Women Cadets Make It Through Academy but Some Find Going Tough

San Diego Police Detective Frank Zellmer was wrapping up a two-hour lecture on rape and sex crimes when he gave a group of sheriff’s cadets a rare homework assignment.

“The vagina is a complicated organ,” Zellmer said with a smirk. “Go home and get familiar with it.”

The male cadets broke out in hysterical laughter; most of their seven female class members turned red with embarrassment.

Inspector Bud Johnson, of the U.S. Marshals Service, was showing a slide presentation to acquaint cadets with organized motorcycle gangs in San Diego County. Included were numerous photographs of female bikers flashing bare breasts.

“This happens all the time,” Johnson explained. “This is disgusting . . . any of you guys want prints see me after class.”

The seven women who survived the 74th San Diego County Sheriff’s Academy quickly learned that law enforcement is still a macho, male-dominated society where locker-room talk and crude jokes are as much a part of the job as public relations and paper work.

Despite claims that they were stripped of their femininity and ridiculed for their lack of physical strength, none of the seven women cadets was dismissed or forced to resign, but nine of their 64 male classmates failed to graduate.

Only two female cadets failed to make it through the sheriff’s training program--one resigned after the first day because she was unable to afford expenses for uniforms, equipment and supplies, and, during the second week, Kelly Bazer was shot to death by a robber.

Several of the women impressed their training officers with their grit and determination.

Maria Bailey, 37, mother of three, surprised the training staff by breezing through the academy. She was dismissed in 1984 from the 24th Regional Academy (run jointly by the San Diego Police Department and Sheriff’s Department) because she was naive, inexperienced and had trouble firing a weapon.

Carole Snyder, 23, set the record for the most push-ups in the 74th Academy--73 in one minute.

When Bonnie Lefort, 23, injured her knee, the training staff recommended that she drop out until the 75th Academy. But Lefort, who served four years in the Navy, endured the grueling physical training sessions while rehabilitating her knee and graduated with her classmates.

Despite these success stories, many of the female cadets expressed bitterness toward training officers who treated them like men and expected them to act like men.

Several members of the all-male training staff chastised the women who lacked upper body strength, according to interviews with female cadets.

Teri Hartley, 28, said her training officers made her feel that she was a failure because she was unable to do a single pull-up until the end of the academy.

“They said, ‘If you can’t do one pull-up, you will never get the respect of the men,’ ” Hartley recalled. “That is a crock.”

One deputy reportedly told a woman who struggled through a rigorous physical training session, “In this job, you’re a man! If you want to be a woman, go find another occupation!”

Several women recalled being told: “You’re not a woman anymore; you’re a deputy now.”

Cadet Kathy Schultz, 26, said, “I guess they feel we are trying to be like men to get into this profession. That’s not true. We want to have a good-paying job, make something of ourselves and help people out at the same time.

“We join this profession to do the best job we can and not to have everything stripped from us like that.”

Bailey said training officers expect women to fail.

“When they see a woman competing in a man’s world, it’s like women not being soldiers,” she said. “Women can have their feminine appeal and still be in a cop’s world without the macho image. I knew I could hold my own and do just as well as the men.”

Lt. Dennis Kollar, director of the academy, suggested that the female cadets were blaming certain weaknesses on their sex.

“I don’t suppose that the staff was very tolerant of males who had physical fitness deficiencies,” Kollar said. “. . . It may be their interpretation that they’re being picked on because they’re females when in fact they are being criticized because of a deficiency with hopes that they are going to correct it.”

San Diego County places women applicants who have the same entry-test scores as men higher on the sheriff’s hiring list because they are considered an “under-utilized minority.” Since 1977, the Sheriff’s Department has operated under a federal court order to fill 43% of its deputy positions with women. The figure was based on the percentage of women in the county work force.

Calling the 43% ratio “ridiculous,” sheriff’s officials said they are not committed to reaching that goal. Even if they were committed, said Lt. Bert Moorhead, the Sheriff’s Department couldn’t possibly hire enough women. He said that not enough women apply to become sheriff’s deputies to follow the court order.

Moorhead, who is in charge of recruiting deputies, said he is content with hiring about 20% women for the Sheriff’s Academy. Only 12% of the cadets hired for the 74th academy were women.

“We hire the best-qualified people we can get, both male and female,” Moorhead said. “I don’t discriminate against (women). If they look like a good candidate, I hire them.”

Moorhead said that 17% of the 888 deputies in San Diego County are women, which ranks among the top two or three law enforcement agencies in the state. By comparison, women make up 11% of all San Diego police officers.

The women enrolled in the 74th Sheriff’s Academy said the first week was particularly stressful. They were ordered to shave their legs from the knees down, use limited facial makeup, clip their fingernails short, wear no jewelry and cut their hair above the collar.

One female cadet was reduced to tears during a riot and mob control drill when an instructor cussed her out.

“She about melted in front of my feet,” said Deputy Tom Cleary. “I told her, ‘You will take a lot of abuse in the streets so you might as well get used to it here.’ ”

Hartley said she was emotionally prepared to get yelled at by her training officers and do push-ups for failing keeping her uniform meticulous. But she was not prepared to get her hair cut.

After surviving a grueling first day of training, Hartley was more upset that she was ordered to cut her hair than being yelled at for being out of shape.

“I cried all weekend,” recalled Hartley, who wore her hair to her hip. “I almost didn’t come back . . . Nothing else scared me, not even telling us they were going to run us until we dropped.”

Hartley, who is now assigned to the Las Colinas County Jail for women in Santee, said she is still angry over the way the academy staff handled her hair. Though the Sheriff’s Department dress code permits women to have long hair if they pin it up during work, all cadets were required to cut their hair above the collar.

Deputy John DeAngelis explained that the academy haircut policy is necessary because long hair posed a danger to cadets during defensive-tactics training. In the past, he said, cadets who practiced defensive holds such as the neck restraint on women were poked in the eyes with pins and clips used to hold up the women’s hair.

Hartley said she thought it was unfair that men were allowed to keep their mustaches but women were forbidden from keeping their long hair.

“They wanted to make us carbon copies of the men,” Hartley said. “They were trying to take my individuality away. . . . To me, that is very biased.”

Like Hartley, Schultz had to get three haircuts in the first week to satisfy her training officers.

“They make us cut our hair and look like boys,” Schultz said. “It was kind of degrading the first week. I came home crying, and my husband put his arms around me.

“I said, ‘Thank you.’ I felt like a woman again.”