Law Enforcement Officers Women

Women in the Los Angeles Police Department are subject to pervasive harassment and discrimination, a dozen Police Department employees claimed in a federal class-action suit filed Wednesday. Described by attorneys as the most ambitious gender-based lawsuit ever filed against a police department, the 47-page complaint alleges that women are unfairly treated throughout the department from the moment they are recruited until the day they leave.

The city of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $430,000 to an African American former police officer who claimed that she was subjected to repeated racial and sexual harassment at the LAPD's Foothill Division in Pacoima. The City Council voted this week to settle a lawsuit filed by Janine Bouey, who charged that she was shunned and demoted to a menial job after complaining of mistreatment by white male officers at the north San Fernando Valley station.

For many women, the only obstacle standing between them and a career with the Los Angeles Police Department is a six-foot wooden wall. Scaling "the wall" is one of the Police Academy's pass-fail entrance requirements, part of an intense physical exam designed to weed out the weak from the strong. Fail it and forget a badge. The wall, with its emphasis on upper body strength, is one of the biggest reasons that women are turned away from the department.

A rookie Los Angeles policewoman was shot to death in Sun Valley early Monday morning by an assailant who in turn was fatally wounded during a brief gun battle with the officer's partner. Tina Kerbrat, 34, was the department's first female officer killed in the line of duty. Kerbrat, who stepped out of her black-and-white cruiser shortly after midnight to question two men drinking beer in public, had no time to speak or draw her gun, according to police accounts.

For the first time in the Los Angeles Police Department's 129-year history, a female officer today is expected to be promoted to the rank of commander. Chief Willie L. Williams said he will formally present Capt. Betty P. Kelepecz with a commander's badge today, making her the highest-ranking female officer ever at the LAPD.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Tuesday reversed an earlier decision and allowed three deputies accused of sexual harassment to resign instead of being fired, leaving lingering questions about the department's role in condoning the hazing of rookies. The department fired five deputies earlier this year after a five-month investigation concluded that they had urged inmates at a jail in Castaic to commit obscene acts in front of Deputy Alyson A.

Kathleen McChesney is used to being watched. She was the first woman police officer to go on patrol in the state of Washington, and camera crews from local TV stations followed her around for days in 1971. "When you're first at something you expect to be looked at," she reasoned 23 years later in an office on the top floor of the federal building in West Los Angeles.

Two women--one Korean, the other Vietnamese--will become the first females of their ancestries to become Orange County sheriff's deputies today when they graduate from the department's academy. Although Orange County's Vietnamese and Korean populations have grown tremendously over the last two decades, Christine Chang, 23, and Courtney Nguyen, 26, still expressed surprise to be the first of their respective ethnic backgrounds to be sworn in as deputies.

Saying he would "stand on his credibility," Sheriff Brad Gates on Wednesday defended himself and his agency against sexual harassment allegations leveled by a high-ranking female officer. One day after a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed by Lt. Wendy Costello, Gates denied ever using sexist language in the presence of the 14-year-veteran and said he was blindsided by the allegations that have shaken his department.