During my police career, I was fortunate to work for some great supervisors. They were the ones who made me want to come to work each day and made me feel part of a team.
The best supervisor among them I worked with for 10 years and followed from one assignment to the next because I wouldn’t find a better supervisor.
This supervisor happened to be a woman. This is not a fact that should garner any distinction except for the disparity I often witnessed in how higher-ranking male officers treated her.
She endured slights, remonstrations, harassment and scrutiny that male officers of equal rank did not. The negative treatment sometimes filtered down to the unit of seven males she supervised. But we were as united behind her as she was supportive of us.
A repeated pattern of behavior
My experiences working for her led me, after retirement, to focus part of my law practice on representing female police officers who were sexually harassed and discriminated against in the workplace. Over more than a decade of representing and litigating on behalf of multiple female police officer clients, I witnessed a repeated pattern of behavior toward them.
I represented good police officers who were stymied in their careers either because they did not submit to sexual come-ons from male colleagues — often supervisors — or refused to tolerate unequal treatment. What ensued in these situations ran the gamut from phony disciplinary charges being lodged against them to heightened scrutiny of their work, re-assignments, shift changes and even physical threats.
Now that I am 17 years retired as a police officer, I would like to report that incidents I witnessed while working for my female supervisor are no longer an issue, but experience and conversations with female police officers from around the country, and those in New York who have consulted with me about their cases, sadly tell me otherwise.
Researching female police officer sexual harassment
In 2020, during a sabbatical leave from my teaching duties, I conducted a study of reported cases of female police officer sexual harassment, gender discrimination and sexual assault by male colleagues from 2000-2019. The outcomes of that research were reported in two columns in April 2021. I have since then updated the research to include cases from 2019-2024.
The new research parallels my earlier results in showing that similarly reported cases have been abundant during the ensuing five-year period, the occurrence of accompanying sexual assault is higher than expected, and there is often retaliation when a female officer reports sexual harassment, gender discrimination, or sexual assault. These cases are also costly for police departments and the municipalities that fund them, with many settlements in the low to mid-six-figure range and trial verdicts producing higher results, many over $1 million. Additionally, I’ve encountered more cases where individual police officer defendants are forced to directly pay plaintiffs. In my own law practice, I had three instances wherein individual defendant officers had to write personal checks, some in the five-figure range, to my clients.
Anecdotally, I have heard from female students and other young women that the “culture” in policing and the potential for heightened issues relating to harassment from colleagues dissuade them from becoming a police officer. My own experience handling these cases as plaintiff’s counsel highlights one glaring issue: how the agency responds to an officer’s complaint and how seriously and thoroughly it is investigated impacts the legitimacy of the process.
My research shows that offenses against the complaining female officer are often egregious, repetitive, and at the hands of a supervisor or a male colleague with a history of prior complaints. From an agency perspective, there is no defensible excuse for the extent of these harassment and discrimination claims. Too often, the supervisory response to a reported claim of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, or sexual assault is to transfer the complaining officer. In the past, I’ve had to vigorously fight against any transfer of my client pending an investigation and when that wasn’t successful, it became another cause of action in the civil court complaint that was filed. In some cases that I reviewed, the retaliation charge survived even if the sexual harassment complaint had been dismissed, and the result was a substantial monetary award to the victim officer.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently delivered a big win for workplace equality in the case of Muldrow v. St. Louis. In this case, a female police officer lost job perks when she was transferred after nine years in her prestigious assignment so a male officer could replace her. The Supreme Court overturned a federal 8th Circuit affirmation of a district court’s summary judgment dismissal of the officer’s claim. Justice Kagan’s majority opinion held that while an employee challenging a job transfer under Title VII must show that the transfer brought about some harm with respect to an identifiable term or condition of employment, that harm need not be significant to satisfy summary judgment. The Court rejected the standard that a worker must show “significant harm” as had been interpreted in the past by many lower courts.
While this case will not alter what happens within the walls of the workplace, it will significantly impact the pathway toward an employee’s Title VII lawsuit proceeding forward. Municipal and agency defenses that once hung solely on the heightened “significant harm” standard, without addressing the underlying substantive claims, will no longer suffice. Workplace inequities — like the transfer of officers who allege sexual harassment (this includes those male officers who come forward to report harassment or discrimination of a female colleague), or the unaccommodated working conditions of breastmilk pumping female officers, or the denial of light-duty assignments to pregnant officers — will have less of a hurdle in getting beyond a motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment.
30X30 Policing Initiative
The 30X30 Policing Initiative was launched in March 2021 by the New York University School of Law’s Policing Project. The stated aim of getting 30% female representation in the national ranks by 2030 has thus far been joined by over 400 police departments nationwide. I expect these numbers to grow, yet I don’t expect the incidents of reported sexual harassment cases to diminish anytime soon. This presents a multi-tiered problem for police agencies seeking to recruit more women and retain those they have.
Prior research indicated that the police agencies that had a higher than national average of 11%-12% female officer representation also had higher monetary damages awards against them in sexual harassment lawsuits. Many of these departments had 20%-22% female representation in their ranks. The hope that higher female officer representation will reduce instances of sexual harassment claims remains elusive. Foreign jurisdictions where female officers have higher representation, such as in the U.K., Ireland, and Canada, have experienced widespread issues of their own. In Ireland, where the Garda has one of the highest percentages of female police officers in the EU, more cases of sexual harassment and bullying are now coming to the forefront, and recent settlements and court awards in the U.K. and Canada show similar patterns.
Suffering in silence
I truly believe most male officers are supportive of their female colleagues. But many others are not. The problem with sexual harassment, gender discrimination and sexual assault within the ranks is that the victims remain hidden because they suffer in silence. Most of the plaintiffs in my 25-year study have been mid-career officers who came forward after years of harassment. Another outcome of the study was that 89% of the cases reviewed involved a supervisor as a named defendant in the civil case. In one instance, the pattern of sexual discrimination was so egregious that the U.S. Department of Justice intervened.
Police executives cannot expect to measurably increase and retain the number of women in the ranks without first truly balancing the equities in the workplace and meaningfully responding to sexual harassment, gender discrimination and sexual assault complaints. Otherwise, for the agencies and individuals who either neglect or refuse to view female colleagues as equals, the lawsuits and monetary damages will accumulate.
NEXT: The 30x30 Initiative aims to increase the representation of women in police ranks to 30% by 2030. This video dives deep into why this is crucial for better policing and how departments nationwide are making strides toward this goal.
