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### A History of Women in Law Enforcement

 March 2017 | Volume 10 | Issue 3

In Honor of Women’s History Month, a History of Women in Law Enforcement

1845: Flora Foster was  appointed as one of two women matrons at the New York City Prison (the Tombs)  and served in that capacity for thirty-six years until her death in 1882.

1890: Marie Owens was  one of the first known appointed policewomen in Chicago, Illinois.

1908: Lola Baldwin was  the first sworn female police officer, hired by Portland, Oregon.

1916: Constance Kopp  was officially hired as New Jersey’s first female deputy sheriff, after serving  as jail matron and capturing an escaped fugitive at a Brooklyn subway stop in  late 1915.

1916: Georgia Ann  Robinson was appointed to the LAPD, making her America’s first known  African-American policewoman.

1920: Myrtle Siler was  elected sheriff in Pittsboro, NC.

1946: Josephine  Serrano joined the LAPD, becoming the first known Latina policewoman.

1972: Tanya Padgett,  Martha Parks, and Tommie Stewart were sworn in as full police officers in Ann  Arbor, MI, one of the first cities in the country to take this step after  changes in employment law in 1972 made it illegal for police departments to  discriminate on the basis of gender.

1985: Penny Harrington  became the first female police chief of major city, in Portland, OR

2004: Heather Fong  became first the first Asian-American woman to serve as police chief of a major  city, in San Francisco, CA.

Approximately 73,000  women serve as law enforcement officers today, 11.6% of the total.*

FBI Statistic:  (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-74)          Historic references  provided by National Center for Women and Policing and John Jay College.
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