489888
research-article2013
PQX16410.1177/1098611113489888Police QuarterlyHaarr and Morash
Article
The Effect of Rank on
Police Women Coping
With Discrimination and
Harassment
Police Quarterly
16(4) 395–419
© 2013 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1098611113489888
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Robin N. Haarr1 and Merry Morash2
Abstract
Qualitative data from 21 in-depth interviews with women in two metropolitan
departments reveals how rank and tenure affected responses to negative coworker
actions and attitudes. Most women abandoned putting up with harassment and bias
after their earliest years in policing, but consistently felt compelled to respond to
officers’ tests of their abilities. High-rank women used coping strategies that provided
some protections from assaults on their identities and negative treatment from
coworkers. Certain coping strategies may enable some women to move up in rank.
The power that comes with rank enabled women to take on unique approaches to
addressing workplace discrimination and harassment.
Keywords
police women, workplace problems, coping strategies
Introduction
Numerous studies show that police women experience particularly high levels of
coworker and supervisor gender-related prejudices, stereotyping, discrimination, and
harassment (e.g., Brown & Grovel, 1998; Franklin, 2005; Hassell & Brandl, 2009;
Morash, Haarr, & Kwak, 2006; Rabe-Hemp, 2008, 2009; Seklecki & Paynich, 2007).
As a result they receive less social support on the job (Davis, 1984; Fry & Greenfield,
1980; Greene & del Carmen, 2002; Morash & Haarr, 1995; Worden, 1993). Research
on multiple occupations confirms very negative outcomes of such gender-related
prejudice and discrimination on health and productivity of female employees
1School
2School
of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA
of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Robin N. Haarr, Professor, School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA.
Email: Robin.Haarr@eku.edu
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
(McDonald, 2012). For instance, women who feel they have not been promoted at
work due to gender bias disproportionately suffer poor health (Nelson, Campbell
Quick, Hitt, & Moesel, 1990; Nelson & Quick, 1985; Morrison & Glinow, 1990), and
sexual harassment contributes to poor physical and mental health and symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder (Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007). Work-related stress additionally contributes to the negative organizational outcomes, including low productivity, turnover, and absenteeism (Cooper & Payne, 1988; Cooper, Kirkcaldy, & Brown,
1994; Moyle & Parkes, 1999; Parker & Sprigg, 1999; Parkes, 1990; Willness, Steel, &
Lee, 2007).
Substantial scholarship carried out to test and develop a seminal psychological
theory, the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984),
focuses on coping with stressful interactions at work (and elsewhere). Transactional
theory explains whether and how individuals perceive actions as harassment or discrimination, and how they react when they see such negativity. Even though the theory
includes propositions linking status-related resources to people’s vulnerability to perceived stressors (Fitzgerald, Hulin, & Drasgow, 1994), few studies have considered
how status affects women’s reactions to gender-related affronts at work.
When research conducted within a variety of theoretical frameworks explores
women’s responses to negativity at work, it usually ignores women’s heterogeneity in
characteristics such as status in the workplace (Gyllensten & Palmer, 2005). Thus, the
present qualitative study provides detailed information on how, during their careers,
policewomen differing in rank responded to negative coworker actions and attitudes
toward women. Nationally, the proportion of sworn police who are women remains
small, at 11.8% overall, though differently sized jurisdictions vary, and women make
up 18.1% of sworn police in the 10 largest cities (Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Statistics, 2010). The most recent available statistics show that women are further
underrepresented in police promotions to high ranks (National Center for Women in
Policing, 2002; Silvestri, 2006). One study (Silvestri, 2007) demonstrates that women
in police leadership tend to promote transformational change more than men. Of particular interest in the present study is whether the power that comes with rank leads
policewomen to take on unique approaches to addressing discrimination and harassment, thereby having unique effects on police organizations.
Such knowledge has utility. Over time, perhaps as they gain rank and experience,
women officers may shift toward using previously untried or unavailable methods of
confronting and changing hostile work environments. Rank brings legitimate and
expert power (French & Raven, 1959) that may enable women to confront genderrelated problems at work. Alternatively, particular coping strategies may enable
women to move up in rank within a department, or may cause the retention of women
and thus their longer tenure (Rabe-Hemp, 2009). Thus, the research can provide
insight into whether or not rank frees women to confront undesirable workplace conditions in particularly effective ways, or whether certain approaches to coping with bias
against women characterize those who obtain high rank. The study may illustrate the
organizational benefits of having an increased number of women in leadership positions within a very male-dominated organization and occupation, and the personal
advantages of some forms of coping for achieving high rank.
Haarr and Morash
397
Relevant Literature
Research establishes two broad categories of response to stressful workplace
interactions—addressing the event and disengaging from it (Compas, Connor,
Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001). Addressing problematic interactions
includes expressing emotions, trying to control these emotions, or trying to stop such
events from occurring again to avoid being a future target of prejudice (Miller &
Kaiser, 2001). Based on a review of the relatively limited prior research, Kaiser and
Miller (2004) concluded that women typically do not confront perpetrators or tell people in a position of authority about even blatant discrimination or prejudice. However,
these findings have questionable generalizability to women with rank and/or tenure in
police departments. Many study samples in prior research consisted of young college
students. Higher status women and women working in an occupation such as policing,
which requires assertiveness to, for example, make an arrest or direct people in an
emergency, may behave quite differently.
In addition, interaction with and observation of other female employees in the
workplace and repeated harmful events at work appear to shape responses to harassment and discrimination. Seasoned employees’ model, support, or teach alternative
responses. The effect is to influence less seasoned employees to shift away from
avoiding or disengaging and toward more direct efforts to stop negative events
(Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984;
Tomaka, Blascovich, Kelsey, & Leitten, 1993). In addition, research suggests that
over time, women who observe pervasive discrimination change their reactions from
disengagement to active strategies (Foster, 2009).
Understanding contemporary policewomen requires data collection in contemporary agencies. In a unique recent study of the connection of tenure to police women’s
workplace experiences, Rabe-Hemp (2008) found that even though women with 10 to
30 years as police described negative early-career events, with time they found acceptance by coworkers and many moved up substantially in rank. She emphasized that in
recent years, women with rank and tenure experience less extreme forms of antiwoman behavior than police in previous times, and that in some departments “enlightened men” grew in number and the “boys club” weakened (p. 263). Changes in
workplace stressors, women’s increased rank, and more women with longer tenure
create a fairly complex, recent departmental context in which to examine women’s
experience of and coping with stressors emanating from gender harassment and
prejudice.
Research on occupations other than policing suggest that occupational status and
position within a place of employment affect how women respond to negative work
environments. Specifically, the female−male differences in coping strategies for confronting stressors at work found in some research (Gianakos, 2000, 2002; Parasuraman
& Cleek, 1984; Vitaliano, Russo, Carr, Maiuro, & Becker, 1985) are not confirmed in
studies that compare women and men with similar positions, occupations, and education (Greenglass, 1988; Korabik & Van Kampen, 1995; Long, 1990; McDonald &
Korabik, 1991; Torkelson & Muhonen, 2004). Rank and type of occupation may
empower women to use a greater range of strategies. For instance, in one study,
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
Table 1. Race-Ethnicity and Years on the Force by Rank for Sample of Female Police
Officers.
Rank
Race-ethnicity
Caucasian
African American
Latina
Asian
Years on the force
6 to 8 years
10 to 15 years
17 to 20 years
30+ years
Low rank
n = 13
High rank
n=8
2 (15.4%)
3 (23.1%)
5 (38.5%)
3 (23.1%)
6 (75.0%)
2 (25.0%)
0 (0.0%)
0 (0.0%)
3 (23.1%)
6 (46.2%)
2 (15.4%)
2 (15.4%)
0 (0.0%)
3 (37.5%)
4 (50.0%)
1 (12.5%)
compared to clerical workers, women in managerial positions had more resources for
coping with stress at work, felt more control over workplace stressors, and more
directly addressed problems (Long, 1998). Our emphasis on responses to negative
work experiences of women currently employed as police, but varying in rank as well
as tenure, contributes to prior work on both police and other occupations through its
focus on rank and changes that women describe over the course of their careers.
Method
Sample
Study participants included 21 police women from two departments in a metropolitan
area of a southwestern (U.S.) state. The participants ranged from 6 to 31 years tenure
working as police, though some had changed departments during their career. The
sample was purposively diversified to provide variation in rank and tenure. So that
study participants could talk about several years of experiences as police and some
would have achieved relatively high rank, the purposive sample was limited to women
with at least 6 years on the force. Efforts also were made to have a sample that was
diverse in race and ethnicity to reflect the study setting, two departments in a metropolitan area of a southwestern state. The final sample included eight White, five
Latina, five Black, and three Asian women. Despite efforts to have each racial and
ethnic group represented equivalently in the subgroups differentiated by rank and tenure, primarily for Caucasian women, among the study participants, more years in
policing translated into being at a higher rank. Black women were less likely to have
moved up in rank despite their years on the force. Although Latinas had been employed
for several years, none held higher ranking positions. They were least likely to have
advanced in rank over time. Asian women were relatively new to police work, so they
were concentrated in low ranks.
