O.C. Far Below Average in Hiring Female Police

Despite numerous attempts over the last decade to diversify their ranks, Orange County’s police departments still lag behind the national average when it comes to employing female officers.

Women make up about 14% of sworn officers nationally, but they account for about 9% of the ranks in Orange County, according to information provided by all 22 agencies. The number represents a slight increase from 1989, when the county average was about 8%.

A few departments such as Irvine and Anaheim have made significant strides over the last decade, more than doubling the number of female officers, while others continue to struggle. Of Santa Ana’s 365 officers, for example, only 13 are women. In Newport Beach, six of the city’s 137 officers are women.

The imbalance has led Sheriff Mike Carona to begin a push to hire women, including recruitment at sports clubs and women’s colleges. The department is also instituting a program that helps female applicants pass the physical tests.

While experts and law enforcement officials said the sheriff’s move is a step in the right direction, they believe local law enforcement agencies have to do more.

“For some women, it’s not seen as a viable career,” said Anaheim police Sgt. Joe Vargas. “Maybe that’s partly our fault that we’re not getting out the message that it can be a great career for women.”

Officials cite several factors for Orange County’s low numbers, including a vibrant local economy that gives women wider employment opportunities than in other parts of the nation. Others said that unlike other professions, police work still places barriers between women and choice assignments.

“It’s difficult being a woman in this line of work,” said Capt. Catherine Zurn, the highest-ranking woman at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “They always had to fight to get accepted. . . . Some men are not used to having female peers. They’ll say, ‘We tried one and she didn’t work out.’ ”

Despite these attitudes, officials said there are many practical reasons to increase the ranks of women. Consider:

* Overtime is on the rise at the Central Women’s Jail, where there are not enough female prison guards to oversee inmates. Something as routine as a guard needing a bathroom break can require a strategy worthy of a chess game as jail captains try to reassign shifts while not leaving a post unattended.

* Some experts believe more female officers would help in responding to crimes against women, such as rape. While this view admittedly plays into certain gender stereotypes, the experts said it’s important to have different types of people policing the streets.

“The presence of women creates a different atmosphere,” said former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, now a Stanford University researcher. “It brings empathy to an atmosphere that can be crushing. . . . Their mere presence makes it a more humane organization. So it’s in the interest of the departments.”

Agencies Reject Strict Quotas

Police agencies elsewhere have taken drastic action to address the imbalance. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, hires one woman for every four men to comply with a court order. About 18% of the LAPD’s ranks are now women, compared with 3% before the order.

But most Orange County departments reject this type of strict quota system and point out they have made strides in diversifying their agencies in other ways. Santa Ana’s department has only 4% women but for years had required that all new hires be bilingual.

The department last year dropped that requirement for officers transferring from other agencies in an effort attract more applicants, especially women.

Cpl. Gene McManus, a recruiter for the Santa Ana Police Department, said few women apply despite an effort to target more female recruits. The department has placed ads in the Women Peace Officers Assn. of California journal and actively recruits at colleges and schools.

At the Anaheim Police Department, where 9% of the officers are women, officials are also frustrated with the lack of female applicants. During the last round of recruiting, only about 45 of the 388 total applications came from women.

“It’s subtle. Somehow women don’t feel welcome,” said Westminster Police Capt. Andrew Hall.

“It’s tough enough to break into a male business,” Hall said. “It takes a concerted effort by the managers and police chiefs. I think a lot of people don’t care if there’s women in policing or not. They think they have more pressing concerns.”

Departments such as Irvine and Laguna Beach appear to attract more women candidates than most agencies and have the highest percentage of female cops in the county.

“We try to use our women officers to help us recruit others,” said Irvine Police Chief Charles Brobeck. “The women we have hired weren’t hired because they were women but because they were excellent candidates. . . . We’re gender neutral, and that’s positive.”

Brobeck said he too is somewhat puzzled at his department’s appeal to women recruits. “I wish I could put a finger on it,” he said. “Irvine has a good reputation. Candidates are pretty savvy. They choose [jobs] where they are going to flourish.”

Irvine, Laguna Beach and Los Alamitos are the only departments in Orange County to approach or exceed the national average for women officers, which various studies, including a recent report by the National Center for Women and Policing, place at 14%.

