BY TONY BOUZA
The NYPD I entered on 1/1/53 had a Police-woman’s Bureau (adopting the androgynous “police officer” came about 20 years later and the police union is still called “The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association” —a classic anachronism). There were maybe 150 females in a department of over 20,000, and they overwhelmingly cooperated with the prevailing view that they’d be employed as secretaries, stenos and other work seen as appropriate for women. The job title was “Matron” (searched women prisoners—oversaw their detention, etc.).
There were two mavericks, Felicia Schpritzer and Gertrude Schimmel, who’d have none of this. They sued to take promotional exams, and won. They were isolated, scorned and resisted.
In 1967 I wound up in an office occupied by just Schimmel and me. She hectored me mercilessly and scornfully on the injustice. I emerged a convert.
I believed women could and should be real cops and wrote an article, “Women In Policing: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.” I lobbied an FBI agent who owed me favors to get it into their FBI Bulletin.
The piece—finally, and after a lot of pushing—was published in 1975.
I received a call from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) asking if I’d testify in some lawsuits that women could be cops. The impediments were height and strength requirements (usually 5’ 8”; lifting heavy weights; running fast and agility tests). That these had little to no relation to the job’s actual needs had bothered no one for centuries.
The SPLC added that they’d not been able to persuade a single police commander to testify that women could do police work—arrest, traffic citations and respond to emergency (911) calls. I was, by then, 1975, commander of Bronx forces for the NYPD and a two-star chief.
I would, and I testified in a number of cases across the country (inadvertently launching a career that blossomed into 20 years of 90 cases of expert witnessing). We won every one. Today the LAPD boasts—rightly—of being one of the most integrated departments in the nation, forgetting—conveniently—that their obdurate and intransigent leaders fought us tooth and claw, until they were defeated and signed a consent decree that forced integration over the next quarter century.
And so Schpritzer and Schimmel were vindicated, and women marched into the ranks by the thousands.
As Bronx commander I had about 60 women on patrol. I insisted they work the streets. No stenos or secretaries in the Bronx. Their uniforms required mini-skirts. As they emerged from squads their flashing thighs inspired whoops, hollers and whistles from the corner layabouts. The women pleaded with me to allow pants.
I wrote the police commissioner (PC) asking to allow it. He wrote back that the proposal had been sent to the Uniform Committee for evaluation. Permanent entombment. The PC—Michael J. Codd (whose photo had graced my article in the FBI Bulletin on Women in Policing) was a ram-rod straight preserver of the status quo.
What to do?
I was stymied, but the women were right. The problem was real, and their positions were fatally compromised by those silly skirts.
I decided to take a chance and, by telephone, not written order, said that henceforth women could wear pants or skirts as they chose. I later came to regret not offering the same choice to men.
Overnight, every single woman was in pants. The women in the other boroughs immediately followed suit. The PD was confronted with a classic fait accompli.
Codd said nothing. He accepted the inevitable and went on. The next year he’d drive me into early retirement over another issue (I described it in “Bronx Beat,” published by the University of Illinois Press).
Today the revolution is over. Women won. They proved us right—as we knew they would. We love to pick at the scabs of our failures and tend to ignore the victories. Women, today, run police departments and not only participate at all levels, but they have inspired the world to emulation. They can now be seen in a dazzling variety of police uniforms the world over.
Gertrude Schimmel died last year. They should erect a statue to her.
