At Long Last, Officers Fete Woman of the Year

November 7, 1994

With Donna Hanover Giuliani and Commissioner William Bratton attending, the Policewomen's Endowment Association presented its first-ever Woman of the Year award Thursday night. The recipient was the department's highest-ranking woman, Gertrude LaForgia, the first female promoted to deputy chief in 16 years.

"We [women] are a definite asset," the 28-year veteran and grandmother of six, who heads the public morals division, told the largely female audience. "And we have a lot to offer."

Referring to Bratton, who in previous jobs promoted women to the highest ranks, LaForgia said: "We have a police commissioner who is going to let us show him what we can do."

As superintendent of Boston's Metropolitan Police, Bratton brought in a woman Boston police sergeant as his deputy. When he came to New York, she succeeded him as superintendent. She's now the top law enforcement official in Massachusetts Gov. William Weld's administration.

LaForgia follows in a short but distinguished lineage. This includes Gertrude Schimmel, appointed the Police Department's first woman chief in 1978, and Theresa Scagnelli Melchionne, the first woman commissioner chosen from the ranks in 1965. Currently on the John Jay College faculty, Melchionne offered the following thumbnail history of women in the department: Until the '60s, she said, women could not become sergeants because policing was considered a man's job. "We met resistance from virtually all police commissioners and the entire line organizations (of ranking officers). They couldn't conceive of a woman supervising male officers."

Instead, women - in 1952, there were but 149 in the department - served only in the Youth Division or in the Bureau of Policewomen, which Melchionne headed from 1952-62. There, she said, the women served as "matrons," supervising female prisoners in station houses. A few were made detectives, but served only in narcotics or pickpocketing details. Melchionne was one of them, and distinguished herself during the 1950s police scandals involving Brooklyn gambler Harry Gross by going undercover to Gross' hotel disguised as a cleaning lady.

When women next attempted to become sergeants, she said, the line organizations insisted their salaries be lower than those of the men. Then, they insisted women supervise only other women. Finally in 1963, the courts forced the Police Department to approve promotions for women. But it was not until 1972, with the passage of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Act - which prohibited discrimination by race, color, religion, national origin or sex - that the Policewomen's Bureau was disbanded and women fully integrated into the department. This, too, met with opposition. Male officers felt working with females would jeopardize their lives. Wives protested at headquarters.