Haarr and Morash
399
To recognize the unique identity and social location of each woman we quote in the
section on findings, we note her description of her racial and ethnic identity in addition
to rank and tenure either in the text or in parentheses after long quotes. Also, each
woman is identified with a unique number so that it is possible to see whether the same
or different women are quoted at various points throughout the manuscript.
Data Collection
Haarr conducted the in-depth, career-course interviews with each of the 21 women.
The structured interview schedule of open-ended questions (appendix) asked for
detailed information about women’s experiences and the positions and ranks from
their entry into the training academy to the present, the effects of gender and race and
ethnicity on their work life, their experiences with discrimination and harassment, and
their strategies for coping with workplace problems. In answering questions, some
women disclosed their lesbian sexual orientation and explained its effect on experiences at work, so this information is noted in findings when it is relevant to women’s
stressors. Note that appropriate probes were added to the basic schedule during the
interview process to obtain as complete a narrative of career experiences as possible.
Also, study participants often provided information unprompted by particular questions, and these responses became part of the data.
The present article focuses on responses to questions in three specific information
domains covered in the interview: discrimination in police work (e.g., coworker questions about capabilities to do the job, overprotection or failure magnification by
coworkers, being made to feel inadequate by coworkers, and limited career opportunities); harassment in the workplace (e.g., unwanted and inappropriate comments, sexual and racial jokes, and sexual harassment); and coping strategies (e.g., self-identified
strategies for coping with workplace discrimination and harassment). Since the study
concerned women’s subjective perceptions, the questions and follow-up probes
allowed and encouraged participants to elaborate on their experiences.
Participants chose the interview locations, which included the police agency and
the researchers’ home and office. Most interviews took about 2 hr, and all were tape
recorded with participants’ consent and transcribed verbatim.
Analysis
Repeated review of the transcripts led to inductive identification of a wide variety of
approaches that women had used to cope with instances of workplace discrimination
and harassment. Women did not always associate the use of a coping approach with a
point in their career or a period when they held a certain rank, but when they did, we
coded the coping approach to reflect whether it was used in the academy, while
assigned to a training officer, after the completion of training, while a sergeant, or after
promotion to a position higher than sergeant. We also coded passages to reflect
whether women associated an approach with the first years on the force or the period
after they had worked as police for several years.
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
Several analytical approaches were used to shed light on how rank was related to
the methods women used to cope with a negative work environment. First, we
counted the number and the types of coping approaches for women differing in rank
and the potentially confounding, associated characteristic, years in policing. Also,
for each of the primary coping strategies analysis examined the career points the
strategy was associated with for low- and high-ranking women, for example whether
the strategy was used while in the academy, working as an officer, after promotion
to sergeant, after promotion to higher ranks, after many years in policing, or more
generally across the career. Finally, we examined women’s statements about how
their approaches to coping with workplace affronts changed over time, and how
gaining power (through rank or tenure) affected their coping methods. The aim was
to draw on these multiple types of information to contextualize and lend credibility
to findings.
High-ranking women held positions of lieutenant, commander, and deputy
chief. Low-ranking women were sergeants, held specialized positions such as
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officers, and worked on patrol. All
women with 8 or fewer years on the force were at the lower rank, and five of the
eight women (62.5%) with 10 to 15 years were at the lower rank. Of the nine
women with 17 or more years of experience, five (55.5%) were high rank. When
women explicitly tied their years on the force or their rank to a coping strategy, it
was possible to present their assessments of whether rank, tenure, or both influenced the choice of strategy. In addition, we note the connection of the primary
strategies to both current rank and to tenure to show whether strategies are connected to each.
The analysis focused on the most commonly used coping strategies for either or
both low- and high-ranking women. Small numbers of women in both groups used
other strategies, such as seeing a psychologist (one person), refusing to do certain
tasks (three), and hiding their emotions (two). These less frequent approaches were not
our focus. Consistent with the intersectional nature of gender, sexual orientation, race,
and ethnic group identity and related discrimination (Bolton, 2003; Hassell & Brandl,
2009; He, Zhao, & Ren, 2005; Morash et al., 2006; Morash, Haarr, & Gonyea, 2006;
for nonpolicing jobs, see Bowleg, 2008), women sometimes spoke of combined reasons for their negative treatment (e.g., race and gender), so findings presented below
reflect this reality.
Findings
The presentation of findings first covers the number of different strategies women
described using and differences by rank and tenure. Then it presents common strategies that women used regardless of rank. The section on common strategies is followed by findings associated with either low or high rank. The discussions of each
coping approach include study participants’ insights into how rank or tenure influenced their choice of strategy.
Haarr and Morash
401
Number of Strategies
Especially if they had higher rank or long tenure, women reported using many different approaches to addressing perceived discrimination, prejudice, and harassment. Of
the high-ranking women, 75% had used seven, eight, or nine different coping
approaches, whereas over 75% of the low-ranking women had used between four and
six different strategies.
Common Strategies
Straight Talk. Nearly all women (85.7% or 18) described voicing their concerns and
criticisms in “straight talk” when they felt mistreated due to gender, race, or ethnicity.
A slightly higher proportion of high-ranking women than those with low rank described
using this approach (100.0% of the eight high-ranking, and 76.9% of the 13 lowranking women). Consistent with findings for rank, just two of the four women with 8
or fewer years of police experience described using straight talk, and all but one
(94.1%) of the women with 10 or more years of police experience gave examples of
how they used “straight talk.”
Women defined straight talk as being direct and standing up to their male coworkers and, when confronted with hostility, even “giving it right back to them” (#8, White,
high rank, 17-20). Consistent with research in other settings (Kaiser & Miller, 2004, p.
168), they directly confronted discrimination, for instance by saying that a remark was
“discriminatory” and “objectionable.” A high-ranking woman (#4, White, 10-15
years) described using straight talk when male colleagues would not let her do parts of
her job,
And I would have to remind them, you know what? Let me do this. I don’t need your help
and if I do I’ll call you, but let me do it. But I didn’t take it as they were trying to keep me
from doing my job. They just do it all. [Q: What effect did that have though when you would
say let me do it?][They would say] okay, okay, okay go ahead and do it. Most of them would
back right off. But I would have to be really, really aggressive to get them to back off.
Most accounts of straight talk pertained to actions of coworkers and supervisors
during police work on the streets. Three quarters of the eight high-ranking women and
almost half of the 13 low-ranking women had used straight talk to address problems
that arose when doing patrol work.
An even higher proportion (seven of eight) of high-ranking women talked about
using straight talk to stop sexual and racial jokes and inappropriate comments (i.e.,
about personal life and physical appearance). They described telling male coworkers
they did not appreciate such jokes and comments and that they should not tell such
jokes or make such comments again. A high-ranking officer explained, “I’d say, I’d
prefer that you not say that. It didn’t make me feel demeaned or degraded. It just, to
me, is inappropriate and it’s not appropriate in the workplace” (#13, Black, 10-15
years). She further explained, “It made me feel like I was standing up for all the women
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
of the world, and I know that sounds so canned, but if we don’t speak up for each
other, who’s gonna speak up for us?” Another high-ranking officer (#21, White, 17-20
years) similarly reacted to sexual jokes or comments demeaning to women and to
racial jokes. For instance, she said, “Nice joke, but would you tell this to your mother?
Would you tell this to your wife? And then people are like, ugh, sorry.”
Five of the eight high-ranking women spoke about using straight talk in their role
as a supervisor. One explained how she addressed racially offensive comments,
I would usually pull somebody aside and say, hey, what you said back there is blah, blah,
blah. If somebody made a racial comment in a group setting and say I’m a sergeant and it’s
a briefing and it—all officers, you know, they criticize people in public. I would, so, criticize
in public. Hey, I don’t know if you think that’s appropriate, but let me set the record straight
for everybody. That is not appropriate, and the next time I hear you say that, you and I will
be sitting in my office, and you’ll be getting a notice of investigation. That will not fly here.
