SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Law Enforcement Academy, a re-
gional facility serving multiple
departments. Several Bellevue of-
ficers said instruction at the acad-
emy was heavy on violence and
light on some of the skills they’d
come to learn months and years
into the job. Combat scenarios
were common, but the scenario
simulating negotiations with po-
tentially violent civilians under
duress lasted 15 minutes, Wrigley
said.
“There’s a lot of times where I
go to a call and I’m talking to
somebody for over an hour,” Wrig-
ley said. “You don’t get that in the
academy.”
Bellevue officers increasingly
are finding ways to use the de-
partment’s growing diversity to
their advantage. Banks, the re-
cruiting director, says he’s been
asked by White colleagues to re-
spond to traffic stops when Black
motorists were growing hostile.
Ogea, the former social worker,
said her male counterparts have
reacted positively to her taking
over negotiations with suspects
who are not responding well to
them. On one occasion, after sub-
bing in and settling a suspect
down, the officer she’d replaced
pulled Ogea aside.
“He said, ‘Don’t ever think that
you’re going to hurt my ego for
somebody wanting to talk to you
over me.’ ” recalled Ogea, a
3 6-year-old mother of twin boys.
“That might be a stigma for most
officers. But I think a majority of
them at Bellevue are not going to
have any problem.”
Clary says he’s always search-
ing for ways to tweak the formula.
He set up an anonymous email
system by which officers can sub-
mit complaints, comments or
suggestions to him. (The vast ma-
jority so far have concerned de-
partment technology.) Officers at-
tend mental health discussions
hosted by peers, and Clary has
hired a therapist who offers week-
ly appointments to all officers.
“They’re going to give that ex-
tra little bit every day when
they’re out there interacting with
people,” Clary said. “They’re going
to give people grace, because they
were given grace.”
Wrigley has been known to sit
down beside a distraught person
— suspect or victim — and cry
with them. That wasn’t always her
way, she said, explaining that the
example set by her husband’s lov-
ing parents birthed a sensitive
side that she lacked early in her
career.
Her empathy was on display
the day she confronted the mini-
van driver.
“I’ll try hard and talk to him
and see if I can get him out,
because he’s a person, just like I
am,” Wrigley said. “And maybe he
just forgot to go to court, so why
not give him the opportunity to go
gracefully, I guess.”
After the man accepted arrest,
Wrigley’s male colleagues teased
her: “Karen, you’re too nice. We’re
freezing.”
Wrigley shot back: “Then wear
more layers. I’m perfectly fine.”Sarah L. Voisin and Joyce Koh
contributed to this report.police killings found that overall
department diversity had little
impact on outcomes, for example.
A 2005 Department of Justice
study of a suburban Maryland
police department determined
the difference in use of force be-
tween male and female officers
was statistically insignificant.
Samantha Simon, an assistant
professor in the Department of
Criminology and Criminal Justice
at the University of Missouri at St.
Louis, says she is “pessimistic
about the usefulness of demo-
graphic diversity in police forces.”
She has found that success or
failure at combat is still valued
above all other fields of study at
most police academies, regard-
less of an officer’s gender. Police
recruits who struggled in violent
confrontations were more likely
to be hazed than mentored, she
concluded when researching an
article and an upcoming book.
“The people who end up being
hired and make it to graduation
fit a blueprint of who the institu-
tion thinks will be a good police
officer,” Simon said. “And a lot of
that really revolves around the
use of violence.”
Bellevue police leadership be-
lieves it’s too early to use data to
understand what effect the influx
of women is having, with the
majority of the female officers
having been hired in the last year
and a half, and several still in
training.
One early insight: For incidents
from September to December in
which officers used force, the in-
volvement of a female officer in a
group effort yielded 8 percent
fewer injuries. And in use-of-force
incidents involving only one offi-
cer, none involving a female offi-
cer resulted in injury, according
to the department.
In interviews, Bellevue’s female
officers consistently cited mo-
ments in life when they felt vul-
nerable as a way to explain their
approach to policing.
