not far from the Jacksonville police headquarters, a pulled-over motorist awaits his speeding ticket from a uniformed officer. It's a benign scene, just a garden-variety case of midday lead foot, and something most people pass by without noticing.
But what does catch the eye, at least of the out-of-towner, is the uniformed officer writing the citation is a woman, something that remains a statistical anomaly in police work.
As the Bureau of Justice Statistics noted in 2020, only slightly more than one in 10 sworn police officers in city and county departments nationwide is female, a ratio that's been largely unchanged since the 1980s after growing from just 3% in the 1970s.
But not in Jacksonville. Here, women make up nearly a third of the patrol force and almost half of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). In fact, the numbers run so contrary to national averages here that only 11% of support jobs are held by women, the very roles to which women have more typically been relegated.
"I've never had a whole lot of backlash as far as not being accepted here," said Capt. Kimberly Lett of the CID, who has been with the Jacksonville department more than two decades. "Jacksonville has always had a good ratio of female officers, even 22 years ago.
"You have to prove yourself; the biggest thing that people wonder is can you handle yourself if it got hands-on out there. I can't ever say that I've ever felt like they question my ability, but it is something you have to prove."
The department's female detectives and officers have been doing just that — proving themselves, with distinction — for years. According to department records, women have been honored for outstanding service in most departmental commendation categories, including Officer of the Year, Detective of the Year, Meritorious Service, Life Saving and the Medal of Valor.
A reputation for providing opportunity and recognition attracts new women to the department. While women used to apply in drips and drabs, it's becoming more common to have multiple female officers hired at one time.
"Just this week I got several applications, and I have more women than I expected,"
said Sgt. Quatiesha Otey, who's coming up on eight years on the force and who handles professional standards, hiring and accreditation. "Prior to this, it was kind of hit and miss. It was more men, it seemed like. This time, I noticed it's a lot of females."
Some of the applicants are applying to the department as a primary career move while others are coming to the profession after starting down different paths. Lett began as a first responder, for example, while Lt. Cassie Blackerby was encouraged to apply to the department by her neighbor.
"Our chief of police was actually my neighbor, and I saw him going to work all the time," she said. "I had a very young child and I knew that what he was doing was making a difference. I thought if I could do something like that, I could help raise my kid in a world that I would want him to be raised in, to keep the bad away from him."
Community service is another common motivation among the women of the Jacksonville Police Department, as well as a primary source of job satisfaction.
"Growing up, I had a lot of bad things happen to me and that kind of pushed me into law enforcement in order to help people," said Ofc. Heather Rappold, a negotiation and field training officer. "I was probably 16 or 17 when I started to really want to make a difference and prevent other people from going through what I went through. I got into it to make a difference in somebody's life."
FAMILY PUSHBACK
Deciding to pursue this career comes with challenges, of course, and they don't always originate from the direction you'd expect. Many times, the pushback against women in uniform isn't from co-workers or supervisors, it's the disapproval of people in their personal circle.
"I grew up in a family where we couldn't even watch 'COPS' in my house," Otey said with a laugh. "That was because of the experiences some of my family members had with police officers in the past. All police officers are not bad, but some people had experiences with officers where it was not a good experience for them, so it made them hate all cops.
"You can imagine when I told my family that I was going to be a police officer; being the first one in my family to do it, it was a big deal. I had a lot of resistance at first. Now they see that I'm really good at it and they love it."
CALMING INFLUENCE
Whatever resistance there is to women on the force — be it systemic in the community or fomented in the ranks — experts agree that policing is more effective with females on the force. According to Police Chief magazine, women are consistently rated as trusted by their communities, possessing high levels of interpersonal communication skills, and they are found to have a calming effect on male partners in high-stress, dangerous assignments.
"Female officers are less likely to use force, use excessive force or be named in a lawsuit than male officers," wrote Ivonne Roman, retired chief of the Newark, N.J., police department. "Even though studies show that subjects use the same amount of force against female officers as against male officers, and in some cases more force, female officers are more successful in defusing violent or aggressive behavior."
Research by economists at the University of Zurich and the University of Virginia (see arkansasonline.com/613zurich) found that departments with a greater female police presence receive more reports from the public about domestic abuse and sex crimes. This, in turn, leads to lower rates of homicide by an intimate partner and lower incidences of repeated domestic abuse, as well as higher reporting and clearance rates of rape cases.
Detective Sierra Lee is a living case in point for these findings. She said she started contemplating a career in law enforcement during high school, in part to work specifically on sex crimes and crimes against children, as she does now. She has worked cases involving survivors as young as infants.
"I knew there weren't too many females in law enforcement, even though in working these specific cases it's normally helpful for the victims. They can find some more comfort in it," she said. "People don't want to believe that these crimes exist. But unfortunately, they do happen. Somebody's got to be there to work them, and somebody's got to be motivated to get justice for those victims."
Jacksonville Chief of Police Brett Hibbs, who started as a patrolman in the city 27 years ago, said the department's ability to attract and retain female officers not only helps maintain staffing levels, but reflects the makeup of the community, a key to community policing.
"We have a large, diverse police force," he said. "We mirror our community and I think that builds a good rapport. Our department has always been, I feel, different than the rest. We are different in that we're a place where people can fit in. We've always been LGBT-friendly. We've hired all kinds of different people, we get along and we welcome anybody.
"I think in the old days, there were a lot of the old guys who didn't like women in police work because they didn't think they could do it. It was a rough-and-tumble world back then, that was the way law enforcement viewed itself. I think that's changing now."
COMRADES IN ARMS
Well-publicized incidents in which police have abused the public trust, such as the murder of George Floyd, add to the stress of careers that are difficult no matter an officer's sex or work assignment. The women interviewed said personal relationships and mental health issues are as complicated for female officers as their male counterparts, if not more so. Many said their spouse or partner was also in law enforcement, and they reported losing friends and family who couldn't relate to the demands of the job.
"When you first get into it, your friends change. You end up becoming better friends with people in law enforcement because they can relate to what you're going through," Rappold said. "My boyfriend actually works here, on patrol. He knows that certain people don't want to hear about what we do, so he'll let me unload it all on him.
"My parents, they're not thrilled that I'm a police officer. Not that they don't support the police, it's that I'm the only daughter on both sides of the family, and I tell them about the pursuits and the fights we get into and they're like, 'You can't be doing that.' What I tell them is not normally all the details. They don't want to picture me in those situations. When you get into law enforcement, it kind of consumes your life. That's all you do."
Despite these demands, the women say they wouldn't trade their career -- and the hard-won street cred that has come with it -- for anything. The mission, they say, is too important.
"The first day that I was working, we got into a pursuit. It was a vehicle pursuit, then it was a foot pursuit," Blackerby said. "I came home and was so excited. I reached out to my mom and I was thrilled. It was just like adrenaline going through me.
"She's like, 'I want you to quit. I want you to quit right now.' I was like, 'I can't do that.'
"I dedicated myself to Jacksonville Feb. 7, 2007. I said this is where I was going to be and I'm not leaving. We've had hard times. We've had good times. We've had harder times. Everybody wants to jump ship sometimes; the waves get bad everywhere. You just depend on the group that you're going to be holding onto the side of the boat with.
"I know there are certain things that I can do and certain things that I can't do, but it's going to be here. This is my dedication."