‘Being our beginning’
Female SFPD officers gather to celebrate pioneers from class of ’75
Forty years ago, Gladys Jackson-Gray stood in front of a hulking San Francisco police officer with the objective of taking the baton from his hands and knocking him to the ground.
She and the dozens of women in line behind her were vying to join the San Francisco Police Department’s 126th recruit class as the first women ever to be sworn in as city patrol officers, and they could not move on to the next level without first bringing down that giant of an officer.
The women said they later learned that the odds were purposely stacked against them that day — the male officers, unwilling to allow women to join their
ranks, had put resin and tape on the baton to prevent the women from taking it away, and taught them disarming techniques thatt didn’t work.
Several of the women in front of Jackson-Gray did not succeed. But she was determined.
“I grabbed him and I flipped him over my back,” said Jackson-Gray, who is now 64. “I threw him and cuffed him. And then all I remember was the women charging me, hugging me. We were in.”
This was just one of the many stories shared Tuesday at the City Hall celebration marking 40 years of women in patrol. Current and retired officers packed the room, whooping and cheering as the women from the first recruit classes spoke of the obstacles they overcame as the first women to join the department as police officers.
The department began hiring women after a discrimination lawsuit filed in 1973 resulted in a federal consent decree that mandated the hiring of women and minorities. Previously, the department employed “policewomen” who wore skirts and heels but did not go on patrols.
The 28 women who made it through the 126th recruit class were sworn in on July 28, 1975, as “policemen” because the department didn’t get around to reclassifying the term to “police officer” until the second class with women officers soon followed that November.
Members of the first classes reminisced with pride, looking back on even the bad parts with fondness and laughter. The crime-fighting pioneers had no separate locker rooms and had to either change into their uniforms with the men, or use the boiler room or the bathroom for female inmates, they said.
They had no actual uniforms, just what was left over from their male counterparts, and had to suffer through wearing restrictive bulletproof vests designed for men — something retired Lt. Mary Rose Stasko, who entered the force several recruit classes after the first one, described as “two phone books” stitched together.
Retired Inspector Maureen D’Amico, 64, a member of the 126th class, still remembers her first day at the old Mission Station at 23rd and Valencia streets.
“I don’t remember what I did, but I dove in,” she said. “I went overboard trying to prove myself.”
D’Amico said the first years were tough, with department officials looking for any excuse to get rid of the women. And with just 28 in the first class, D’Amico said sometimes they would find themselves as the only women in a station. “You didn’t have anyone to lean on,” she said.
Still, D’Amico had aspirations. She worked undercover narcotics before reaching her dream of working as a homicide inspector, finally retiring from the department after 35 years — more than half her life, she said. “And it was a good life,” she said.
Since the first women were sworn in four decades ago, the department has had its first female police chief. Two women serve on the chief ’s command staff, and today’s 335 sworn female officers make up about 17 percent of the department.
Though some agreed there was work to be done to recruit more women into the force, all acknowledged that the department would not be where it is now without that first class of women.
“Thank you for being our beginning,” Stasko told the women who blazed the trail for her and others to follow.