Female Officers Changing Police Style, Report Says

NEW YORK —  Female police officers have been making the style of law enforcement less aggressive and more non-confrontational over the last 12 years, a magazine report said last week.

“I think the women are finally influencing the men into becoming less aggressive,” Louise Vasquez, a 49-year old Miami homicide detective, was quoted as saying in the article in the coming Sunday Parade.

“When I first came on the job, I always heard that you had to be a macho tough guy to be a police officer,” she said. “You got to be able to beat somebody up.

“I’ve seen men get into more fights, cause more injuries, kill more people and produce more complaints because of their need to prove their manliness.”

Vasquez, highly decorated 18-year veteran, said that with women “it’s just the opposite. They don’t have to prove anything. A gun is gonna make me as tough as any man. But the women are less likely to use it. They’re gonna find another way.”

Another female police officer, Mary Wamsley, 34, a sergeant in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Colo., said, “I find that women don’t like to be arrested by other women. They either call me a lesbian, a dyke or a whole string of profanities,” she said.

Kathy Burke is a 15-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, one of 2,109 women on the force. She has put more than 1,000 drug dealers behind bars as an undercover cop while risking exposure, rape and violent death.