One typical client was a 30-year-old who, when his parents went on vacation, hocked all their furniture in order to buy heroin.

I rushed to the office of the director and recommended the new applicant--let’s call him John Smith--for the program. Our director, an ex-addict himself, looked at the sheet on the man and said: “He’s been coming to us for the last eight years. He wants methadone so he can persuade his probation officer to not put him back in jail.”

Gradually I learned Smith had hocked his parents’ furniture many times. He was chronologically 30 but emotionally about 12. His parents kept feeding into his sickness by going out and repurchasing the furniture, again and again, and letting him have access to the house.

Interning on the county methadone program, dealing with a series of sociopaths, it became obvious to me that people had to be helped at much younger ages. It was something I’d be interested in doing, but at that particular time it was not something I could deal with.

My routine was frantic. My day began at 6 or 7 o’clock in San Clemente. I’d drive to Irvine for three or four classes, with maybe 30 minutes in between to study and have lunch. In mid-afternoon I would leave the campus and drive to the methadone clinic at the south end of Anaheim. Then I’d leave the clinic in time to arrive at the other end of Anaheim by 5 o’clock, when my shift began at United Parcel Service. I finished at UPS at 10 and drove back to San Clemente. By the time I had everything together for the next day, it was midnight or later. That meant five or six hours’ sleep and then off to classes again.

What this routine did was pay my tuition, books, rent and other expenses. I didn’t think about it in terms of being too much or too stressful. I’m stubborn and independent, and I kept seeing it as a means to an end.

At some point the extremely full schedule eased up just a little bit and I had a relationship with a guy that I thought I was going to marry. But he turned out to be a very lovable flake. He was maybe 33--I was 21--and he felt threatened because I was academically inclined and achievement oriented. He was against my going to graduate school, and I really resented that attitude. It took me a while but when I realized he was probably not the ideal mate, we broke up.

Worked in Drug Rehab

After I enrolled at Chapman College, studying for a master’s in counseling psychology, I also became like an assistant therapist at a CareUnit, working on drug rehabilitation with kids in the 11 to 17 age group.

Right in the middle of these two big activities--and about halfway through the master’s program--I happened to see that TV commercial, with Daryl Gates urging women to join the LAPD. So there I was being interviewed, and I kept saying I didn’t know if I wanted to be a cop.

I figured my independent attitude really blew my chances. I was surprised when I received a letter saying I’d scored 97 on the oral interview. There were other tests, including psychological, but the only one I worried about was physical agilities.

I knew I wasn’t in shape. I quit smoking and began running and doing pull-ups. It took three months of hard work, and when I passed the physical, I let out a scream that you could hear for miles.

But this was just for openers, this was just to get into the police academy--that’s where the real physical challenge began.

The police academy routine was so grueling that I took a leave of absence from the master’s program at Chapman. In academic things I was like almost top of the class, but the physical stuff had me scared to death.

The way I handle friction or tension or stress is, I smile. So I’d smile and my physical training instructor would say, “Doyle, wipe that smirk off your face.” And the penalty was to do 50 push-ups.

If I didn’t smile the instructor might twist my tie bar and say, “Why’s your tie bar crooked?” and I’d have to do 50 push-ups. Whenever I saw the instructor at a distance, I tried to dodge him. Understand, even if you are in tip-top shape, you cannot keep doing push-ups all day long, so the instructor would say, “You owe me 50,” meaning you’d have to work them off at another time.

In addition to push-ups there were burpies, which are practically the death of a recruit. Burpies are like a five-part exercise combining calisthenics and aerobics. The goal was to do 125 sit-ups in three minutes and 28 burpies in a minute. There was also the obstacle course and climbing a wall.

I did all that, but I had problems with pull-ups. Most women do, because of lack of upper body strength. I’d also get into trouble keeping up in the runs through the hills of Elysian Park. Realistically, I don’t know how important it is to run seven miles at a fast clip, because when you’re on the street you don’t chase someone on foot for seven miles; you just call the air unit. But I’d run my hardest and the instructor must have thought I was sand-bagging, because he’d say, “Doyle, when we get back, you owe me 50 push-ups.”

Another part of the training was self-defense, where you are taught kicks, and how to block, and how to use your baton, and such things. In the class just before mine, six out of seven girls failed the self-defense test. When my turn came, I was scared to death. I was so anxious, I couldn’t perform. My partner knocked me over, I hit my head and blacked out.

I was allowed to take the test a second time. I went to my sergeant and I said, “Sir, I’m going to kill him if I have to, but I’m going to graduate.” I passed the test.

It’s hard to get across how tough the total training was at the police academy. We had 17 girls start in our class and only four or five graduated. I was at the bottom of the list physically, but in my favor my academics score was like 92.

I was assigned to patrol duty in Van Nuys. The men at the station were very uneasy about a woman working among them. They’d say things like, “Why don’t you go be a model or something? Why do you want to be a cop?” And I’d say, “Look, I don’t need to tell you why I want to be anything. But I am depending on you to save my life, if you have to, as you can depend on me.”