Got it? (#21, White, 17-20 years)
In addition to rank, tenure seemed to enable women to impose their standards for
behavior on other officers. An Asian woman (#1, low rank, 10-15 years) explained
that if an incident similar to a superior saying early in her career that she joined the
force to find a husband occurred now that she was a sergeant, which she had protested
at the time by having a discussion with her superior, would lead to a simpler, more
direct comment: “I would basically say, ‘you’re out of line.” Early in her career, a
high-ranking officer (#12, White, 30+ years) ignored coworkers’ calling her “baby”
and “gorgeous.” She attributed her growing intolerance of this behavior to maturity,
having the “guts,” awareness of how inappropriate this was, becoming a supervisor,
and knowledge of women’s suits for harassment against departments nationwide. She
took on responsibility for training on sexual harassment and EEO (Equal Employment
Opportunity legislation) in the organization, leading to her handling of incidents very
directly. She confronted a man who called her “baby,”
I had a peer at my rank currently who called me gorgeous every time he saw me. Finally I
stopped him one day and said, you know, that makes me very uncomfortable. Don’t do that.
[He said,] well, I call everybody that. And I’m like, you don’t call me that. Not anymore.
(#12, White, 30 plus years)
With time on the job, one woman (#11, Latina, low rank, 10-15 years) became bold
enough to change from having “a little discussion” after men were sent to do jobs that
were her responsibility to usually talk to the supervisor hoping for the response, “Yeah,
you’re right, I didn’t give you a chance. Next time, I’ll give you the opportunity.”
Besides a higher proportion of high-ranking women mentioning using straight talk
when they were supervisors, a higher proportion described using straight talk early in
their careers (75.0% rather than 46.2%). Also a higher proportion provided descriptions of straight talk that they did not tie to any specific career stage (75.0% vs. 30.8%).
Possibly straight talk enabled women to move up in rank, and that rank gave them the
power that comes with supervisor status to use straight talk to make changes.
Haarr and Morash
403
Alternatively, harassment and discrimination may have been so much worse in past
years, when females first started performing patrol work, that women felt they had to
confront issues directly. Two high-ranking women talked about the concentration of
problems with “overprotection” in their earliest years of employment. Two others
talked about extreme overt discrimination; in one case a superior officer indicated that
no decent women would become police officers, and in another a superior ordered an
officer not to be seen with her sister, who provided transportation to work, because the
sister had an “afro” hair style that the superior thought others would see as a sign of
radical group membership.
Hard Work and Good Work to Prove Abilities to Do the Job. The same proportion of
women that used straight talk, and the majority of women in both the high- and lowrank groups, described how at some point or at multiple points, they worked hard to
prove they could do police work when others questioned their capabilities. Indeed, 17
of the 21 officers told us about using both straight talk and hard/good work. In the
group with 8 or fewer years’ experience, in the middle experience level group, and in
the group with 17 or more years, over three quarters of women described how they
confronted harassment and discrimination with hard work and efforts to prove their
worth as police.
Regardless of rank, several women spoke of moments when they demonstrated
their physical capabilities. A woman (#6) with low rank, who joined the department as
one of the first minority women 30 years before, hid the pain caused by a recent
Caesarian delivery and went on a run at the training academy. When she tripped over
an obstacle, she tore out her stitches and required hospitalization. She believed her
superiors would not care “whether or not I came to them with my little sympathetic
stories, well, I just had a baby, I had a C-section.” She thought they’d just conclude,
“You can’t handle this, you need to go home.”
Women recruited more recently talked about less extreme conditions in which they
felt they had to prove their physical similarity to men, for example by being athletic
enough to excel in the academy’s physical training, or jumping into fights and making
arrests while on patrol. One woman recalled,
It was very easy [to prove my physical capabilities]. I just kind of threw him on the ground
and got on top of him, handcuffed him, rolled him over, stood up, and took him to the back
of my car. That’s what you hope for [the opportunity to prove yourself physically] because
you get your chance and then they [male coworkers and supervisors] get to learn that they
didn’t need to think that you’re gonna fail.” (#21, White, high rank, 17-20 years).
One officer who held a high rank at the time of the interview (#8, White, 17-20
years) described how early in her career, she sought out opportunities to demonstrate
her physical capability to make a resisted arrest, “And I know women that wanna get
it over with early, so just jump in, or you know, or go to that physical-arrest mode
quicker instead of finding the easy way, the other way, the better way. Because you
wanna prove that you can do it.” She recognized that she had better ways to handle
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
resisted arrests than by physically overpowering the citizen, but she conformed to
perceived pressures to show she could and would physically restrain someone.
Consistent with prior research on police women (Martin & Jurik, 2007), multiple
women told of repeated “tests” and “retests” scattered throughout their careers in
which they were called on to assuage other police officers’ doubts that they had the
abilities and emotional makeup needed for police work. Nine of them used the term,
“test,” to describe how coworkers prodded women to show whether females, in some
cases specifically minority females, could be effective police. Particular tests determined whether they would make correct decisions, bear gruesome scenes, command a
squad, or avoid preferential treatment of citizens of the same minority group as themselves. One officer (#19, White, low rank, 10-15 years) said that after a stint as a
DARE officer, “I better be able to scale the fence. That’s the bottom line. I better be
able to chase those bad guys down. I better be able to perform as I did when I was on
patrol six, seven, eight years ago.” A high rank officer with over 30 years on the force
(#12, White) said, “But every new job I ever had, it was like starting over and proving
again, okay, I can be in this fight, I can run this mile, I can go over this wall, I can do
whatever.” Only one woman (#6), a Black, low rank officer with over 30 years on the
force, felt her good reputation followed her after she protected a White coworker from
a threatened attack by a group of Black men early in her career, and then worked with
street gangs and the confrontation squad. More typical, a high-ranking officer (#4,
White, 10-15 years) witnessed repeated testing of women. She asked the interviewer,
“Do we do that to the men?” She answered the question herself, “No!”
Consistent with the prevalence of repeated testing, half of the eight high-ranking
women felt they proved their capacity to make decisions and use police powers, and a
quarter said they demonstrated their ability by getting a graduate university education.
One (#2, Black, 17-20 years) indicated that especially women needed more than an
undergraduate education to “compete” and be successful “in spite of who you are,”
since sometimes “people judge us by gender and by race.” The time order of proving
oneself and moving up in rank was not necessarily that rank came after “proof.” For
instance, one high-ranking Black woman (#13, 10-15 years) explained that whenever
being Black and female enabled her to get a promotion, “I’ve always proven that I was
the best fit for the job.”
Putting Up With the Stressful Work Environment. Two thirds of women told of times
when they dealt with negative conditions by just putting up with them. There was no
clear relationship of tenure in the department to whether women described this strategy during the interview (three or 75% of women with 8 or fewer years of experience,
four or 50% of women in the middle experiential group, and six or 66.7% of those with
10 or more years). However, nearly all women talked about “putting up” as a coping
strategy early in their careers, particularly during academy and field training as well as
the probationary period, to cope with inappropriate and unwanted comments, sexual
and racial jokes, and sexual harassment. Two examples from several high-ranking
women who looked back at these periods and reflected on their reasoning and the
results follow,
Haarr and Morash
405
I’m on probation, so I’m concerned about retaliation, and so a lot of times that is a big
important factor. You don’t have the department’s support. I believe you can be
discriminated against, but you won’t seek help because of fear of retaliation. (#2, Black,
17-20 years)
Actually most of the time, back in the first year or two, especially when you’re on probation,
it was a silent anger. And other internalized anger, because I wasn’t sure I belonged here, and
maybe I too was looking for how I fit in. And really I had to spend some time, even though
I’d get angry, well are they right? Do I not belong here? Can I not do this? I’m much better
at verbalizing now than I was back then. I mean, back then, I was just pretty grateful that they
let me work here at all. (#12, White, high rank, 30 plus years)
This study participant went on to say she attributed her earlier nonconfrontational
stance to the period when women working on the force “was a real change and for
everybody, I mean, we were all finding our place, and there were no clear lines of what
was right and what was wrong.” Other high-ranking officers explained that at the
beginning of their careers, they wanted to fit in and be accepted by their coworkers, or
they desperately needed the salary that police work provided, so they put up with
affronts.
The low-ranking officers, many of whom were relatively new to the force, did not
mention unclear guidelines for appropriate behavior toward women police. They
instead echoed concerns about getting through the academy, being accepted, and “not
causing waves.” For instance, one woman reasoned,
We were all under so much stress, and I’m thinking, is this really important? Is this something
worth mentioning? I don’t know where I should go with this and we didn’t have a female
RTO [Recruitment Training Officer]; I didn’t feel comfortable talking to my RTO about it.
I just didn’t feel like, it really didn’t bug me. At that point, I just wanted to keep my nose
clean and not do anything to screw up my chances of getting through the [academy] because
I had already been through hell.” (#5, Asian, low rank, 6-8 years).
