{"id":37283,"date":"2022-11-15T14:18:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T21:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-police-are-looking-for-a-few-good-women\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:36:25","slug":"durango-police-are-looking-for-a-few-good-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-police-are-looking-for-a-few-good-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango police are looking for a few good women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kathleen
Kathleen O\u2019Toole worked as a police officer in Boulder for 11 years before joining the Durango Police Department in 2014. Before that she was a reporter with no experience related to law enforcement. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Durango Police Department is making a push to hire women officers \u2013 a whole bunch of women officers. And they hope women who may never have considered the job or dismissed it for one reason or another will take another look because they may have exactly the right stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever been at a restaurant and seen a server dealing with five tables?\u201d said Durango Deputy Chief of Police Brice Current. \u201cAnd maybe one table is rude, another is loud and one table has five different drink orders. One wants a straw, one doesn\u2019t. One wants a lime, another doesn\u2019t want ice. And she gets the order without writing it down while another table is impatiently flagging her for a check. Then she delivers all the orders without a mistake and with a smile. She would be a fantastic cop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Durango Police Department has three female officers. It would like to increase that to 12. And that\u2019s just to start. That\u2019s why the department signed on to the 30 x 30 initiative this year. The initiative is a coalition of police, researchers and professional organizations with the shared goal of increasing the number of police women across the United States to 30% by 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want our police department to mirror our city, and this community is over 50% women,\u201d Current said. \u201cWe know diversity makes us stronger. Fifty percent would be better, but we need to start somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research suggests that women officers use less force and less excessive force, Current said. Women are named in fewer complaints and lawsuits and are perceived by communities to be more compassionate. Research also indicates that female officers can achieve better outcomes for victims, especially in cases of sexual assault.<\/p>\n

Starting pay for a Durango police officer is $55,000 to $77,112 a year along with a premium benefits package.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Durango you don\u2019t have to look any further than a local cross-fit gym or mountain bike trail to see women that can outpace and out-lift most people,\u201d Current said. \u201cMany female officers say that looking back, they were worried about the danger of the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those worries vanished once they realized how safe the nature of the work actually is, he said.<\/p>\n

Durango Detective Kathleen O\u2019Toole was a 31-year-old newspaper reporter investigating the Littleton Police Department for gender bias when its department spokesman suggested she\u2019d make a good police officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh no, I can\u2019t,\u2019 which surprises me now that I sloughed it off,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause I think there\u2019s just this confidence gap sometimes with women that we need to overcome. And being a police officer is awesome. You get this impression that it might be intimidating through television and movies and things like that. But keep in mind, that\u2019s television and the movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Toole has been on the job now for 21 years. She is 5 feet 4 inches tall and 135 pounds. She wears glasses. She\u2019s neither imposing nor intimidating. But she\u2019s broken up more than a few bar fights. And she not only feels safe, she feels empowered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a woman, being trained in law is so powerful,\u201d she said. \u201cWomen are victimized by crime at a higher rate than men and just learning the law, how to protect myself, how to protect others, learning ground fighting, learning to shoot, it\u2019s really empowering for women.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest thing for O\u2019Toole in starting on the path to police work was realizing she wasn\u2019t just going to be put on the streets. She had no military background. Had never worked security. She\u2019d shot her father\u2019s gun maybe three times while growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they train you,\u201d she said. \u201cYou get tactics training, weapons training, safe driving training. You learn how to fight. But the big thing to remember is that it\u2019s actually pretty rare you\u2019re ever using those tactics. And I loved the academy. And I loved what one of my instructors said: \u2018If you think you need backup, you need backup.\u2019 Nothing is saying you have to stand and fight someone by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brains and talking with people have been her best weapons during her time on the force. The job is more about reading people and situations than anything else, she said. And the profession is changing, especially post George Floyd, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to look at different ways of policing,\u201d she said. \u201cThe show up \u2013 kick ass and take names isn\u2019t flying. It never has really if you want to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Empowering women is what O\u2019Toole comes back to in her pitch for new female officers. There are benefits that woman bring to the policing table, and she is excited the department is attempting the 30 x 30 initiative, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can take care of ourselves in this profession,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been wanting more sisters in the locker room. It\u2019s needed. We really do need more women in law enforcement. This is a great opportunity for women and I don\u2019t think there are enough of us thinking about it. And if I can say one thing \u2013 you can do it. I\u2019m nothing special.\u201d<\/p>\n

gjaros@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Department wants at least 30% of its officers to be female by 2030<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1065,1255,3885,28,52,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-police-department","tag-employment","tag-gender-equality","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83612,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37283\/revisions\/83612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37283"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}