There was a time when the idea of having female cops seemed silly. After all, they weren’t strong enough, tough enough, threatening enough, to deal with all the bad dudes out there. And yet here we are, with women in blue who are just as familiar with the First Rule of Policing as the guys. And yet, Slate posits that we can fix the excesses of police violence with this one cool trick.
“We’re not the ones out there shooting,” says Janeé Harteau, former chief of police of the Minneapolis Police Department. “This is really about gender at its very core.”
A growing number of police reform advocates say the way to fix the policing problem in America might be to hire more female police officers. In fact, they say gender parity was a key item missing from the conversation when, in the wake of a series of high-profile police shootings of Black Americans in 2020, a federal police reform bill made its way this year to the halls of Congress.
While it’s not quite accurate that men shoot and women don’t, and while this seems to be a rather flagrantly stereotypical view of women that would be anathema to reformers if used in a negative fashion, such as women cops weren’t up to the job, it’s apparently totally acceptable to argue that women are very different from men when it serves their interest.
Yet decades of research has proved what anecdotal evidence has demonstrated for half a century, that compared with their male colleagues, female police officers use less excessive force, are named in fewer complaints and lawsuits, are perceived by communities as more honest and compassionate, see better outcomes for crime victims (especially in sexual assault and domestic violence cases), and make fewer discretionary arrests, especially of Black and Latino people. And, most important, when female officers do stop or arrest people, they are more likely than their male peers to actually find guns or drugs.
Are men more prone to use violence than women, toxic masculinity being what it is? Are women more empathetic than men? Does this have something to do with the kind of guys who want to be cops? Are there enough women who want a shield anyway?
Advocates say increasing the number of female police officers cannot be dismissed as simply a women’s rights issue. “This is about improving public safety outcomes for communities,” McGough says. While millions of dollars have been spent to reduce violence by police officers, including body cameras and training programs, not much has changed, she adds. Reports show that the number of people killed by police still hovers around 1,000 a year.
Two new studies released this year have reinforced earlier findings about women in policing from the ’90s and the early aughts. Despite studies showing that women have better outcomes, the overall pool of policing research is thin. Researchers say the dearth can be attributed to a lack of transparency by police departments over the last several decades.
It’s curious, given that we’re simultaneously faced with arguments that gender shouldn’t matter, that it’s the solution to police reform. Is it? Are men the problem? Will more women in blue be the answer to excessive force and the premature leap to violence? Or is this just facile gender stereotyping that promotes the facile assumptions about empathetic women and will backfire when some perp decides to beat the crap out of the female cop who tells him to “freeze” because what’s she going to do about it?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply/
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False dichotomies of binary biology,
And a ‘study’ you know must be true.
Is all that you need,
When you write your next screed
To get Slate to publish your poo.
GD, please, finish the song! We know you can do it.
Anecdotally, non-binary police are even less prone to violence but more prone to performative excess. Is it the trade off we are looking for?
I saw the Skatalites live at very small venues a few times in 93 and 94. Pretty spectacular.
Can any man resist arrest?
Pretty certain the current veep is Exhibit A in the counterargument to this theory that women and their supposed empathy are the “solution” to problems in the criminal justice system…
By asking such an obvious question, you reveal your misogyny. No one but a sexist would even consider questioning whether we would be better with women.
Are more women “The solution”? No. The referenced article does not come to that conclusion. It also doesn’t suggest there’s something magical and intrinsic about being a woman that makes them better at law enforcement.
It does, however, offer disparate data indicating there is a difference in how individual men and women approach the job, how they execute their responsibilities and the outcomes they achieve.
The article suggests, to me, that more research will be useful -but that’s not exactly a novel conclusion. More specifically, I would vigorously pursue more data and analysis regarding the noted disparities in the educational background of men and women on the job. It’s also not a novel observation that better-educated people have more tools to solve problems, decreasing the likelihood of resorting to violence.
Numbers bore me. Rhetoric is way more exciting. Our research shows that we should do more research is a game for funding isn’t it? When isn’t research a game for funding? Open your pocketbook wide enough and I’ll research whatever answers you want to find, and I might even tip the scales for you.
State your hypothesis, Data Scientist Jake. Do you think we’d be better off with an all woman police force. Assume that we could do it. Or put another way, you have a dollar to fund all the research you want to fund. Does this idea make the cut or are your nickels and dimes better spent elsewhere?
I appreciate your efforts to be careful about what you say and how here, but talking about the research is boring. I’d rather talk about how evil men are. We are incurably toxic, aren’t we? If you and I can’t come to terms by talking it out, we can always have a fight to the death, as is tradition, with history written by the victor and woe to the vanquished.
I dunno, PK. In a country where the amount we spend on law enforcement grows faster than a California wildfire, for incremental gains and widespread, bipartisan disapproval, it might be time to allocate more than a rounding error for research. But if your goal is to convince me that, broadly speaking, research has little to no value, that’s going to be a tough row to hoe.
My hypothesis is smarter cops will be better cops and that means more education. That said, research will be necessary, to test any hypothesis.
As to whether men are incurably toxic, I reject the premise. Men, as a class, are not all toxic, whatever that means. Some are less sophisticated than others. This is true among women as well.