Another low-ranking woman said, “You just laugh it off, just do not make a big
deal of it, because you don’t want to cause waves, because you know if you do, the
guys would find out and they would turn against you” (#20, White, low rank, 6-8
years).
Mentors. About half of the women talked about mentors’ assistance in addressing
negative work situations and department or academy environments. Women’s comments about having or using a mentor varied little based upon rank or years on the
force or on the career point they were talking about. Instead, there were similarities in
women’s descriptions of the important qualities that mentors possess (e.g., the ability
to listen; and having a positive influence on one’s career by assisting them with career
planning, career advancement, and workplace problems). Mentors often served as
people that a woman could “bounce ideas off of” and that could help them “to critically look at situations.”
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
Most accounts of how mentors affected women illustrated how mentors encouraged or enabled women to challenge existing arrangements. Even in the training academy, one officer’s (#21, White, high rank, 17-20 years) mentor advised her to further
her career advancement by not staying too long in any assignment; later in her career,
another mentor put her in situations where she could develop her teaching and training
skills. One officer (#14, Latina, low rank, 6-8 years) regarded her husband as a mentor
because he pushed and encouraged her to seek promotions. A woman (#18, White,
10-15 years) who now held a high rank said her female mentor helped her by demonstrating a “we’re [women are] gonna make a difference attitude.” Another person’s
mentor helped her when she complained that her coworkers were “beating the shit out
of me” (#4, White, high rank, 10-15 years) by saying, “just stay the course because
some day they’ll all be working for you.” Some mentors intervened with administrators to improve women’s treatment at work. One low-ranking woman (#6, Black, 30
or more years) described her mentor’s intervention,
I call him my rescuer. He used to kinda be like my savior. It was just one thing after another
and I was always whining and complaining that they were doing this to me, they were doing
that to me, and he was kind of a center for me. I would call him anytime I had a problem, and
he helped me through the crisis or because he had some rank [Lieutenant]. He would talk to
other people of rank and say, you know, they’re doing this to her and I don’t think this is
really right. As a matter of fact, he helped me a lot, so he was kind of like my mentor.
In many ways, mentors counteracted or contradicted disempowering responses of
other people to women. In addition to serving as listeners and advisors, mentors modeled what women could achieve, suggested to women that they could “make a difference,” and gave advice, opportunity, and encouragement about career advancement
that could place women in positions of influence.
Strategies of Low-Ranking Women
A common strategy noted by several low (61.5% or eight of 13) but few high-ranking
women (25.0% or two of eight) was accepting help and protection from male coworkers. The longer women worked as police, the less likely they were to present acceptance of help and protection from men as one of their strategies for coping with
harassment and discrimination. Specifically, 75% (three) of the women with the least
tenure, 50% (four) in the middle group, and 44.4% (four) with 10 or more years said
that they used this approach at one or more points in their careers. Interestingly, three
of the four high-ranking women who described using this strategy said they avoided
using it earlier in their careers, but relied on it at some points after moving up in rank,
often to deal with physical challenges that became harder with age, for example when
confronted with an obstacle course at the National Law Enforcement Training
Academy.
Low-ranking woman discussed their willingness to accept help from their male
coworkers during the training period and while working patrol. For instance, one
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407
woman (#10, Black, 17-20 years) appreciated that her training officer treated her like
a daughter, “kind of gingerly and like, I’m gonna get you through everything.” Another
(#7, Latina, 30 plus years) recounted that both at the beginning of the career and
recently, she appreciated men helping her to carry things, or helping her in other ways,
saying “The more help, the better.”
Another officer noted that early in her career she took offense and rejected her male
coworkers’ attempts to help her. Later in her career, particularly when she became a
patrol sergeant, she was much more willing to accept male coworkers’ help. She
viewed their willingness to help her as a compliment, a reflection of the fact that she
was part of a patrol working group.
Well, I used to be very offended—I can take care of myself, I can open my own door. Yeah,
that guy’s starting to back talk to me, but I can take care of the situation. Just leave me alone.
So, I would talk to them later about it and say, quit doing that, don’t do that, I can take care
of myself. Now when somebody disrespects me or talks back to me or shows any kind of
aggression and a guy steps in, honestly, I take that as a compliment. So I kind of changed my
way of thinking. I don’t know if it’s because of the supervisor thing [her status as a sergeant],
because officers will come in and step in and defend their supervisor. So, I don’t know if it’s
that or even as an officer, towards the end I’d have some officers that would say, we’re your
partner and we got along great, and they’ll defend you. I took it as a compliment.” (#11,
Latina, 10 to 15 years).
Another woman explained,
Depending on what’s going on, I might say I’ll go in first or I’ll do a search, but it depends.
Sometimes it feels good to have a big guy go in the door first and have me watch his back.
So it just depends. But you know, opening the car door, I don’t get mad if they do that.
Walking next to be on the curb so a car would hit him, not me. I think a lot of it is more how
they [male coworkers] were raised or brought up, and I think a lot of it is the military. Three
of the men I can think of off-hand are all military guys; that’s just the way they are.” (#20,
White, low rank, 6-8 years)
Strategies of High-Ranking Women
Compared to low-ranking woman, a higher proportion of those at high rank used three
coping strategies: (a) avoid and disengage from problem people, situations, and departments (75% of high and 46% of low-ranking women), (b) rely on their own definition
and assessment of themselves as police officers (87.5% of high vs. 23.1% of lowranking woman), and (c) use unions, legal counsel, or formal grievances to address
workplace problems (62.5% of high vs. 15.4% of low-ranking woman). Women with
10-plus years of experience more often coped with negative work conditions through
avoidance and disengagement; but there was no clear pattern of differences related to
years employed in policing either for self-definition and assessment, or for reliance on
formal sources of help.
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Avoid and Disengage. Avoidance ranged from being person and situation specific, such
as avoiding interactions with certain officers, to changing one’s career, for instance by
changing jobs in a department or by getting a job in another department. Starting with
the more specific actions, one low-ranking officer who used this approach (#1, Asian,
10-15 years) left the room every time her colleagues began to tell offensive jokes. A
woman who held a high rank had become a DARE officer earlier in her career so she
could avoid spending time with the “Neanderthals” in her department (#4, White,
10-15 years).Most extreme in our sample, one officer (#11, Latina, low rank, 10-15
years) transferred to another department when she realized that as a female, she
“wasn’t going to go anywhere in that department.”
The mentality was you can work sex crimes, you know, deal with all the child issues, you
know, the police force officers, you know, all the positions they feel a female should be able
to handle. Other than that, you will never take on a supervisor role. You know, you can be in
charge for a little while, but [not] to make any major decisions let alone any type of any
tactical situations.
Avoiding interactions, changing jobs, and changing departments allowed women to
act in their best interests and resist and escape negative treatment and biases. One
high-ranking woman explained how she looked into leaving the police department to
cope with a supervisor that was discriminating against her. As she told it,
I finally put him [her supervisor] on ignore a lot. I looked into the Secret Service and my
commander finally stepped up and started putting a buffer in between us and eventually
when rumor got around that I had applied for the Secret Service, I got called up to the chief’s
office and he gave him a direct order that he was never to speak to me again. (#4, White, high
rank, 17-20 years)
Another high-ranking woman (#18, White, 10-15 years) took a demotion after the
chief made it clear that he would not force early retirement for a superior officer who
was biased against her. Later, she was repromoted to Lieutenant. Similar to the process
of self-defining that is described next, getting out of bad situations and interactions or
refusing to participate in selected interactions insulated women from negative effects
and placed them in a more positive work environment. Such actions did not, however,
seem to alter the negative work environment by making it more positive for women in
general.
Self-Define and Assess. Rank also differentiated the women who challenged notions of
policing and their organizations by deciding for themselves what constituted quality
police work, and therefore deciding that they were very able police officers. Several of
them described their independence and strength. For example, one officer said that as
one of just two girls in a family with seven siblings, she didn’t like being a girl growing up, but now “I’m a strong Black woman and it’s, I don’t know, what can I say, it’s
phenomenal to be a woman now, you know.” She went on to explain her relationship
with coworkers,
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409
I think it was just the living with those guys for eight years or so. And all the, I say, trauma
that they put me through and you know, and then just deciding, you know, that I am here, and
I’m a force to be dealt with and you’re gonna deal with me whether you wanna deal with me
or not. We may not come out of here friends, but you know what, I’m here and I’m not
leaving just because you don’t want me here. (#6, Black, low rank, 30 plus years)
Another officer similarly noted her independence from her coworkers,
I got to a place a long time ago where it’s my mirror that matters in the morning. How I see
myself, whether I know I’ve done what’s right, whether I know I’m doing a good job,
whether I know if I can still like myself in the morning. I’m really okay with that. And I’m
a real people person, and I used to really be needy, need to be loved, need to be liked, need
to be about everybody, and I learned that doesn’t work. (#12, White, high rank, 30 plus
years)
She went on to describe a period when all but two people in the department avoided
her and criticized her for being single and pregnant, claiming she would never be promoted and that she was a poor role model for women. At that point she realized “you
are really on your own.” As a result, she said, “I will not leave myself open to relying
on other people.” In her eyes, lacking a mentor was “very good for my career” because,
I have done it on my own and people, people don’t accuse me anymore of getting jobs
because I’m a girl, because of who I know, because of who I’ve slept with, because of
whatever the reasons maybe. What did my boss call me? A free agent or something.
