‘Calamity Jane’ Officer Is Out but Not Down

A Santa Monica police officer, dubbed Calamity Jane because she was stabbed, beaten, shot at and smashed up during a bizarre rookie year, said she resigned last week after being refused a permanent job by superiors who said her injury-related absences left too little duty time to evaluate.

Anita McKeown, 24, whose on-the-job injuries kept her off the job for all but two of her first 12 months, said she was notified last Monday that she would not pass probation. She formally resigned that day so that she could start again as a rookie officer. McKeown will begin probation anew Aug. 22, she said.

In five separate incidents during an eight-month period, the fledgling officer was beaten up, hacked at with a butcher knife, shot at twice, run over by a drunk driver and nearly crushed in a high-speed stolen-car chase.

McKeown could not be hired permanently, her bosses contended, because the battered officer--still laid up with a broken ankle and sternum, a bruised heart and blurred vision from a June 10 crash--had not spent enough time on the job to show that she could do it, she said.

“They said that I didn’t prove myself enough on the days I was there,” she said.

To her, the explanation sounded like a “Catch 22,” paradoxical and impossible to refute. How could she show she was a good officer if injured and off duty, she wondered?

“The last crash I had was my fault,” she said. “I was going too fast. But all of the others weren’t my fault, and they never said they were.”

Santa Monica Police Capt. Billy King, McKeown’s superior, could not be reached for comment Sunday. Officers on duty refused comment, saying that only King could speak on the issue.

McKeown said she was disappointed and surprised by the department’s decision, “but I have to understand their point of view too. They’ve never had a situation like this before.”

She said she is determined to complete her second rookie year. “I just want to go through with it.”

The star-crossed McKeown’s first year began with a rattlesnake bite and a dislocated shoulder at the Police Academy and continued in the department with two concussions, a wrenched back, a twice-broken ankle and several other injuries, .

Hurt by Drunk Driver

Then, while on patrol last Nov. 9, McKeown hurt her back and broke a finger while wrestling to the ground a drunk driver who had fled on foot.

Six weeks later, a man whom she was questioning about making too much neighborhood noise pulled a butcher knife and stabbed her repeatedly in the chest. A bulletproof vest saved her life, but her hand was badly cut. A second man put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger, but the weapon produced only a click. A blow to the head drove her to the ground and into the hospital.

As incidents and injuries mounted, she was pegged Calamity Jane in squad room legend and cartoons penned by a fellow officer.

When McKeown went back to work in early February, a drunk driver ran through road flares and smashed into her.

After another six weeks off and 23 workdays without injury, passengers in a car she was pulling over for a broken taillight fired several shots into her patrol car and led a pack of officers for a wild chase.

Finally, six weeks ago, a traffic stop led to another high-speed chase that ended with several serious injuries from which she is still recovering.

By then, friends and relatives were encouraging McKeown to reconsider a career in psychology, in which she holds a degree from California State University, Northridge. Her boyfriend, a Los Angeles police officer, was proud of her grit but “desperate” for her to resign. Even she considered abandoning the profession.

But now, faced with rejection, McKeown is determined to succeed. “But I just hope next year is not like this year,” she said.