The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-18
WOMEN POLICE IN
  MANY CITIES ARE AN INVALUABLE AID
Los Angeles PoIicewoman De- ScribeS Work at National
 Conference.

Baltimore. Md, May 1S.-A police woman, Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells, of Los Angeles, California, was given | close attention by special session of the National Conference of Charities and Correction here today when she told of poIicewomen's work.
 For long time past, she said, the ''woman policeman has been a fig ment of the imagination, held up to ridicule as to the acme of the absurd and impossible, but though the lost echo of deris1on still reverberates, l there has grown po1icewoman movement as great in strength and size as any recent Humanitarian movement has attained in equal time As the latest list of cities which have added regular policewOmen as an integral part of the police depart ment for outside work, she named Chicago as leading with 20; Los An gales, Baltimore and Seattle with 5 each; San Francisco and St. Paul. 8 each; Topeka Minneapolis. Dayton. Fargo, Grand Forks, Rochester, N. Y., Ottawa, Aurora San Antonio, Den- yer, iMuncie, Colorado Springs, Super for, Jamestown, Ford Wayne, Ind, Racine, Wis, and Phoenix, Arizona, 1 each She also believed that Sioux City, Iowa, Beatrice and Omaha, Neb. and Boston and Salem, Mass, Bel 1ingham, Wash, and Ithica, N. r., and Des Moines, Iowa. as places i where policeWomen were paid from private funds, with approval of the chief. In addition there were nun1er- ous cities which employed police ma irons.
 She had found upon investigation that the United States led in this de- parture, for notwithstanding reports 1 of the employment of policewomen | in foreign countries she had been I.I,, ko +Io- cially employed abroad except in Norway, and in England in vo1un- ], tary way.
 1 The need of women on the police force has arisen, she said, from the fact that industrial and social energy no longer centered in the home, .fbut has given yds an age in which men, women and children, eat, sleep, work and play together as never before in 1 the worlds history
 l Mrs Wells was the first policeWo- man in Los Angeles, the post being created upon her initiative. eI had charge of this york; she said, @sand I know two things That girls and l women in trouble have a right to the sympathetic help of women officers; and that men officers have a right to exemption from what may be a con- stant temptation to the weak, and from enforced and unnecessary as sociation with those who, if restntful, may cast a cloud upon the reputa- 1 ton of the most exemplary The best officers are the most reluctant to undertake the handling of girls, and will sometimes resign in prefer ence."
 Mrs, Wells told how the police womars work took her into the home to talk to mother and daugh- ter as no man could hope to do, and of numerous other police activities in which wamen engawed.
 ''I would not give the impression 2 she said, that the policew wonaan's work is a silver lining or an orna mental fringe to the very dark clouds of law enforcement for which a po- liceman stands in the average mind 1 She is an integral part of the depart lment and stands for law enforcement but her largest and best work is to 1 prevent, for the securing of obedience to law is the very best form of law enforcement.
 Docs the poIicewoman make ar rests? is the question asked. Indeed 1 she does-but as few as possible, and those in keeping with the spirit. of the work. She does not try to do the traditional work of the policeman l on the street, but when d girl is to | be brought in and held for any req son, it is Tight for the policewoman to go and bring her in. If she has
 to summon to court the proprietor
 of a place of amusement, she does so. These constitute arrests, yet are no more spectacular or unwomanly
 than the work daily performed by t+other business and professional wom- en-
 Concluding with an advocacy, of
 the extension of state police, Mrs.
 Wells saw still further work for po-
 1icewomen. She believes they would
 some day be mutually exchanged be- I7n 1ox~c oi+ of no
 state, travelling from one to the other
 incognito fashion, and be able to reveal in the strange cities hitherto
 unsuspected conditions.