Kicking off a two year women in police leadership development program, the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Police Leadership for the 21st Century conference for over 200 women in law enforcement will be held November 11-14 in Washington, DC.The Conference agenda has taken on new urgency in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial and verdicts. Laura Hart McKinney, a key witness subpoenad by the Simpson defense team, revealed that Detective Mark Fuhrman of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), a key witness for the prosecution, was part of a secret fraternal organization within the department called "Men Against Women" (MAW). McKinney, a North Carolina professor who was studying sex bias in the police force and writing a screenplay on the subject, exposed MAW. The Feminist Majority is seeking to have portions of McKinney’s tapes dealing with sex bias released
.Further, Fuhrman’s racist statements on McKinney’s tapes exposed the fact that he had committed perjury when he claimed on the witness stand that he had never used the word "nigger." The "not guilty" verdict sent a clear message to law enforcement agencies nationwide that departments riddled with sexist and racist officers do not have the trust of a significant portion of the inner-city community.
"Mark Fuhrman is not the only ‘bad apple,’ in the Los Angeles Police Department," points out Penny Harrington, director of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing. "Within law enforcement agencies nationwide, these types of anti-woman and racist attitudes are not only tolerated, but all too frequently rewarded with promotions and pay raises."
Speakers for the three-day conference include some of the most significant women and men in law enforcement today: Assistant Chief Gertrude LaForia of New York City, one of the highest ranking woman police officers in the country; Laurie Robinson, Assistant Attorney General of the United States; Chief Nicholas Pastore of New Haven, CT, whose community policing successes and aggressive promotion of women have been featured in USA Today and 60 Minutes; Dr. Lee Brown, cabinet member and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Pennsylvania Auditor General Barbara Hafer; as well as National Center for Women and Policing Director Harrington, who was the first woman chief of police of a major U.S. city — Portland, Oregon.
The Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing was founded to significantly increase the number of women in all ranks of law enforcement as a strategy for reducing police use of excessive force and improving police response to crimes of violence against women. Studies show that women police officers have fewer incidents of police brutality, and respond more effectively than their male counterparts to domestic violence, which accounts for about 50% of all 911 calls to police departments.