NONFICTION - June 18, 1995

BREAKING & ENTERING: Women Cops Talk About Life in the Ultimate Men’s Club by Connie Fletcher (HarperCollins: $23; 298 pp.). It’s been decades since women became full-fledged police officers, and by now you’d think the thin blue line would be pretty well integrated. The policewomen interviewed for this book say different; as one told Connie Fletcher, a journalism professor at Loyola University, “You have more problems with the people that you work with than you do with the bad guys on the street.” Fletcher, author of two previous books on police work, talked with more than a hundred women in various branches of law enforcement, and although most at some point had good things to say about their male peers, they also agreed that policing is a men’s club in which women are treated as second-class citizens. “Breaking & Entering” doesn’t hold many surprises--male cops tend to act macho before female officers, berate policewomen for making mistakes laughed off when committed by policemen--but provides good dish and chilling war stories. The policeman who read his own poetry to a female partner; the forensic artist whose family complained about the stink emanating from a skull brought home for reconstruction; the California Highway Patrol officer who may have died during a shootout because he took the time, as taught at the academy, to pocket his spent shells; the police wives described as “four thousand pounds and Capri pants and you know, the hair was out to here, and there’s about twenty- four buzzing bees in their beehive hairdos and they’re all married to these slugs that you wouldn’t look at on a bad day and they’re worried we’re going to seduce their husbands.” One policewoman also dispenses an excellent bit of advice; if you find yourself needing a bathroom in the middle of the night, head for the nearest fire station.