Women equated defining themselves and recognizing their worth with having confidence in their abilities and not allowing others to define or belittle them.
Women used self-definition to cope with negative comments. One said, “I know
that I know how to do the job, no matter what people say about me. It’s okay, because
I am very confident with me. I know what I’m doing and what I’m not doing, so most
of the time I’ll just laugh it off” (#13, Black, high rank, 10-15 years). She added, “I’ve
learned to really know me and to like me and my strengths and weaknesses, and my
abilities and inabilities.” One high-ranking woman (#2, Black, 17-20 years) explained
how not allowing other people to “define” her and the roles she could have in her
career gave her more control, “I know that others will define you if you allow them to
define you, but others don’t have control over you. I have no more control over your
life than you have over mine, until I allow you to have control.” Women talked about
how they gained confidence in their strengths and abilities over time, often by meeting
challenges, for example by resisting a supervisor’s efforts to “make me quit.”
More than one of the women who “self-defined” and “self-assessed” clarified that
this strategy evolved over time. They rejected dependence on others for approval and
acceptance. For instance, one said,
You can’t worry about how and what everybody thinks. You have your group of people that
matter to you and those are the people that are your friends, and those are the people that you
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go and move toward, try to be a good person, try to be a reputable leader. Try to do those
sorts of things and maybe you wake up intermittently and go hey, I’m doing pretty good. I
suppose it’s in the back of your mind to get to this point and to be respected, but I think it’s
something that will be a by-product of all these other good behaviors. (#15, White, high rank,
17-20 years)
This officer developed self-sufficiency when she spent less time with colleagues
due to the time demands of returning to school. She found,
I was happy because I was meeting my own needs and I was recognizing the priorities that I
had for myself. I think that kind of brings you into an evolution of you don’t need the
judgment of others to make you happy, as long as you yourself judge yourself as doing what
you do well. Then you’re okay.
Formal Action. One third (seven) of the women had taken at least one formal action
(e.g., filing a grievance or report of inappropriate coworker actions, seeking assistance
from a union or attorney, suing the department). The proportion was much higher for
the high-ranking women (five or 62.5%) than those at low rank (two or 15.4%). The
specific formal actions and the number taking each one were: report the problem to a
supervisor (five); threaten to file a complaint with the EEO Office (two); hire an attorney and sue the department (two), and report the problem to the union (one). During
their careers, women sometimes used more than one formal action to deal with one or
more workplace problems. Just one of the four women with the least years on the force
had taken formal action compared with three of the eight with 10 to 15 years, and three
of the nine with over 15 years.
It is possible that discrimination was so common when women with many years on
the force or with rank (groups that often overlapped) began their careers, no alternatives to formal action existed for intractable problems. Two women, including one
who still was at a low rank at the point of the interview, reported hiring an attorney and
suing the department for discrimination, in one case allegedly due to gender and sexual orientation, and in the other because of sexual orientation. The officer who attributed discrimination to both gender and sexual orientation said,
There was no state statute for the law or anything to protect gays and lesbians. And they [the
police department] were actually quoting different individuals from throughout the state that
had been fired for that reason. So I knew my life was over. The chief at the time said to an
officer that he was going to rid the department of all the lesbians and that he could start with
[officer name], meaning me. You know, I’m just this little person. What have I ever done to
deserve this? And I mean it was just a terrible dark, dark time in my life. This went on for
about six months and I really wanted to quit. We ended up basically suing the department for
my civil rights violations, contract violations, because what happened between she [her
female partner] and I had no effect on my ability to perform a job as a law enforcement
officer. And that was our contention, that what happens inside the home shouldn’t affect who
I am inside the building. But the department didn’t see it that way, and they didn’t care. (#19,
White, low rank, 10-15 years)
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411
When asked what happened, she went on,
We started all the depositions and it’s interesting because when we started deposing some of
the other command staff, a lot of dirt started surfacing on these other people and suddenly
they wanted to settle. We met with the city attorney. They finally said king’s axe we give up.
You know, we’re gonna stop this, just bring [officer’s name] back to work now. We’re
gonna sweep this all under the carpet, pretend it never happened. So we went into this
meeting and signed all these contracts that I would not reveal any of this to the media. That
it’s all gone away and I was gonna go back to work with no discipline on my record and all
that. So I’m literally signing these contracts and at the same time they’re physically driving
my file down to the state governing board. They delivered it to them requesting that they
review it because they thought my certification should’ve been stripped. So even though I’m
signing these contracts saying it’s all over and it’s forgiven, they’re still behind the scenes
sending this down to say, well, now strip her of her certification. That’s evil. We found that
out and my attorney turned to one of the lieutenants and said, you know, we’re done playing
with you guys. I’m taking you off at the knees. And he started the whole process again of
litigation. But, it was resolved. The department later came out with a policy reference: we
would not discriminate against sexual orientation.
More typical, five women formally complained to supervisors about sexual harassment and discrimination by coworkers. One (#15, high rank, 17-20 years) said that
after she complained, her sergeant retaliated by giving her bad reviews and practicing
karate chops while they talked, and that she knew that someone was going through her
desk on a regular basis. She handled this by leaving a closed folder with EEO federal
guidelines for reporting sexual harassment on her desk, after which she felt there was
a “buffer” for her to get through the hostility. Nonresponsive supervisors and officials
often limited the change that women could effect through formal actions, but formal
actions did offer protection or escape from particularly egregious harassment and bias.
Over half (58.3%, or seven) of the 12 women who avoided and disengaged from
people and situations that they viewed as discriminatory also had taken some formal
action during their careers. Formal action was evoked by the most negative experiences women had; avoiding and disengaging may have served as self-protection
through these difficult experiences or as an earlier strategy that was not fully effective.
For example, the woman (#4) who volunteered to work as a DARE officer to avoid
interaction with the “Neanderthals” in her department eventually decided that she
could not develop a meaningful career in the restricted roles available to her. She
therefore joined another department where she could be a “street cop,” which was her
goal. It is important to recognize that, consistent with Foster (2009), women often use
a mixture of strategies to address negative work conditions and they shift to formal
actions when other approaches fail.
Discussion
The research location and the small purposively chosen sample limit generalization
beyond participants. Another limitation of the research was that the sample size
precluded examining sergeants as a separate, middle-ranking group. Findings of
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
differences in coping between women at different ranks may have been even clearer if
we had been able to consider finer distinctions in rank. Finally, it may be that policies
and procedures have reduced workplace problems to those that women did not bring
up as forms of discrimination and harassment. Despite these shortcomings, the detailed
data, which pertained to the prerecruitment period to the time of the interview for each
woman, and the variation in rank and tenure allowed us to compare and examine coping approaches by point in career and by current rank. More broadly, the findings
suggest that when transactional theory is used to guide research designed to increase
understanding of gender and the workplace, it is essential to consider the status of
workers as an element that may explain the use of certain strategies as well as the
effects of using certain strategies.
High rank characterized the women who avoided and disengaged from negativity
at work, who relied on their personal sense of worth and belief in their capacity to do
police work to confront coworkers who treated them badly, and who resorted to official actions when bias was especially extreme. These strategies provided some
individual-level protections from assaults on their identities and, in some cases, staved
off some of the negative treatment they received. The findings complement research
results (Morash & Haarr, 2012) showing that women police officers value their own
characteristics and often do not passively accept coworkers’ attacks on their positive
sense of self. However, with the possible exception that some departments took steps
to avoid being sued for failing to abide by EEO legislation, none of these strategies
forced permanent or widespread organizational changes.
Especially as they gained rank and tenure, but for high proportions of all the groups
of women we compared, speaking one’s mind to coworkers seemed to stop affronts by
individuals in the officers’ immediate context, which sometimes was limited to an
officer’s interactions with just one person. Consistent with the hierarchical nature of a
police department, women’s span of influence increased when they used straight talk
as supervisors, at which point they often used it to end sexual and racial jokes and
inappropriate comments by a group of officers. However, again, even with an increased
span of influence, these strategies did not ensure lasting changes throughout the
organization.
