5 women seek top police job

2 from LR ranks combine 54 years

Only a sliver of the 15,000 licensed and sworn officers in the state call a woman “chief.” But a handful of candidates seeking to replace Little Rock’s outgoing chief of police wants to change that.

The Springdale Police Department, with 134 sworn officers, is the only law enforcement agency in the state with a female in command. Of the 59 applicants looking to take Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas’ job once he retires in June, only five are women.

Of those five, two come from within the Little Rock ranks, and with a combined 54 years of policing between them, both want to build on the gains made in Thomas’ nine-year tenure as the largest city department’s top cop.

Neither Capt. Patrice Smith nor Capt. Alice Fulk applied in order to become the first woman chief. Smith, head of special projects, and Fulk, commander of investigations, said they applied because they think their experience, vision and ties to the community would make them the best fit.

They just happen to be women.

“We’re not really represented in that top tier [of law enforcement] and I do think I have an extra splash of diversity that could add to something that may be long overdue,” Fulk said. “But at the same time, I do think I’m qualified. I’m not wanting the job because of my gender.”

While the city’s Fire Department has had a woman fire chief, Little Rock has never hired or promoted a woman to run its largest and most expensive department.

It has never hired or promoted a woman to assistant chief, and after both Smith and Fulk were passed over for the two open assistant jobs in 2012, both filed suit with the city and Fulk asserted that there was a “glass ceiling” in the city’s Police Department.

Montie Sims, Dardanelle police chief and head of the state’s police chief association, said that the dearth of female police leaders is really no surprise in a profession that is historically male dominated.

“I won’t say that the males have the market on [chief jobs] by any means, but it just works out that way, that there are more males that have done it,” Sims said. “Not that there’s some females in law enforcement that wouldn’t probably make excellent chiefs of police. I’m sure there is some of them that don’t apply for that because of family and raising a family… some of the women are more at ease possibly not being under such a stressful job as police chief.”

Kathy O’Kelley, who retired from the North Little Rock Police Department in 2003 and then was hired on as Springdale’s chief, agreed that family can limit some women’s options in policing, but thinks that overall, chiefs’ jobs are no longer the province of men.

Women started to trickle into law enforcement on a national scale in the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to O’Kelley, and in 1985, the city of Portland, Ore., was the first major city to hire a woman police chief.

By the past decade, women accounted for roughly 13 percent of law enforcement professionals, according to the National Center for Women and Policing.

Statewide numbers were not available from state standards officials because of a software complication, though, according to Stephanie Harris, creator of the nonpartisan advocacy organization Women Lead Arkansas,the state has only elected one woman sheriff. Judy Pridgen was elected Saline County sheriff in 1992 and served eight years.

“To really be eligible and qualified to administer a larger organization, you have to come up through the ranks and get your experience,” O’Kelley said. “I think the environment is more ripe now [for more women chiefs] since you’ve had more women in law enforcement for the years [necessary for experience] and you’ll see more women applying.”

Smith, who joined the Little Rock department in 1982, said that whether its tradition or something else, there is an ingrained bias in policing that is set against women.

Smith said she was the first female to be promoted to lieutenant in Little Rock, and in 1996, she was the first female captain. In her career she has commanded every division of the department, experiences she said that have taught her that the new chief needs to do a better job at opening the lines of communication and foster greater back-and-forth in the chain of command.

“I’m not going to say there’s a [communication] breakdown, but a lot of times, officers feel that the only thing they’re considered are worker bees. Just go and do the job we tell them to,” Smith said. “You need to sit down with your people and hear what they think would work better … they need to feel like they’re part of the organization.”

Fulk, who joined the department in 1992, and holds a master’s in human resources, agrees with Smith that the department needs to open a greater dialogue within.

She also thinks that a greater commitment to investing in more technology, fostering an “equitable” standard for officer conduct, and bolstering community policing departments should be the department’s goals over the coming months.

Fulk also thinks it’s necessary to encourage education, and diversity, in a department that, despite efforts, still fails at its quest to be a “mirror” of the city it serves.

In a city that has a majority of women, only 17 percent of the 550 officers working for Little Rock are women, according to department statistics from the start of the year.

“We all learn from each other and each others backgrounds,” Fulk said. “An agency limits themselves when we don’t try and include that diversity in and that diversity really needs to start at the top and go down.”

City Manager Bruce Moore said he puts a premium on diversity and although he said it was too early in the process to speak specifically about candidates, he said he thinks Little Rock is trending in the right direction.

“If you look at the command staff, including captains and lieutenants, we have more females in those levels than we have had in the history of the [department],” Moore said. “We have a good track record when it comes to ensuring we have a diverse and representative team.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/21/2014

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