Your other responder doesn’t agree with your studies. Does that help show what I’m getting at by saying it isn’t all about the research? I’m not the one trying to weigh the value of certain studies, so I don’t know why you’re projecting your doubt on me. All I said is that I don’t want to talk about numbers. Sometimes you have to try to be persuasive too.
I shouldn’t have said “incurably”. You showed me that all we need is more Jake-approved training and double blind studies and then all will be well. A panacea does exist.
OK, how about: We need more transparency to stop cops from getting away with crimes like entering your home and murdering your innocent children where they sleep because they got the wrong address on a no-knock warrant.
“More specifically, I would vigorously pursue more data and analysis regarding the noted disparities in the educational background of men and women on the job. It’s also not a novel observation that better-educated people have more tools to solve problems, decreasing the likelihood of resorting to violence.”
Let us know how those Indian schools turn out.
You must realize that your comment reeks of elitism and contempt for working people. There is very little evidence to support your hypothesis, states with higher education standards do not necessarily have better outcomes. That you could read the entire article and come away promoting throwaway statements, which weren’t even supported by the studies the author linked to is not surprising but disappointing.
Of course there’s no difference between men and women! Sex doesn’t even exist. It is a something whatever construct! Of course women are better!
If you are struggling to reconcile these unquestionably true and correct ideas. you might need to take the ADA’s CLE course “Doubleplusgood Doublethink.”
Yet another 1984 reference. Comrade McLeod raised the bar yesterday or didn’t you see? Dude dropped a reference to The Mikado and changed the literary reference game on SJ forever. I’m so cowed that I don’t know if I’ll even continue playing. I’m weak on theatrical trivia, shamefully. We all have to up our game now, ok? Please, please no more Orwell for a while.
Who is this “Orwell” that you speak of comrade? I don’t see his name on the list of party-approved content creators.
I know what I’ll do, I’ll reference Ray Bradbury because one of his works is so obvious and easy that everyone will find it interesting. I’m not the censoring type of leftist who would tell you who to read or what to write, even if I do want discourse to be interesting, at least to a certain degree.
He’s between Marx and Pops. You clearly missed him. Lists should be checked twice, I’ve heard.
Daunte Wright was unavailable for comment.
Twofer Tuesday.
Be careful what you ask for. It can always get worst. Kipling had it right when he said “For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
The Abbé Maillard on the Mi’kmaq, c.1740.5
So the wretch was handed over at once to the women who, like so many Furies, seized him and tied him to a tree trunk with his legs bound together. They built a very hot fire in front of and very near him and, seizing branches, they applied them to the sole of his feet which they had stretched out to the fire … taking live coals and putting them on the most sensitive part of his body … using their knives to cut him deeply … plunging his charred feet and legs into a cauldron of boiling water, and then scalping him. They were unable to make him suffer more, because he died after the last torture. But they did cut out his tongue, even though he was dead, planning to force another English prisoner … to eat it.
So the poor soul’s cooking caused Maillard’s reaction ?
This is bovine excrement because the root cause is toxic police culture and training not “toxic masculinity tm” Female police officers seem every bit as corrupt, violent, and trigger happy as male officers and in similar proportion. Changing the tick box from M to F has about as much difference in policing as the being a “wise old Latina” has on Scotus rulings on qualified immunity.
For extra oddness I cite the case of former Gladstone Oregon police officer Lynn Edward Benton nee Lynne Irene Benton whose history of domestic violence and spousal homicide began with large doses of male hormones, and ended with prison.
You been shooting-up estrogen or something?
This might be one of your finer two-fer Tuesdays as of late….
Nice!
This is an old idea. In one of the Dune sequels, The God Emperor of Dune, Emperor Leto has reorganized the army into an all female force. He asserts that male military forces are fundamentally predatory.
A following book features the Honered Matres, female priests that control and dominate the population with violence and sex.
It seems obvious to me that more women on the police force would change policing. I have no idea whether for the better or worse. I think it is definitely a worthy experiment.
I wonder what will happen when the police force is flooded with applicants with deep voices, beards and rural backgrounds identifying themselves as female?
All this “data” about women and excessive force, and Slate still misses the obvious: are the men and women cops even in comparable situations? I don’t know about you, but I see far fewer women cops in high-crime neighborhoods where the shootings and discretionary arrests are likely to happen. If women do indeed arrest fewer brownish people, is it because they interact with fewer? Nobody at Slate bothers to wonder this, because they like what they’ve already assumed too much.
After half an hour of negotiations with some whiny banshee for carrying a gun and drugs the perp yells out “Dear God! Please! Just send in a real cop so we can have a shootout!”
Personally I can concede and even believe there is truth to the argument that a 5′ 2″ woman will have less use of force complaints than a 6′ male.
However after reading the entire article, it was surprising that the payoff was that the best the lead author of the traffic stop study in Florida and North Carolina could say was, Ehhh Maybe it will help. Well, the exact quote was ““doing so may decrease the rate of negative outcomes and interactions” but they are , in essence, shoulder shrugs.
On a related note, I did find it humorous that the study that led to this statement, “early research on women in policing shows that female police officers have a “calming effect” on male partners”, postulated that part of that “calming effect” was due to sexual arousal. So it would seem that police departments don’t just need to hire more women, but sexy women, if they want to see better police outcomes.