A16 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022
cants, Banks offered breakout
groups headed by female officers
and officers of color who spoke to
the challenges they faced in the
regional police academy. Clary
told applicants worried about
meeting fitness requirements
that he would run with them
during testing.
At one recent screening, the
chief joined recruits including
Anastasia Schrader, 31, a child
welfare case manager who said
she wants to enter law enforce-
ment in part to reverse distrust of
police in communities of color. If
hired, Schrader would be one of
six Black officers on the force —
and, according to Clary, the first
Black female officer in the depart-
ment.
When Clary arrived in Septem-
ber 2020, just four of Bellevue’s
80-plus officers were women, and
just one officer spoke Spanish in aful here,” Clary said as Fox News’s
midday lineup played on mute on
a corner television, “you’re inten-
tionally excluding people.”
He took aim at recruitment and
personnel policies he said dis-
couraged women and people of
color from applying. The rule dic-
tating that officers couldn’t take
extended medical leave twice in
two years, affecting women who
might have pregnancies in quick
succession — scrapped. The bans
on dyed hair and multiple ear
piercings — gone. The bench
press requirement for joining the
SWAT team — nixed.
And this past winter, Clary pro-
moted Howard Banks, a Black
39-year-old former school re-
source officer, to lead recruiting
efforts, hoping he would relate
well to a younger, more diverse
audience. At physical and class-
room training sessions for appli-city as community development
director. In an email to The Wash-
ington Post, he denied wrongdo-
ing.
Officers say they saw the lead-
ership change as a chance to re-
store morale and trust within the
agency. Clary describes himself as
politically conservative. There’s a
Ronald Reagan quote about dele-
gating authority framed above a
bookcase in his office and twin
photos by the door of Clary shak-
ing hands with George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney. But he says he
doesn’t always agree with Repub-
licans on social issues. And in
managing his department, he
preaches that hiring and retain-
ing people from more diverse
backgrounds is of paramount im-
portance.
“If you’re not intentional about
recruiting everyone and showing
everyone that they can be success-Midwestern law enforcement
agencies Clary invited have
signed up, McGough said. And
during a seminar while the initia-
tive was in the planning stage, a
male chief told McGough and oth-
er organizers he was reluctant to
hire women, for fear they’d be
sexually harassed by male officers
and sue the department.
The women in the audience
were incredulous.
“So, not that he needed to ad-
dress the behavior of the officers,
right?” McGough said in an inter-
view. “We don’t want to deal with
the sexual harassment suits that
would come from a woman.”
Clary was hired in Bellevue to
replace a chief who was accused
by the police union of sexist atti-
tudes, racism and other miscon-
duct. Mark Elbert retired after
being cleared in an internal inves-
tigation and now works for thePHOTOS BY SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
FROM TOP: Anastasia
Schrader’s path to possibly
becoming Bellevue’s first
Black female officer
involves passing a physical
fitness test, so Officer Jess
Manning guides her
through push-ups during a
Feb. 5 session at the
University of Nebraska at
Omaha. | Officers Pam
Volk, center, and Crystal
Kenny resolve a dispute a
woman is having with her
substance-abusing
granddaughter, in part
with Volk recounting her
own experience of living
with an alcoholic. | Volk,
joined by Kenny, handcuffs
a man who was stopped for
a traffic violation but had
an arrest warrant.use down there, I would suspect
that a bunch of other depart-
ments are going to try.”A police chief’s evolution
As a captain for the Iowa State
Patrol seven years ago, Clary
hadn’t given much thought to the
dearth of women in policing (na-
tionwide, about 7 percent of state
troopers are female). He did no-
tice that the two women under his
command drew citizen com-
plaints far less than many of their
male peers. In 2016, he attended
the National Institute of Justice
LEADS Scholars Program in
Washington, where he was intro-
duced to a wealth of academic
research indicating female offi-
cers excel at de-escalation and use
force less frequently than male
officers.
Between classes, Clary struck
up friendships with Ivonne Ro-
man, a Newark police officer who
would go on to be a finalist for
New York City police chief earlier
this year, and Maureen McGough,
an attorney who is chief of staff
for the Policing Project at the New
York University School of Law.
Roman shared with Clary many of
the obstacles she faced rising
through the ranks in Newark. In a
later conversation over lunch,
Clary shared with McGough a
dawning realization.
“He looked at me and, out of
nowhere, he said, ‘Mo’, we have
got to figure out how to get the
toxic masculinity out of polic-
ing,’ ” she recalled. “And it was
just like this moment of, ‘Who are
you and how do I support you?’ ”
Clary was the first police chief
to join the 30x30 Initiative,
launched by McGough, Roman
and others a year ago to push
police departments to make their
rosters at least 30 percent female
by 2030. To date, about 150 juris-
dictions have signed on, includ-
ing New York City and, this
month, D.C.
But many others have been
skeptical. Only seven of the 40“Yep, us, too,” Wrigley said,
handcuffing him. “Just to let you
know, others aren’t going to be as
nice as me.”
Wrigley, 35, is one of a slew of
female officers hired over the past
year and a half in this suburb
south of Omaha, part of a deliber-
ate strategy by Police Chief Ken
Clary to reduce the likelihood of
misconduct and excess violence
on the force.
Clary, a former Iowa state
trooper, believes the research and
his own experience, both of which
tell him diversity makes for better
policing and decreases the use of
force against civilians, especially
those who are Black. He’s rewrit-
ten the department’s rule book
and promoted an officer to be-
come head of recruiting, with an
eye toward adding more women
and police officers of color and
making sure they stick around.
It’s too early to see significant
changes in data generated by the
103-officer department. But offi-
cers say the personnel efforts have
helped usher in a culture shift,
which experts say is the key to
long-lasting change.
Outsiders seem to be noticing.
This winter, seeking to under-
stand the police hiring climate in
a post-George Floyd world, Ne-
braska Fraternal Order of Police
President Jim Maguire asked the
state’s 225 law enforcement enti-
ties whether recruiting was up or
down. Each chief who responded
said the number of applicants had
shrunk dramatically. Except one:
Clary. He told Maguire he had
more applicants hoping to police
the city of 53,000 than ever be-
fore, with officers transferring
from departments as far as New
Mexico. Many new arrivals were
women.
There’s Wrigley, who was in-
spired to become a cop as a teen-
ager after watching the 2000 film
“Miss Congeniality”; Brandy Val-
dez, a former ballet dancer and
maid who sought her badge after
leaving what she calls a “patriar-
chal marriage” and has a talent
for calming and reassuring vic-
tims of sexual assault; Chatelle
Ogea, a rookie officer, former so-
cial worker and current Army
reservist; and Pam Volk, who re-
solved a recent dispute between a
woman and her substance-abus-
ing granddaughter by recounting
her own experience living with an
alcoholic.
Bellevue, the third-largest city
in Nebraska, is experiencing “the
complete opposite of what every-
body else is dealing with,” Magu-
ire said. “I don’t know exactly how
Chief Clary is doing it. But what-
ever magic wand he’s been able to
POLICE FROM A
Research, instinct
drive chief to hire
more women
Hiring more female officers is
integral to Chief Ken Clary’s
strategy of improving Bellevue’s
police department.