UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, May 5, 1997
5A
"It was like they didn't know how to treat me, like they were too concerned about not offending me. I'm not sure, but I think a lot of the older officers had been around when it was only men." — Amy Jumisko, Lawrence police officer
A FEW GOOD WOMEN
Continued from Page 1A
homes and waved at a few people.
"The piddly stuff gets on my nerves," Jumisko said. "The paperwork's not worth it. I would rather go on a stressful call."
Noticing a pickup truck parked on the wrong side of the street, Jumisko pulled up behind it, pulled out her ticket clipboard and wrote a $10 parking ticket.
Jumisko said that being a female cop had never been an issue for her, except maybe when she was the only woman among 10 men in her police academy class.
"It was nothing horrible, but sometimes it was a little awkward," Jumisko, 23, said. "It was like they didn't know how to treat me — like they were too concerned about not offending me. I'm not sure, but I think a lot of the older officers had been around when it was only men."
Recruiting problems
Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin never has had problems recruiting officers in Lawrence, but the number of women applicants is another story.
"We just have so few," Olin said. "We'll have over 400 applicants for one job opening here, and only four of them will be women. That's not acceptable. But it's
probably unrealistic to shoot for 50-50 because we just don't see those numbers "applying."
Lawrence hired its first female officer in 1973, but in the last two years the police department, which pays a rookie officer about $25,000 a year, has lost two women to better-paying jobs, Olin said.
"It is very difficult to find, train and keep qualified female employees," Olin said. "In each of those two cases, both of the women were offered a job that was 8-to-5, Monday through Friday, with a car and a $10,000 raise. The police department cannot compete with that."
Kansas cities rank well below other metropolitan areas in the country when it comes to women on the police force. Lawrence, with women officers making up 7.3 percent, compares well to other Kansas cities like Wichita, with 7.6 percent, or Topeka, with 5 percent. But it falls short of the 13.5 percent female officers in Kansas City, Mo., and other metropolitan departments like those in New Orleans and Los Angeles.
"We're making a concerted effort to recruit and retain qualified women officers," Olin said. "Lawrence had a woman officer before the LAPD did. But traditionally, law enforcement has been viewed as a male job."
Police department female percentages
Inherently masculine?
KU police officer Gayle Reece has done quite a bit of reading on the gender makeup of police forces and said that she saw a wide discrepancy between males and females.
Reece, one of two women in the KU police department, listed two leading causes of the scarcity of women in law enforcement.
"The traits to be a police officer are inherently masculine," Reece said. "And police work, with its odd hours, doesn't juggle really well with families."
Reece, who earned $29,930 this year, said that she thought the number of female police officers was growing as men and women in the U.S. began to share gender roles. But she didn't think the number of female officers ever would be spectacular.
The highest-ranking woman cop in town is Sgt. Susan Hadi of the Lawrence police department. After rising through the ranks for almost 17 years, Hadi, who earns
"I don't think we will ever see women outnumber men like they do in the general population," she said.
$49,881, has worked as a patrol officer, in juvenile investigation, in the drug investigation unit, in internal affairs and as a patrol supervisor. Now she works in technical services and briefs the press at daily meetings.
Hadl agreed that the small number of women on the force was common in law enforcement.
“It's very difficult to interest and recruit quality women,” Hald said. “But I'd like to think that's changing. I'd like to think that it's recognized as a professional career and that it's becoming more attractive. But it's not realistic to expect the numbers to go up very high.”
ABOVE: (Clockwise) Sgt. Rose Rozmiarek and Sgt. Troy Mailen go over a briefing with officers Richard Avery and Bob Linzer. Nightly briefings discuss previous problems and anything officers should be aware of during their shifts.
BELOW: Sean Franklin and Susan Parker talk while waiting for cars to come from the last shift. Franklin was working on bike patrol.
That gender gap may be aggravated because of the male stereotype attached to police officers, Hadl said.
"It's just human," she said. "I can't blame them for conjuring up an image of a man when they hear the words 'police officer.' From our perspective, it's really not a big deal."
Officer Jumisko has only 14 hours left at the University of Kansas to complete a degree in sociology, a subject that she thinks helps her in her job. Kansas doesn't require a college degree of police officers, but Jumisko would like to see that changed.
Back on the beat
"This is considered a truly blue-collar job, not a professional career," she said. "But I think it should be a requirement. You have to write a report to put the bad guy away. And with an education, it makes you that much better at it. It gives you a chance to mature and gain experience in what you're going to be dealing with.
When she tries to understand the way people react to her and to the police in general, she often is frustrated.
"Sociology fascinates the hell out of me," Jumisko said. "I catch myself thinking about it when I read this or that article and how it could relate to a situation."
"It's hard trying to help those who either don't want it or won't accept it," Jumisko said. "It's frustrating. Some people look at it like we're going to get the bad guys, put them in jail, and they'll rehabilitate. But that's not the way it works. You're always going after the same people."
Jumiko likes her $28,660-a-year job. The Lawrence police department provides good benefits, and the officers have high morale. But she also said that burnout was common among police officers.
"I don't think I want to do shift work for the rest of my life," Jumisko said. "I'd eventually like to work more normal hours. I haven't done anything with my roommates
for about a year."
Junisko parked in the driveway of a cemetery on East 15th Street and reached behind her seat for the radar gun. She struck the tuning
fork and held it in front of the gun to calibrate it. She then aimed down the road to the west."I think in about a couple years, I'll be ready to do something else," she said.
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