Santa Rosa police pledge to boost ranks of new, female officers

As part of a national initiative to attract more women to law enforcement careers, the Santa Rosa Police Department has pledged to boost the representation of women in recruiting classes to at least 30% by 2030.

Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro made the pledge on June 9, joining nearly 100 other police agencies across the country that have done the same within their own departments as of this month.

Called the 30x30 Pledge, the project challenges law enforcement agencies to address the widespread under-representation of women within the ranks of sworn officers. It also offers recommendations on how to reverse the trend.

The pledge suggests how law enforcement leaders should evaluate existing workplace conditions and culture so that public safety agencies can better retain women once they’re hired. Among the examples is reviewing how officers are promoted and why female officers, in particular, choose to leave a department or the profession.

Agencies must acknowledge how race, class, religion and sexual orientation come into play in their efforts to improve the representation and experiences of women in policing, according to the pledge website.

Nationally, women made up 13% of the police force in 2019, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics. The 30x30 Pledge website says only 3% of police leadership roles are held by women.

In Santa Rosa, female officers made up about 7% of the department’s sworn staff by the end of last year, according to department data. All 12 female officers employed by the agency at that time were white, the department said.

Navarro said he decided to sign the pledge because it fell in line with his department’s goal to be more representative of the community it serves, particularly among its sworn personnel, a sector of the department’s workforce that has consistently lacked employees from diverse backgrounds.

“These are things we can do,” said Navarro, the city’s first Latino police chief, of the suggestions included in the pledge. “It gives us a strategy for the future so we don’t take our foot off the gas pedal. It provides us some stepping stones so we can continue to make this a priority in the future.”

The push for greater representation of women in policing comes as the ripple effects of the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, continue to spread in part because of ongoing conversations about police reform.

Pledge organizers point to studies that suggest increasing the ranks of women within law enforcement could improve public safety. Studies have shown women typically use less force, including less excessive force, and are named in fewer complaints and lawsuits than their male counterparts.

Women also obtain better outcomes for victims of crime, especially those involved in sexual assault cases, the organizers say. The pledge was founded by the New York University’s School of Law Policing Project and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives.

Former San Rafael Police Chief Diana Bishop, who is now a consultant for a recruitment firm that works with local governments, said her 36-year career in law enforcement has shown her why female officers may use less physical force on another person.

An officer who is physically outmatched by someone they are trying to arrest may be more inclined to avoid going “hands on” with that person compared to officers who perceive themselves as more equally matched with a suspect, Bishop said, adding that generally female officers are shorter than their male co-workers.

“Maybe it would take someone who could talk well, who could speak to someone, five more minutes on a call for them to not use force, but you don’t want to use force,” Bishop said. “If you can have a work force that can do the job well, and use less force, why wouldn’t you do that?”

As part of the pledge, agencies are encouraged to take five immediate steps, which include making hiring, retaining, and promoting qualified women a priority for the agency, having a zero-tolerance policy against harassment or discrimination and ensuring female officers have equipment that is physically suited for them.

Navarro said the agency already has implemented nearly all of those suggestions, including having a dedicated space for nursing mothers who have recently returned to work to express breast milk, though the department will need to purchase a fridge for it to be stored as part of the pledge’s suggestions.

The other actions law enforcement agencies are encouraged to take as part of the pledge include reviewing data on who applies for police jobs and what information is presented to potential recruits about what a career in law enforcement will look like.

As opposed to “lateral” hires, or experienced officers who are hired from other agencies, the recruit hires are put through the police academy by the department at the very start of their career, Santa Rosa Police spokesman Sgt. Chris Mahurin said.

The department’s current pool of recruits undergoing police academy training includes two women out of a group of seven new hires, Mahurin said.

“We’ve seen two or three females in the last few academy classes,” Mahurin said. “But there are times that we have academy classes where we don’t have a female, or academy classes where we only have two recruitees going in at all.”

Since 2009, the percentage of woman who make up Santa Rosa Police Department’s sworn officers has slowly declined, going from 10% that year to 8% a decade later, the FBI data shows.

That trend continued in 2020, when only 12 female officers were among the department’s 169 sworn officer ranks, data provided by the agency showed. Currently, the number of female officers in the department totals 16.

Navarro said his agency hopes to provide regular public updates about the progress his agency has made in connection with the pledge, possibly through the department’s social media pages and the city council’s Public Safety Subcommittee.

One benefit of participating in the pledge is that participating agencies will be able to share information with one another about what’s working in their departments, he said.

Mountain View Deputy Chief Jessica Nowaski, who formerly served on the planning committee for the Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Symposium, said the lack of visibility of women in law enforcement may contribute to the under-representation of women in the job field.

Her agency combated that issue with an event in 2018, where women and girls in the community were invited to meet with police department employees, including female sworn and civilian staff.

“It had to do with the idea of ‘you need to see it to believe it,’” Nowaski said.

Mentors who understand the unique challenges women face while on patrol and co-workers who call out bad behavior when they see it can also be impactful for women in law enforcement, she said.

“We need people to be able to call it out and have those conversations in the room,” Nowaski said of instances when discriminatory comments are made. “This is not just a women’s issue, this is everyone’s issue.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.