Arresting Preconceptions

Women's liberation notwithstanding, most residents of large U.S. cities probably still harbor an untested suspicion that police patrol duty is men's work -- tough, grueling and occasionally filled with split-second dangers. A study released this week by the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., a law enforcement research organization, upsets almost every facile objection to women on patrol. The survey compared 86 male with 86 female officers on the capital's police force for a year and found little difference in the abilities of men and women to deal with violent, or potentially violent, situations. Women were found to be similar or equal to men in the percentage of arrests they made that resulted in conviction, their attitude toward the public, the number of incidents they were involved in that required back-up support from other officers, the number of injuries they sustained on the job, and even the number of driving accidents they had.

Perhaps the most annoying on-the-job irritant women officers faced: hostility from male officers. Patrolmen persisted in the belief that women officers were not fit partners for them, while patrolwomen more modestly concluded that under most circumstances they were as good as but no better than men. Yet under stress there may well have been a female advantage. Noted one policewoman wryly: "A lot of times a female officer is not only able to be cool, calm and persuasive with the disorderly; she can also help to do the same with her male partner."

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