Frederick police join national pledge to add more women to policing

Sep. 16—Seanna Hurst, a Frederick Police Department student officer, scribbled in her notepad as presentation slides about fraud flipped across the screen in front her.

In a training class of 10, she is one of three women the agency recruited for the current academy, which is in line with a new pledge the agency made: have 30% of its sworn personnel be women by 2030.

The agency recently made the 30x30 Pledge, which is a national effort to increase female representation in police work.

"[Representation] brings balance," Cpl. Sara Leishear said,

According to the 30x30 website, women currently make up only 12% of sworn officers in the U.S. In police leadership, women make up only 3%.

According to the police department, they are already well above the national average with 21% of their sworn officers being women.

Officer Lindsay Fader said she feels the pledge is yet another step in the right direction to try and make police relatable to the community.

Fader has been a police officer for five years. She was with the Rockville Police Department before she joined the Frederick department seven months ago.

"I think that everybody wants to be able to relate and communicate with the people that we're dealing with on a daily basis," Fader said. "So I think it's important to bring people from all different kinds of backgrounds..."

And that's one of the reasons she believes it's good to have more women in policing. Fader wants to work with women and children who are victims of human trafficking and other crimes. As a woman, she said she feels victims can relate to her more easily than her male peers.

"Women have different life experiences than men and those experiences give them the ability to talk to people in a different light," she said.

According to the 30x30 website, agencies with more women have better outcomes for crime victims, particularly those in sexual assault cases.

Leishear agreed that female officers can better relate to female victims, particularly with domestic violence and sexual assault. Additionally, she said in her nine years with FPD, she has noticed women have a sort of "calming effect" at crime scenes.

As a woman in a supervisory role, she said it's not only important to have representation in the community, but also have representation within the agency.

For cadets and officers, it's important to see women in higher ranks, she said. It allows them to see that it could be an option for them if they wanted to continue their career in policing, Leishear said.

The fact that the department joined the pledge reinforces Leishear's love for the agency. It's always been supportive, diverse and "cutting edge," she said.

"I plan to retire from FPD," she said. "I plan to serve my full 22 years."

Frederick Alderman Kelly Russell said she was excited about the pledge having being made. She served as an officer in the department for 22 years and retired in 2005. Much has changed since then, she said.

When Russell was with FPD, the agency had roughly a dozen women among its ranks, she said. They were truly a minority.

"You never saw two female officers in one place, because there just weren't that many of us," she said. "And so sometimes I'm at events, and I'll see, you know, two or three women officers together, and it just kind of blows my mind," she said.

And as a former head of the Human Resources Division of FPD, Russell said the higher number of women now serving is due to the consistent, progressive recruiting efforts of the department.

The department has broadened how, where and who they recruit and it's showing, she said.

A lot of what the 30x30 pledge asks agencies to do revolves around recruitment and retention, according to their website. It has agencies look closely at their demographics and policies to see how they might change them to be more proactive toward recruiting and maintaining diversity.

For example, in order to promote equitable opportunities for female officers, they ask agencies to provide flexible schedules to nursing mothers once they return to work.

They also require agencies to analyze their hiring data to see if the number of women applicants is proportional to women hired. They require the same for promotional data.

"So you have to really sort of laser focus your efforts on when you're looking for women, or when you're looking for other for minorities, and other communities to be represented," Russell said.

"Signing the 30x30 Pledge reaffirms our commitment to continue to be a leader in this effort, and to provide Frederick a police department that is reflective of the diverse community which we serve," Chief Jason Lando said in a Facebook post.

Follow Clara Niel on Twitter: @clarasniel