Robert L. Snow - Policewomen Who Made History: Breaking Through the Ranks

THE MOMENT

L iz Coffals hand trembled just enough so that the car key she was holding moved noticeably. Since early that morning, her stomach had been filled with electricity, but now that the moment had at last arrived, the voltage seemed to be surging at full power, rippling out her arms and fingertips. As she got into the police car, a 1964 black-and-white Ford Custom with Indianapolis Police Department emblems on the doors and red lights and siren on the roof, Lizs breath hitched in her chest. The moment was here at last.

I had wanted this for so long, Liz said, but when the moment finally arrived, it was really scary.

Next to her, in the passenger seat, sat fellow policewoman thirty-fouryear-old Betty Blankenship, eight years Lizs senior. Betty didnt look to Liz as though she was faring any better. Liz could see perspiration on Bettys upper lip.

Liz and Betty were about to do something that had never been done before in the United States. They were going to make history. Two big-city policewomen were getting ready to go out in a police car on street patrol, a totally male-dominated job for as long as America had been a country.

We knew we were making history, Liz said, but the size and scope of what we were doing didnt really occur to us until years later. At the moment, we just wanted to show that we could do the same nitty-gritty work that the men did.

It was September 10, 1968, and Liz and Betty, dressed in Indianapolis Police Department blue jackets and skirts, their guns in their purses, were headed out into hostile territory. If reality turned out to be anything like their dreams, they would be going on dangerous radio runs, where the people they would deal with would often be angry, drunk or high, and occasionally violent.

Liz and Betty, both strikingly attractive women who many of the male officers had flirted with, realized they couldnt count on that type of male attention any longer. Instead, they knew they would likely receive little, if any, support from the other street officers they would be working with. The male officers had made no secret of the fact that they resented women attempting to enter their domain. No policewoman in a major city in the United States had ever done this before because, according to the men who controlled access to the job, the work was just too dangerous, too physically demanding, and too raw and uncivilized for a woman.