Lack of Deputies Problem at Jail

But even the county’s top agencies don’t compare with the record in Palo Alto, where a quarter of the department’s 93 officers are women. The department has been aggressively seeking female cops for years and has a goal of 50%. Recruits “know there are women of rank here and that any sort of harassment will be handled appropriately,” said Palo Alto Lt. Alana Forrest.

Orange County’s struggles to catch up are felt acutely by Zurn, a top sheriff’s captain who oversees the care of 2,800 inmates at the Central Women’s Jail in Santa Ana. Finding enough women to staff the jail is difficult, and she is currently 18% understaffed when it comes to female deputies, she said.

She said women generally leave law enforcement earlier in their careers than men, citing a variety of reasons from job dissatisfaction to better job offers to family concerns.

Although in her experience overt discrimination against women is rare, resistance still exists in some quarters, she said.

“There are pockets in the department that still have to work through the issue of having women as peers,” Zurn said.

As evidence she cites the special squads.

“Female deputies can go undercover as hookers for eight hours, but no women work on the vice squad,” said Zurn, explaining that the occasional job as an undercover decoy is not as prestigious as being a regular member of the squad.

There are no women on the 26-man narcotics squad, and none in the 15-deputy homicide department.

Zurn said she faced skepticism firsthand when she became the department’s first female captain. “When I got promoted, [some of] the men said, ‘We knew she’d get promoted because we needed a female captain.’ And I’m thinking, you [expletive]. I earned it.”

Still, Zurn said the treatment of female deputies has improved during her 20 years on the job, and she believes women just entering the profession will break new ground.

Officer Carol Salvatierra is five years into her career. Recently she transferred to the Santa Ana Police Department, where she says the women’s locker room is a lonely place.

But being one of the few women in the department is not a problem, and discrimination within the department has never been an issue, she said.

Salvatierra said women can have an advantage dealing with some suspects because they appear less threatening than men, but she is quick to add that gender is not the most important issue. It’s all about personality.

“I don’t think one is better than the other. To be a good officer, you need a specific personality: You need to like people, be understanding and be willing to listen,” she said. “You’re there to serve the community.”

Police trainers said that while getting women interested in law enforcement is difficult, they tend to be strongly committed once they join.

David Barr, a former La Palma police chief who now heads the Golden West College Criminal Justice Training Center, said a key barrier for women is the rigorous physical tests that departments require.

All recruits have to scale a 6-foot wall, one of several requirements more challenging to women who have less upper body strength than men.

Women often have to work much harder to pass the physical tests, he said. But having less physical strength than men does not make women less suited to a career in law enforcement, Barr said.

“It used to be thought that you had to be a gorilla to be a cop, but women can do this job,” Barr said. “When you have two male egos competing, many times a woman can step in and calm things down.”

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Playing Catch-Up

Orange County police departments fall behind the national average when it comes to employing women. On average, the departments employ about 9% women. Here is the breakdown by law agency.

1989

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# of females Percent of Rank City on staff staff Anaheim 18 6 11 Brea 6 7 9 Buena Park 2 2 21 Costa Mesa 7 5 13 Cypress 4 8 8 Fountain Valley 6 10 4 Fullerton 11 8 7 Garden Grove 8 5 12 Huntington Beach 6 3 20 Irvine 8 7 10 La Habra 1 2 22 La Palma 1 4 16 Laguna Beach 7 15 1 Los Alamitos 1 4 19 Newport Beach 6 4 18 OC Sheriff* 135 13 2 Orange 6 4 15 Placentia 4 8 6 Santa Ana 15 4 17 Seal Beach 4 11 3 Tustin 5 8 5 Westminster 4 5 14 TOTAL 265 7.7%

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2000

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# of females Percent of Rank City on staff staff Anaheim 37 9 8 Brea 9 9 9 Buena Park 5 5 17 Costa Mesa 8 6 15 Cypress 3 5 16 Fountain Valley 7 11 6 Fullerton 13 9 11 Garden Grove 10 7 14 Huntington Beach 11 5 19 Irvine 21 13 2 La Habra 6 8 12 La Palma 3 12 4 Laguna Beach 8 16 1 Los Alamitos 3 13 3 Newport Beach 6 4 20 OC Sheriff* 162 11 5 Orange 16 10 7 Placentia 2 4 21 Santa Ana 13 4 22 Seal Beach 3 9 10 Tustin 7 8 13 Westminster 5 5 18 TOTAL 358 8.6%

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* Of the 162 female deputies in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, 87 work in the Orange County jail.