Crystal Kenny, who joined the
department in December 2020
after working at the nearby Sarpy
County Jail, said her two brothers
were “in and out of the system,”
often getting hauled out of her
childhood home in handcuffs.
One is currently in jail in Law-
rence, Kan. She speaks with him
regularly by video chat.
“How would I want an officer to
treat my brother?” asked Kenny,- “I would want them to be
treated respectfully and fairly re-
gardless of what they’ve done.”
Valdez, 35, said her passion for
investigating domestic violence
and sexual assault, and helping
victims, is drawn from personal
experience. “A lot of times, people
do find themselves in very help-
less situations,” she said. “They
don’t know that there’s resources.
They don’t know that there’s peo-
ple who care, things that can be
done to help.”
Changing the cultureThe Bellevue Police Depart-
ment, like most smaller law en-
forcement agencies, does not run
its own police academy. Many
recruits attend Sarpy Douglascarrying out traffic stops that re-
sult in drug seizures, according to
researchers from the University
of South Carolina; and more effec-
tive in investigations involving
sexual assault, according to a 2018
University of Illinois at Chicago
study, and domestic violence, ac-
cording to a 2018 study by re-
searchers from the universities of
Virginia and Zurich.
Numerous studies show female
officers are less likely to fire their
guns in the line of duty, use exces-
sive force or become the target of
successful civil suits.
Still, a few studies have found
only minor differences in use-of-
force incidents among male and
female officers. And some re-
search indicates that diversity
cannot be a cure-all for depart-
ments, especially when tradition-
al training and police culture re-
main in place. A 2003 look intoForce as a last resort
Research generally supports
the idea that female police offi-
cers are better than male officers
at finding resolutions without us-
ing violence.
A 2021 study by researchers
from the University of California
at Irvine, the University of Penn-
sylvania, Princeton University
and Columbia University found
that female officers made 7
p ercent fewer arrests than their
male counterparts while using
force 28 percent less often. The
researchers found the largest dis-
parity centered on the treatment
of Black civilians.
Female officers are, on average,
more educated than male officers.
They are more likely to engender
the perception of fairness in the
communities they police, accord-
ing to a University of Kentucky
study in 2017; more efficient inthem get their first apartment or
their first car. So are they going to
struggle with credit? I would ar-
gue, yes, probably at a much high-
er rate.”
Clary said he made some head-
way with a few departments, but a
larger segment of police leader-
ship in the Midwest has rejected
or brushed aside his ideas.
Whether Clary advocated recon-
sidering credit requirements or
creating realistic physical fitness
requirements for the job, he said,
the most common response was
consistent: You’re talking about
lowering standards.
“I was exactly where you are
five years ago,” Clary said he
would tell those officers and offi-
cials. “We’re not lowering a stan-
dard. We’re thinking differently
about the standard. We’re inviting
people that didn’t believe that
there was a pathway.”city where 16 percent of residents
are Hispanic or Latino, according
to census data. (About 6 percent
of residents are Black.) Nineteen
months later, the department has
103 officers, including 15 women
and five Spanish speakers. Nine of
the last 15 hires have been women.
Clary has tried to convince oth-
er departments to make similar
changes. While teaching a hiring
course hosted by the Nebraska
Law Enforcement Training Cen-
ter in 2021, he challenged lieuten-
ants and captains to reconsider
the potential impact of credit re-
quirements when recruiting peo-
ple of color.
“If you’re looking at hiring
from minority communities, his-
torically, you’re going to get bad
credit,” Clary recalls telling the
group. “At 18 years old, they don’t
have a safety net of family that has
money to throw at them to help
P HOTOS BY SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
FROM TOP: Officer
Brandy Valdez works an
overnight shift in
February. | Manning,
center, talks with fellow
officers that month about
an incident in a restaurant
parking lot where a person
with mental illness was
said to have a gun. That
person was taken to the
Bellevue police station for
questioning. |
Officer Chatelle Ogea
returns home from a 12-
hour shift to greet her 5-
year-old twin boys, Canyn,
left, and Layton. A former
social worker and a
current Army reservist,
Ogea has at times taken
over negotiations when
suspects aren’t responding
well to male officers.