Williams to Name LAPD’s 1st Female Commander

For the first time in the Los Angeles Police Department’s 129-year history, a female officer today is expected to be promoted to the rank of commander.

Chief Willie L. Williams said he will formally present Capt. Betty P. Kelepecz with a commander’s badge today, making her the highest-ranking female officer ever at the LAPD.

The landmark promotion is seen as a major breakthrough for women into the department’s upper echelon, but a reminder to many of the LAPD’s past reluctance to fully accept women as equals in policing. However, it also comes as the modern-day LAPD finds itself under increased criticism for the way that it deals with gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Women’s advocacy groups and city officials have taken the department to task for the way that it has handled domestic abuse cases involving its own officers, while an internal investigative report released this week found that institutional harassment of female officers remains a serious problem.

For Williams, the appointment means the realization of a goal that he said he wanted to reach before leaving office.

“It’s a significant achievement for women in the LAPD,” Williams said in an interview Wednesday. “When I came here five years ago, the highest ranking woman was a lieutenant. . . . This shows that we are opening the doors wider than they have been before, but there is always work to be done.”

Penny Harrington, director of the National Center for Women in Policing and a former chief of the Portland, Ore., Police Department, said the promotion is “long overdue.”

“I’m glad they’re appointing her to this rank,” she said. “But most police departments throughout the United States have had women in these ranks for years. I hope they take this opportunity to promote the other women to top jobs so this is not just a token promotion.”

Not so many years ago, “policewomen,” as they were known, wore long skirts, could not work patrol and were not allowed to be promoted beyond the rank of sergeant. Rigid height requirements precluded many women from even getting hired and those who were often found themselves relegated to desk work.

“The department has obviously come a long way since then,” Kelepecz said in a recent interview. “But there is still a ways to go.”

When Kelepecz, 41, entered the Police Academy in 1980, women were just beginning to be allowed to work patrol duties. At that time, she said, there were only about 150 female officers on the force as opposed to about 1,600 women wearing the department’s blue today.

She said that the attitudes of some of her male colleagues toward women during the early part of her career would not be tolerated in today’s LAPD. She recalls enduring inappropriate and demeaning comments and even outright hostility as a young officer.

“We didn’t see it as harassment back then, we saw it as playing along, doing what you needed to do to survive,” she said. “Some male officers would say to me, ‘I don’t think you belong on the job.’ ”

Over the course of her 17 years in the department, Kelepecz has had 12 different assignments ranging from patrol and detective duties to special events coordinator and adjutant to Chief Daryl F. Gates and Williams.

In her current post, Kelepecz, who worked as a microbiologist before joining the department, supervises the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. It has not been decided what her responsibilities will be as a commander.

Whatever her assignment, Kelepecz expects that she will have to perform well and prove that women are just as capable as men at commanding the troops.

“I need to pave the way for other women as those before me did for me,” Kelepecz said. “I’m continuing the legacy.”

Williams said Kelepecz will bring a diverse perspective to his previously all-male senior command staff.

Under Williams, women increasingly have assumed positions of influence, with scores now working as sergeants and lieutenants and two, not including Kelepecz, holding the rank of captain. The department, which has a work force that is about 17.3% female, leads all other California law enforcement agencies in hiring women.

But also under Williams, the department has continued to be plagued by gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Dozens of harassment complaints are made annually, some involving high-level officers and a few involving charges as serious as rape.

This week, the department released a report on its investigation into former Det. Mark Fuhrman’s allegations of police misconduct, which disclosed that a group of male officers in the West Los Angeles police station repeatedly harassed female colleagues.

Last May, a Police Commission-sponsored reform study by Los Angeles lawyer Merrick A. Bobb concluded: “It is a matter of serious concern that women are not represented in the highest ranks of the department.”

Williams acknowledged Wednesday that some serious problems concerning the treatment of women still exist within the LAPD, but that progress is being made.

He said that Kelepecz, who has earned a law degree and become an attorney while rising through the department’s ranks, is “a very good and effective leader and administrator.”

It is unclear, department officials said, when the next high-ranking promotion for a woman might occur. One possibility is that the pending merger of the LAPD and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police might result in at least one high-level female officer. Authorities said MTA Chief Sharon Papa could enter the LAPD as a commander or deputy chief because of the merger.

As for Kelepecz, she said she couldn’t be happier with her accomplishment.

“The LAPD has everything I wanted in a career,” she said. “This is the best job anyone could ever have.”