Using straight talk from the start of a career in policing may enable some women to
move to high rank. Relying on help from male officers early in the career may impede
moving up in rank. Further exploration of the effects of coping strategies early in
career is needed to reach conclusions that have more generalizability than ours.
Empirical evidence and theory to explain why women are so underrepresented at the
higher ranks of police is very limited, and often focuses on individual characteristics
of women officers (Archbold & Hassell, 2009; Archbold, Hassell, & Stichman, 2010;
Dick & Metcalfe, 2007). However, such research has potential to show how the interaction of anti-woman contexts in police departments with women’s coping approaches
explain how and why only a small proportion of women move up in rank. It may,
therefore, show that organizational conditions that require women to “cope” are the
Haarr and Morash
413
problem, combined with how they do cope, rather than individual propensities and
characteristics of women.
Most women seemed to abandon simply putting up with harassment and bias after
their earliest years in policing. In contrast, even if they gained rank and tenure, most
women felt compelled to repeatedly respond to other officers’ tests of their abilities by
working hard and working well to prove their abilities. Smaller proportions received
help from mentors, especially in steering themselves along a successful career path in
police departments, but in a few cases in challenging existing organizational practices.
All of the findings together lead to our conclusion that the women who took part in our
research do double duty as they repeatedly demonstrate their abilities. However,
straight talk and the magnification of its effects that result from moving up in rank
increase the scope of the interactions and behaviors they can influence and the standards they can set for other officers. Moving up in rank also is associated with relying
on one’s own view of self and ability as an officer, though it is not clear whether this
reliance produces promotions or results from them.
Our findings illustrate that police departments like those where the interviewed
women worked remain highly gendered. Women had special problems due to bias and
harassment, and except for putting up with them, usually at the beginning of their
careers, they coped with these through multiple individual means. The present study
did not consider collective approaches to making change, and that focus is an important area for future research. At the level of the individual, the ongoing nature of men
“testing” women officers and women’s responsive efforts to prove themselves, and the
need to use straight talk to confront discrimination, or to withdraw from group interactions and rely on oneself for evidence of capability, indicates the persistence of the
gendered nature of the organizations. Aker (1990, p. 146) described the gendered
organization as marked by “advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control,
action and emotion, meaning and identity . . . patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine.” The small proportions of
women with influence that is increased by high rank most likely severely limits women’s ability to address persistent gender discrimination and just how far a police
department can deviate from a heavily gendered organization.
The demands on police women to individually work to change negative work
conditions and constantly prove themselves, and the known negative results of such
demands, show the need for more widespread organizational leadership to free
women to focus their energies on doing police work rather than contending with
coworkers. The unchanging small proportion of women constituting police forces
and holding leadership positions most likely impede this type of organizational
change. Recent national statistics on trends in the proportion of police who are women
and who hold high rank, however, are generally unavailable, especially for small
departments. This lack of data makes it difficult to show failures or successes in hiring, retention, and promotion of underrepresented groups, and thus impedes the
development of effective policies.
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Appendix
Interview Schedule
How would you describe your race and ethnicity?
How long have you worked as a police officer?
Have you worked at other departments? If yes, which ones?
Why did you become a police officer? Why did you continue?
Were you originally from the area? If no, where were you from? Why did you come
here?
What was it like going to the academy? How many women were in the class? Were
they mainly one race, or mixed? As a woman in the academy did you face any
difficulties?
Where did you first work after the academy? And what was your experience on that
first day?
What were your coworkers like? Your training officer? What racial, gender, and
ethnic makeup were they?
Can you tell me about your early experiences on patrol? What was it like to be a
woman in policing back then?
With hindsight what sort of things that you might have picked up on then related to
your gender, race, or ethnicity? What did you think? How did you feel? How did you
react? With hindsight, what sort of things would you have done differently? If you
were to encounter the same situation today, how would you handle that? Would you
handle it the same way? Or would you handle it differently?
How much education did you complete prior to the academy? Since the academy?
What did you study?
What were your parents’ careers? What did they think of your career choice?
What is your marital status? Was your partner or husband supportive of your career
choice?
Do you have children? What did your children think of your career choice?
What is the current assignment you held in the police department? How long have
you done that? What exactly do you do? Is it a good fit between the job and who you
are, what you think is important, and what you do well? If yes: Did you do anything to
make it come together you and the job or was there something other than you that
made it come together? How long did this take? Did you try other things first? If yes,
was belonging to the IACP, NOBLE, the Hispanic Officer organization, or any other
organization like that a part of the process of making it come together? If yes: How
hard was it to get to this point where your work was a good fit with who you were?
What made it hard? If no: in what ways wasn’t it a good fit? Why did this work out this
way? How did you deal with it? Did you get involved with the IAWP, NOBLE, or the
Coalition of Hispanic American Police Officers, or any organization like that as part
of the process in making your job what you wanted?
What other positions did you hold in the department? Looking back, if only held
one position, was it a good fit with who you are, what you think is important, and what
you do well? If more than one position, which ones were a good fit in all those ways?
Haarr and Morash
415
When you look back at your whole experience in policing, did you hold any positions that did not fit well with who you are, with what you think is important, and what
you do well? If yes: Can you tell me about it? How did you deal with this? Did you do
anything to make it come together?
Looking back, how did the job shape who you are today?
Looking back, what kind of impact did you have on the job?
What kind of impact did you have on the place you worked, the department?
What kind of impact did you have outside of the workplace.
Was there anything you wanted to impact but could not?
In police work, did you spend time with any of your coworkers after work/outside
of the workplace? Why or why not? If yes, how often, what do, and who were they
racially, gender, ethnicity? What kinds of things did you value in your friendships with
coworkers? Do you expect to still spend time with them after retirement?
When you look back at your whole experience in policing, did you have any mentors in the workplace? What role did mentors play in your career? Have mentors been
male or female?
When you look back, do you feel the women in your department got along with
each other? Was there unity between them? If there was unity among women, how did
it benefit you and affect the workplace? Were there any tensions between women in
the department? What do you think was causing tension between the women in the
department? If tension, how did it affect you? How did it affect the workplace? When
you look back, do you feel that you were similar to other female officers in the department? How? Are there differences between male and female officers in your department? What? Do you feel the presence of females in policing threatens male officers?
In what way? [This same series of questions is repeated for Hispanics/Latinos, African
Americans, and Asians].
When you think of yourself, what does it mean to be a woman of your race, ethnicity, and to be a woman?
Where you worked, which of these things did you let people see?
Which of these things did you keep hidden? Why? As a woman of your race and
ethnicity, how did you want those you worked with to see you?
How did you change how you expressed yourself as a woman with your race and
ethnicity over time? Why? What impact did it have?
Did your coworkers expect you to act a specific way because you are a woman?
Can you tell me about it? Did you ever resist or fail to accept any of these expectations? How? How did coworkers react to your resistance to gender role expectations?
How did you handle the reactions of your coworkers? Did their reactions affect your
future behavior? In what way?
Were there any activities or behaviors that were considered inappropriate for a
female police officer to engage in? What?
Were there ways that male officers were expected to react because they are men?
Can you tell me about that? Did you ever see male officers resist these expectations?
How? What happened when they did that?
Did coworkers expect you to act a certain way because you are White/Black/
Hispanic/Asian? Can you tell me about that? If yes: Did you ever resist or fail to accept
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Police Quarterly 16(4)
any of these expectations? How? What happened when you did that? (How did your
coworkers/supervisors react?) How did you handle your coworkers’ reactions? Did
their reactions affect your future behavior? In what way?
Were there times when you had to demonstrate to your male coworkers or supervisors that you were capable of doing the job? Can you tell me about these instances?
Were you ever denied the chance to show your capabilities? Can you tell me about
instances? What did you do?
Did your coworkers ever try to make you feel inadequate because you are a woman?
How did you deal with that?
Did your coworkers ever try to make you feel inadequate because of your race or
ethnicity? How did you deal with that?
Did your male coworkers try to protect you because you are a female? How did you
feel about that? What did you do?
Did you ever see your male coworkers/supervisor magnify the failures of females?
Did you find that your career opportunities were limited because you are a female?
Did you ever find that your career opportunities were limited because of your status
as a Hispanic/African American/Asian?
For whole career, did you ever have to deal with comments reappearance? Can you
tell me about it? How did you handle it?
Did your male coworkers ever tell sexual or racial jokes in front of you? If they did,
how did it make you feel and how did you handle?
