Ann Young Hits New Plateau in LAPD

Nineteen-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran Ann Young was appointed captain this week, becoming the highest-ranking African American woman in the department’s 131-year history.

Young, the acting head of the Van Nuys Division’s detective unit, will assume formal command of that group Sunday.

Although she now breaks glass ceilings, at one time, Young, 47, couldn’t get onto the Police Department’s ground floor. She was too short to join the force when she graduated from UCLA in the ‘70s.

“I always wanted to be a police officer because I remember the foot officers walking the beat back in New York,” said Young, who was sworn in as captain on Tuesday. “They had a height requirement of 5-7,” she said. “I was only 5-2. So I went back to school to get my teaching certification.”

She chose not to leave her “unfulfilling” teaching career when the department first dropped the height requirement, but Young finally responded in 1980 to an LAPD effort to recruit more women officers. That wave of recruits, she said, is just reaching the point in their careers when numbers of them will ascend into the top ranks. Young’s number just came up first.

“I think that, because most of us who came in the early ‘80s became lieutenants at about the same time,” Young said. “So, a lot of it has to do with timing. Please don’t think I’m trying to say it was easy. The positions were here, but we couldn’t go from patrol officer I to captain.

“This has been a road. There haven’t always been open doors. Sometimes you take assignments you don’t like because you want to stay on that road. You think about suing because things don’t seem right. Then there’s another way to go and you decide to take it instead.”

Young’s career took her through stints in undercover narcotics, internal affairs and divisions throughout the city. She moved to the San Fernando Valley a year ago to take over as lieutenant in charge of Van Nuys detectives. On Sunday, she replaces Capt. Sean Kane, who left the department to work with the Democratic National Convention.

Police spokesman John Pasquariello said the 9,379-officer department has eight African American men serving as police captains.

“We congratulate and acknowledge Capt. Young’s commitment to excellence in law enforcement service,” Pasquariello said.