To mobilize women police officers to fight the deceptive California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), the Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation's National Center for Women and Policing, Penny Harrington, will travel throughout California holding briefings for women in law enforcement. "CCRI is very deceptively worded," Harrington said, "and a lot of women in law enforcement don't know about it yet. But when they understand that it could hurt their chances for promotions and limit the number of women in law enforcement, they are worried about it.
"If CCRI passes, we're going back to 3% women in the police force," Harrington continued.
Today, women are still only 8% of police officers in the United States, but with affirmative action some big city police departments have considerably more - 14% in Los Angeles, and over 40% in Pittsburgh. Los Angeles is under court order to reach approximately 25% women. Further, a recently-passed Los Angeles city council resolution asks the LAPD to attempt to reach a goal of 44% women police officers.
CCRI may prevent police departments from entering into "consent decrees" to address discrimination, according to the Los Angeles City Attorney. A "consent decree" is an agreement between the plaintiff and the defendant to address the discrimination in a mutually satisfactory manner before the case goes to trial.
In addition, Clause "C" of CCRI will make it much harder for women police officers to prove discrimination in court.
"Clause 'C' will allow police departments to go back to any old excuse to exclude women," said Harrington. "It would be easy for small town police departments that have never had any women police officers to argue in court that an all-male police force is their 'normal operation.'" Police departments could also use "reasons" such as lack of women's police uniforms or women's lockerrooms to exclude women under CCRI.
A 1989 Police Foundation report found that affirmative action programs "have a major impact not only on the rates at which females apply and enter policing, but, over the long term, on women's overall representation in policing."