Did you ever have experience with coworkers and supervisors commenting on your
sexual relationships? Can you tell me about it? How did you handle it? What happened
when you did that?
If you were to do it all over again, would you still become a police officer? Why or
why not?
What kind of advice would you offer other White/Black/Hispanic women considering an occupation in policing?
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
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Author Biographies
Robin N. Haarr holds a PhD from the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University.
She is a professor of Criminal Justice at Eastern Kentucky University, and director of the
Institute for Global Justice & Security. Her research focuses on women in policing, cross-cultural violence against women and children, and human trafficking and exploitation. She spends
much of her time in Asia and CIS/CEE countries engaged in action-oriented research and policy
work with UN entities. She has received several academic awards, including the American
Society of Criminology Division of Women Crime Saltzman Award for Contribution to Practice
and the CoraMae Richey Mann “Inconvenient Woman of the Year” Award.
Merry Morash holds a PhD in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of
Maryland. She is professor of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. She is a recipient
of the American Society of Criminology Division of Women and Crime Lifetime Achievement
award and is a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. Recent books are Women on
Probation and Parole: A Feminist Critique of Community Programs and Services (2020, The
Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law) and Understanding Gender, Crime, and
Justice (2005, SAGE). Her current research focuses on the effects of probation and parole officers’ relationship and communication styles on women offenders.
+(,121/,1(
Citation:
Jennifer Wareham; Brad W. Smith; Eric G. Lambert, Rates
and Patterns of Law Enforcement Turnover: A Research
Note, 26 Crim. Just. Pol'y Rev. 345 (2015)
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Article
Rates and Patterns of Law
Enforcement Turnover: A
Research Note
Criminal Justice Policy Review
2015, Vol. 26(4) 345-370
©
2013 SAGE Publications
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/08874034135 14439
cjp.sagepub.com
*SAGE
Jennifer Wareham', Brad W. Smith',
i
and Eric G. Lambert
Abstract
Law enforcement agencies invest substantial resources to recruit, hire, and train new
police officers. Reducing officer turnover can save significant resources, yet little is
known about the rates and patterns of turnover in law enforcement. Using data from
the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey in
2003 and the Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA) in
2008, this study establishes baseline rates of employee turnover for sworn police
officers. In addition to national rates, variations in turnover were compared across
states, regions, urbanity, agency size, and agency type. Nationally, the total turnover
rate was 10.8% in both 2003 and 2008. There was much consistency in turnover rates
between survey years. Turnover rates, however, were higher in smaller agencies,
municipal agencies, those in southern regions, and those in rural areas. The turnover
rate benchmarks reported here serve to inform future research on law enforcement
turnover and retention.
Keywords
law enforcement, turnover, retention, police officers
The success of virtually any organization depends upon its employees, perhaps even
more so in the human service fields. Agencies often invest a great deal of resources in
recruitment efforts to attract a diversity of qualified applicants (Doerner, 1995). This
is especially true for law enforcement agencies, which not only invest significant
resources in recruiting, but also in screening and training of potential police officers
'Wayne State University, Detroit, Ml, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer Wareham, Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, 3278 Faculty Administration
Building, Detroit, MI 48202, USA.
Email: jwareham@wayne.edu
Criminal Justice Policy Review 26(4)
(McElroy, Morrow, & Wardlow, 1999; Orrick, 2005). Before the recent economic
downturn, many police agencies experienced significant difficulties recruiting qualified applicants (Koper, Maguire, & Moore, 2001). Recruiting, screening, and training
diverse and qualified applicants are the first phase of the hiring process; the second
phase is retaining qualified officers after the agency has invested in their training
(Orrick, 2008). Most agencies expend a great deal more effort on the former part of
this process compared with the latter.
Employee turnover in policing results in significant costs to agencies. Direct financial costs include the loss of the performance and expertise of the employee, as well as
the recruitment, screening, and training costs of replacement hires (Evans, Christopher,
& Stoffel, 2000; Weisberg & Kirschenbaum, 1991). Recruiting and hiring costs tend
to be much higher for police agencies than for many other types of organizations. In
addition, finding qualified applicants for law enforcement positions is not an easy task
because many applicants are eliminated through the costly and time-consuming
screening process, which includes various tests, interviews, and background investigations (National Institute of Justice, 2004). Beside the direct screening and training
costs, there is the lower productivity of new hires as they are trained. Even after the
academy training, there is a significant learning curve for new officers trying to master
their complex, mercurial job.
The indirect costs of turnover include the loss of expertise to the agency, decreased
social networks and contacts, increased use of inexperienced and/or tired staff, insufficient staffing, and decreased morale (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000). Social networks and communication lines are essential for police officers to be effective at their
jobs. High turnover can result in inexperienced officers who have not cultivated these
networks with others, particularly those in the community. Excessive turnover can
lead to difficulty maintaining adequate staffing levels (Koper et al., 2001). Not only
does this potentially mean less police coverage in the community, it can also lead to
decreased quality of services (Harris & Baldwin, 1999; Lynch & Tuckey, 2008;
Wood, 2002).
High levels of turnover can also trigger turnover among the remaining employees
(Cawsey & Wedley, 1979). Turnover can lead to increased frustration among officers
who remain due to increases in workload demands and a loss of social relations with
those coworkers who have left (Drew, Carless, & Thompson, 2008). "If the topic of
conversation is not, 'How are things going?' but 'When are you going to leave?' then
turnover begins to generate further turnover" (Cawsey & Wedley, 1979, p. 93). Thus,
turnover can also decrease the morale of the officers who remain, ultimately leading to
demoralization (Harris & Baldwin, 1999; Hoffman, 1993). In sum, turnover is potentially very costly to law enforcement agencies (Kiekbusch, Price, & Theis, 2003;
Phelan, 1991). A reduction in turnover could save law enforcement agencies substantial expenditures over the long run.
While turnover is often viewed in negative terms because it is costly to agencies for the
aforementioned reasons, turnover may also be positive for agencies. Turnover is necessary to free the agency from poor performing officers, either those on probation during
Wareham et a/.
their initial hire or those demonstrating job performance problems after their probation
period has ended (Orrick, 2005). In addition, turnover allows for administrative and cultural change within the agency, which can be positive (Orrick, 2005). In such cases, the
costs associated with turnover may save the agency future money and resources.
Despite the significant costs of turnover for police organizations, little is known
about the rates and patterns of law enforcement turnover across the United States.
The limited research on police turnover has disproportionately focused on individual-level predictors of turnover among police officers, and these studies typically
focus on one or only a few agencies. While important for understanding the turnover
decision-making process among officers, it leaves a number of important questions
unanswered.
Police agencies are extremely diverse in terms of size, location, and focus. The current body of research does not provide information on whether different types of agencies have greater problems of turnover than others. In addition, the literature is unclear
if turnover rates vary across regions, states, or by urban status. The varying roles of
different types of agencies may also result in turnover variation. Most importantly, the
existing research does not provide a baseline on turnover. The level of employee retention is an important indicator of the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization
(Lee & Mowday, 1987; Park, Ofari-Dankwa, & Bishop, 1994), and yet, without
benchmarks, it is impossible to evaluate retention within agencies. Agencies need to
be able to compare their retention rates with benchmarks established on similarly situated organizations. Currently, no such benchmarks exist for law enforcement turnover.
Police administrators and city managers must rely on educated guesses as a means of
evaluating turnover in their own jurisdictions. It seems reasonable that many police
agencies are failing to address turnover because they do not know when their level of
turnover is substantially higher than that of comparable agencies. However, agencies
may be investing substantial resources in retention programs that have little effect
because they do not know that their agencies have low turnover relative to similarly
situated agencies. Furthermore, baseline data can help identify agencies most in need
of research and intervention programs.
Much past research has operated under the implicit notion that turnover is similar
across all agencies. It may be that agency type, region, or location-specific models
are appropriate, yet without baseline data researchers are left in the dark. Using data
from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey for 2003 and the Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies
(CSLLEA) for 2008, this study examined the rates of different types of turnover to
establish overall base rates of turnover, including for each of the 50 states and the
District of Columbia. Furthermore, the survey data were examined to determine
whether turnover rates varied across different parts of the nation, by location of the
agency (rural, suburban, and urban), by type of law enforcement agency (i.e., municipal, county, and state), and size of the agency (i.e., small, medium, large, extra large,
and super) based on personnel. Changes in turnover trends between 2003 and 2008
were also evaluated.