There was a lot of pressure from my peers, enough to put me into tears at times. But I was lucky--I always had good partners. They understood my feelings. Like, if I walk up to a car and I have my gun out, it’s because I’m scared to death. Now, it’s OK for me to say I’m scared. But somehow for a guy who’s 6-foot-4 and macho , he can’t admit that.

The Hells Angels Caper

Some guys will say, “Never ask for a back-up unless you really need one.” OK, that’s part of the John Wayne syndrome. My personal attitude is: “Ask for a back-up anyway, and if you don’t need one, then you just have an extra body there.” I simply feel more comfortable than many of the guys do, asking for back-up.

I had good training officers and I learned a lot. One time my partner and I pulled over a bunch of what we called gangbangers, four or five guys packed into a car. My partner covered us while I searched the guys. Afterward my partner, who was a training officer, said: “Adrienne, you blew it, you could have been dead.” Meaning I had neglected to search a certain area and if they’d had a gun there, I’d be finished.

Another time a partner and I pulled over 18 Hells Angels, to write out citations for speeding. We got back-up units and meantime I stood there with my shotgun. The Hells Angels, facing away from us, kept turning around and fidgeting and looking at me. I took the loudspeaker and I said, “You guys are making me nervous. If you don’t stop turning around, I am going to hit the trigger of this shotgun.”

We gave them all citations but later on my sergeant phoned to say threats were coming in against me, and he said: “Maybe we should have Metro division come and sleep at your house.” I said, “I think I’d be safer with those Hells Angels.”

I worked patrol in a car for 20 months, and I learned I can be friends with a police officer but never to be involved romantically. I went out with one once and discovered it’s like belonging to a bridge club: if something happens in Van Nuys, they know about it in Harbor Division in 22 seconds.

But the real point is, you’re in a car with a partner for 8, 10, 12 hours a day, and you spend more time with him than his wife does. You begin to get feelings for him. But then you say: “Wait a minute, these are feelings for my partner, not for somebody I could love or marry.” It’s very important to make that distinction and to keep your social life outside the department.

I was lucky enough to get different kinds of assignments. Narcotics borrowed me to work like sort of a stand-in, on cases where a guy needed a girl to go with him on an assignment.

Vice borrowed me at times for the “trick task force.” You stand out there in plainclothes on the sidewalk and some John comes up and solicits you. It took a bit of training. My lieutenant would be across the street, waving desperately at me, and afterward he’d tell me: “Adrienne, you can’t say, ‘Pardon me?’ when a guy propositions you. Hookers don’t talk that way. They say, ‘What do you want, buddy?’ ”

Studied at Night

After a time I enrolled again in the graduate program at Chapman College, studying at night and then doing a full year of interning at night as a family counselor. It was a rough routine, like going to the police academy all over again. Last May I got my master’s in counseling psychology.

At the same time I wanted to advance (in the LAPD), but when the word got around that I was going to class, some guys said, “Oh, yeah, Doyle’s a squint.” That’s a derogatory term for someone who’s always studying and stays in a staff job rather than becoming a real cop. There’s a lot of peer pressure and you don’t want to be called a squint. I could feel the resentment so I kind of kept my studies under my hat.

But I’m ambitious. I looked through the rotator every day to see what positions were available in different departments. When I noticed a new drug education unit was being started, to work in the elementary schools with fifth and sixth graders, I applied for it. At first my bosses turned me down, saying in effect that I just didn’t have the qualifications or seniority.

I said, “Listen, if anybody can educate, I can educate.” I told them about the drug rehabilitation work I had done earlier, and I kept reciting my credentials, including my counseling experience. They were skeptical, but when they finally accepted 10 out of 60 candidates, I was included. I was the only girl.

The program I’m attached to is called DARE, which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. To do the job--which required some 300 hours of special training and meant a promotion in rank--we are each assigned to five schools for a full semester, with one day a week at each of the five schools.

We work with fifth and sixth graders, mostly 10 and 11 year olds, because we’re dealing with prevention and not intervention. The goal is to reach the kids before they are offered drugs. We talk about self-esteem. We talk about peer pressure: how to identify it and how to resist it. We talk about the kinds of risks where you cannot possibly win.

Winning Their Trust

We are not in the schools in an enforcement capacity. If we identify a problem requiring police action, we notify the station to send out a car, but we do not get involved. We’re in the schools only to teach, to befriend the children, to win their trust and to reduce drug abuse.

I live with a certain kind of stress: I’m an obsessive-compulsive. I want to keep bettering myself. The minimal amount of law I studied in the (police) academy was fascinating to me, and right now I’m thinking seriously about to going to law school at night. It would take four years to get my law degree.

People say to me, “What on earth are you doing, Adrienne? Why are you always going to school?” My feeling is, hey, I am my own person. I really believe in the cliche about the land of opportunity. I’m ambitious and I always want to do what I can do. I’m kind of a stubborn character.