Subscribers can listen to the audio version of today’s post here.
A gentle reminder that paid subscribers are greatly appreciated and help fund my efforts to provide content that is free of charge and available to all.
How to write a story about the LAPD that is not an excoriation of what bigoted shitburgers many of them are? Let’s tell the tale of the first woman on the force, Alice Stebbins Wells.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 12, 1910--
Born in 1873, Alice later graduated from the Hartford Theological Seminary where she’d studied the need for female police officers, because young people and women often don’t want to talk to male cops. Hell, I don’t like talking to male cops.
She was a minister and part of the Christian temperance movement (barf), and it seemed a lot of people really wanted her to be a cop. Except for those who got to decide if she could be a cop. It was a long battle of petitions with massive community support saying let the lady have a badge that finally forced the mayor, the police commissioner, and the L.A. city council to grant Alice Stebbins the role of first female LAPD officer on September 12, 1910.
No gun though. Can’t be trusting women with guns. Could you imagine the embarrassment of a man being shot by ... by a woman? She was given a telephone call box key and a badge that said “Policewoman’s Badge Number One.” She had to sew her own uniform, which was the first policewoman’s uniform in the U.S. She wasn’t the first female cop in the U.S., but it’s believed she was the first with the power to actually arrest people.
She was given the perilous duty of supervising skating rinks, movie theaters, and dance halls. But also being a liaison with women who’d really rather not have anything to do with male cops, jeez I fucking wonder why. Two years after Wells joined the LAPD two more female officers were hired, and then the idea caught on and cities all across the U.S. and the world said hey this having lady cops thing is actually a good idea. Wells created the International Policewomen’s Association in 1915, which still exists today. In 1919 the LAPD hired Georgia Ann Robinson, its first Black female police officer, who I’m sure never experienced any racism from colleagues.
Wells’s work and influence revealed that female police officers were better at defusing potentially violent situations than their male counterparts, and led to safer streets and improved social conditions. As a result, along with Wells’s campaigning in favor of it, women’s presence in policing grew, especially after 1972 with the passing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.
Alice Stebbins Wells died in 1957 and her funeral was attended by senior officers of the LAPD along with a 10-woman honor guard.
Thanks, Jenn, for the suggestion of today’s post.
Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.