Criminal Justice Policy Review 26(4)
Literature Review
There is a small but growing body of studies focused on police officer turnover. The
bulk of this research has explored how personal characteristics and work environment
variables are associated with either turnover intent (i.e., the intention to quit) or voluntary turnover. The personal characteristics of age, tenure, gender, educational level,
and marital status have been linked with law enforcement officer turnover intent or
turnover (Doerner, 1995; Koper et al., 2001; McElroy et al., 1999; National Institute
of Justice, 2004; Stageberg, 1990; Wood, 2002). In terms of perceptions of the work
environment, pay, benefits, dangerousness of the job, job stress, supervisory support,
role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, appreciation by management, organizational support, group cohesiveness, job growth opportunities, and promotional opportunities have all been found to be related with turnover intent or turnover among police
officers (DeLey, 1984; Fry, 1983; Harris & Baldwin, 1999; James & Hendry, 1991;
Jaramillo, Nixon, & Sams, 2005; McIntyre, 1990; Phelan, 1991; Seidel & Courtney,
1983; Sparger & Giacopassi, 1983; Stageberg, 1990; Teske, 1976; University of
Maryland Center for Applied Police Studies, 1999; Wales, 1988; Wood, 2002;
Yearwood, 2003). In addition, law enforcement officers' perceptions of administrative
and personnel policies and procedures were observed to be associated with turnover
(Harris & Baldwin, 1999; Stageberg, 1990). Job satisfaction, job involvement, and
organizational commitment have been found to be negative predictors of turnover
intent and turnover among police officers (Hoffman, 1993; James & Hendry, 1991;
Jaramillo et al., 2005; Lipson, 1987; Seidel & Courtney, 1983). Finally, organizational
factors (i.e., how an agency organizes, structures, and operates) were linked with turnover of officers (Seidel & Courtney, 1983).
The research on police turnover has been limited to looking at turnover at particular
police agencies or a handful of agencies. While these studies are important, in that they
indicate that personal characteristics and, to a greater extent, work environment variables are linked with turnover intent and turnover, what is missing is information on
the rates of different forms of turnover that can be used as a benchmark by law enforcement agencies and scholars. Studies looking at the correlates of police turnover often
provide rates, but from only a limited number of police departments.
To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is only one report of police separations, or turnover, among a national sample of law enforcement agencies in the United
States. Recently, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS; Reaves, 2012) reported police turnover rates gathered in the CSLLEA in 2008. According to the BJS report, 7.4% of
full-time sworn personnel separated from state and local law enforcement agencies in
2008. The rate of turnover was higher in agencies with fewer full-time sworn personnel. This report does not, however, indicate separation rates across geographic regions,
states, urbanity, or types of agencies (i.e., municipal vs. sheriff).
It is important to know the overall estimated level of different forms of turnover
across law enforcement agencies in the United States, as well as the rates by state. In
addition, there is some indication in the literature that turnover rates may be linked to
agency size and agency location (University of Maryland Center for Applied Police
Wareham et a/.
Studies, 1999). For example, a few studies suggest that smaller departments tend to
experience more officer turnover than larger departments (Hoffman, 1993; National
Institute of Justice, 2004; Reaves, 2012; Stageberg, 1990). The present study examined if rates of resignations, retirements, and total turnover vary across states and
regions of the United States, as well as by urban status, agency size, and type of
agency. Importantly, this study extends the 2012 BJS report of the CSLLEA data in
two ways. First, it examines turnover rates across more geographic areas and agency
types than the BJS report. Second, it considers temporal changes in turnover trends by
comparing turnover rates for 2003 to those in 2008.
Method
Sample
This study utilized two sources of secondary data: the LEMAS survey of law enforcement agencies in the United States for 2003 and the CSLLEA survey of law enforcement
agencies in the United States for 2008. The LEIAS data are a nationally representative
sample of state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. The sample
contains 2,859 agencies (overall response rate of 90.6%), with approximately one third
(n - 904) representing agencies with 100 or more sworn officers and the remaining
1,955 agencies representing a random, stratified (based on type and size of agency and
population ofjurisdiction) sample of agencies with fewer than 100 sworn officers.
The CSLLEA data are also a nationally representative sample of state and local law
enforcement agencies in the United States. In fact, the CSLLEA sample is based on the
2007 LEMAS sample of agencies (Reaves, 2012), and contains the same questions on
police separations as the 2003 LEMAS data. The data reported in this study come from
a supplement, or extended questionnaire, of the CSLLEA data. The CSLLEA sample
contains 3,006 agencies (overall response rate of 97. 1%), with approximately one third
(n - 918) representing agencies with 100 or more sworn officers and the remaining
2,088 agencies representing a random stratified (based on type and size of agency and
population of jurisdiction) sample of agencies with fewer than 100 sworn officers.
Both LEMAS and CSLLEA data contain sample weights that can be used to adjust
the samples to represent the population of law enforcement agencies in the United States.
The weighted samples are used in the present study to adjust the samples to the population of law enforcement agencies with fewer than 100 officers based on the nature of an
agency and the population size of its jurisdiction (recall all agencies with 100 or more
officers were included in the samples; hence, these agencies are not weighted). In this
study, the full samples of LEMAS and CSLLEA are utilized because, unfortunately,
only about one third (n - 1,233) of the agencies, primarily those with 100 or more officers, are represented in both the LEMAS 2003 and CSLLEA 2008 data. Rather than
exclude two thirds of each data set, we opted to report the results of analyses using both
full samples. It is better to examine both years of turnover data because relying on only
1 year may provide an invalid representation of law enforcement turnover rates in the
United States. In addition, as the analyses will offer a comparison of turnover rates
Criminal Justice Policy Review 26(4)
between the 2003 and 2008, we can get a better sense of law enforcement turnover trends
in the United States. In the subsequent analyses, the sample size varies depending on the
unit of analysis (e.g., county or municipal), as indicated by the n sizes reported in subsequent tables.
Measures
To explore the rates of turnover in the law enforcement field, it is first necessary to
define turnover and break it down into its major forms. Turnover is simply the cessation of the official employment relationship between a worker and the employing
organization (Price & Mueller, 1981, 1986). Turnover refers to a permanent ending of
employment, and as such, does not include absenteeism, long-term leave, layoffs,
transfers, promotions, or demotions where the person either still works for the organization or is expected to return to working at the organization at some point (Price,
1977). While there are many reasons why employees leave an organization, these
reasons can be grouped into three categories: voluntary, involuntary, and retirements
(Beehr, Glazer, Nielson, & Farmer, 2000; Price, 1977; Price & Mueller, 1986; Schmidt
& Lee, 2008). Voluntary turnover refers to when an employee quits, not including
retirement. Involuntary turnover is when the turnover is not a willing decision by the
employee. In most cases, involuntary turnover is initiated by the employing organization, but not always (McElroy, Morrow, & Fenton, 1995; Mueller, Boyer, Price, &
Iverson, 1994). Examples of involuntary turnover include termination, death, and disability (Hom & Griffeth, 1995; Price & Mueller, 1981, 1986). Some involuntary turnover may be beneficial to the police agency, allowing problem or nonproductive
employees to be removed (Orrick, 2005). Retirement is the third form of turnover and
occurs when the employee retires from the agency. Sometimes retirement is voluntary
(e.g., early retirement) and other times is not (e.g., mandatory retirement; Schmidt &
Lee, 2008). Any of the forms of turnover can be costly and disruptive, especially if the
form of turnover becomes high.
In both 2003 and 2008, agencies were asked to indicate how many officers separated from the agency. Participating LEMAS agencies were asked to "Enter the number of actual FULL-TIME SWORN personnel with general arrest powers who
separated from your agency during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2003."
Participating CSLLEA agencies were asked to "Enter the number of FULL-TIME
SWORN personnel who separated from your agency during 2008." For these questions, agencies indicated the total number of personnel lost within six sub-categories:
resignations, dismissals, medical/disability retirements, non-medical retirements, probationary rejections, and other separations (e.g., death).
Four measures of police officer turnover were created for the present study for each
survey year. Each turnover indicator was divided by the number of full-time sworn
personnel with general arrest powers also reported by the agency and multiplied by 100
to create percentages of turnover. The variable resignations represented the percentage
of full-time sworn officers who resigned from the agency (i.e., voluntary turnover). The
variable retirements measured the percentage of full-time sworn "non-medical
Wareham et a/.
retirements" reported for the agency. The survey does not indicate whether this form of
retirement is early and/or mandatory. The variable total voluntary separationsreflected
the sum of the resignations and retirements variables, that is, the percentage of full-time
sworn resignations and non-medical retirements within the agency. The variable total
turnover measured the proportion of full-time sworn officers reported for all categories
of separation by agencies, which included probationary rejections, medical retirements,
and deaths.
Units of Analysis for Turnover Rate Comparisons
In the subsequent analyse...
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