The first female police officer in the country with arrest powers, Alice Stebbins Wells, arrived in 1910 with the Los Angeles Police Department. By 1937, the department employed 39 policewomen. Women are serving in most areas of the department; they have yet to crack the elite SWAT unit, but a 2008 report led to 12 women being accepted into the training program that feeds the unit. These photos, which show several of the pioneering police women of the department, have been provided by the Los Angeles Police Historical Society.
Some officers don't give patrol gloves a second thought. It's time that you did. Gloving up can mean much more than protecting yourself from inclement weather. Today's patrol gloves can also protect against microbes, bacteria, blood-borne pathogens, needles, and even knives. They can help you scale chain-link fences, keep your extremities warm, and give you a better grip when you need it.
A swift kick can do wonders in a violent confrontation, but you have to know how to deliver it. Law enforcement agencies equip and train officers with pistols, rifles, shotguns, batons, OC, TASERs, canines, horses, basllistic shields, battering rams, emplty hand self defense, and countless other potentially dangerous law enforcement tools, but may be hesistant when an officer properly and justifiably uses kicks for self-defense or to subdue a suspect. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Graham v. Connor that the reasonableness of an officer's actions must be judged by the circumstances at the time the force is used. It did not restrict of limit the tactics that an officer can employ.
You don't need to have majored in biology to know that men and women are not created equal-in measurements, that is. That's why female officers need ballistic vests made especially for their unique shapes. And now that women make up a more significant amount of the market share in law enforcement, body armor companies are taking notice.
