Trooper Down! Page 12

  “I have a lot of freedom and I enjoy that. I can go anywhere I want to within my assigned area and stop whenever I want to. Our main responsibilities are the state highways, but most accidents occur on rural roads, so that’s where I like to patrol. I also get to know a lot of people in the country, people I can wave at or talk to regularly. These are the folks who can make you or break you when you need help serving a warrant or getting directions. I also like the satisfaction that comes from helping people. Once I found a boy sitting by his car because he didn’t know how to fix a flat. So I did it for him.

  “I pick people up when their car runs out of gas, or call a wrecker for them when they need it. Or I’ll stop and talk to kids and answer their questions about my gun, my uniform, anything they want to know. I love that part of the job.”

  Her advice to other women considering a career in the highway patrol is to first get all the education they can.

  “My only regret is that I didn’t finish my master’s degree before I came on the patrol. I don’t think anyone can have too much education. There’s always something new in the world to learn.”

  What Gail Cloer learned when she joined the highway patrol in 1986 was that she had more gumption than she thought. A single parent with a nine-year-old child to support, Gail was going nowhere in finding a career until her mother suggested she try law enforcement. So one summer she joined the Sylva Police Department as an intern and found that she loved the work. Afterwards, she enrolled in a technical college and earned a degree in criminal justice.

  “Until I worked at the police department, I had no prior contact with the highway patrol,” said Gail, a tall, striking blonde. “But as I got to know different troopers, I realized how professional they were and I thought, ‘This is for me.’ From then on, it got into my blood and joining the patrol was all I thought about.”

  Getting in was fairly easy for Gail since the patrol was recruiting females and minorities. Staying in was difficult.

  She began cadet school when she was twenty-six, in January 1986. She still rolls her eyes at the memory of those first few weeks.

  “People tried to tell me how hard it would be. But it’s something you can’t explain to another person. The biggest adjustment was stepping out of the world where I had control and going into one where I was told what to do and when to do it. I was in shock for two weeks. The first night I was there, I thought, ‘What in the world am I doing here? What have I gotten myself into?’”

  At first the men cadets paid little attention to her and to the two other females enrolled. But toward the end of school the women began to hear taunts and chauvinistic remarks.

  “They’d say things like, ‘You have no business being here,’” said Gail. “‘You should be at home.’ Some of it was joking around but some of it was serious too. The men tried us. But if we came right back at them, they accepted us. They just wanted to see what we were made of.”

  One of the women cadets excelled in physical training, but struggled through parts of the book work. Another breezed through the academics and had difficulty with the physical training. Gail was somewhere in between. But none of it was easy.

  “I learned that to become a trooper you have to want it more than anything else in the world. There were times when I had to really reach inside myself to get through. If it wasn’t for my family’s support I’m not sure I could have done it.”

  For Patricia Anne Poole, a twenty-four-year-old cadet, the sense of comradeship she expected from the highway patrol was sometimes hard to find.

  “I’m not saying I didn’t get support from the other cadets, because I did. There were times when I wondered if I’d get through another day and someone next to me would say, ‘Yes, you can.’ But if an instructor talked to me, some of the guys said I was kissing up to him, which was the furthest thing from the truth. I’m in this job for my career and myself. I didn’t come here to see how many troopers I could get. But because I’m a female, that’s what a few of the cadets thought.”

  Her family opposed her decision to become a trooper, partly because of her diminutive size. At five feet five, she weighs just over 121 pounds.

  “‘You’re gonna get killed,’ they told me. ‘It’s not a place for a woman.’ But when I hear things like that, it makes me want to do it even more. So I told them I was going to join whether they liked it or not. I want to be happy in a career. After that, they were all for it.”

  “I admire Poole,” said W. F. (“Butch”) Whitley, one of her classmates. “There were a lot of guys who couldn’t cut it, while she progressed.”

  During Gail Cloer’s first few weeks on the road she learned lessons that never came up in school.

  “My training officer and I were called to a wreck one night at a place named Hanging Dog, a rough section in Cherokee County. I arrested the driver for driving while impaired, a big man about six-three, 250 pounds, rough-looking. I put handcuffs on him and took him to jail while my training officer stayed behind to write out the report. The man lost his temper a couple of times on the way but I talked to him and calmed him down. Later, my training officer asked if I had any trouble and I said, ‘No, he seemed to be a pretty nice guy.’ Then he starts telling me how this man was once arrested for kidnapping a social worker and how many fights he had been in, that he was into drugs, etc.

  “And I thought, ‘My lord, I really let my guard down. Anything could have happened.’ But the experience stayed with me. I became more aware that people can appear to be one way and turn out to be something entirely different.”

  One of the biggest misconceptions female troopers encounter among people they work with is that women law enforcement officers are homosexual.

  “A deputy in my county was trying to fix me up with a male friend,” recalled one lady trooper, “and I kept telling him my social calendar didn’t need any help, but he kept on. Then he said, ‘I’ve been hearing some things from my friends who are asking some questions.’ I knew what he was getting at so I just looked at him and said, ‘Every female who comes on the highway patrol has been called a lesbian at one time or another. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve been expecting it. But we’re not lesbians. And we’re not out to prove anything. We just want to do our jobs and be accepted.’ He didn’t say anything more about it after that.”

  Often patrolling alone in isolated parts of the county, Gail is not afraid to admit she worries about her safety.

  Her greatest dread is stopping a van with tinted windows.

  “You can’t see inside those darn things and there’s no way to know what’s going on.”

  She handles fear by setting it aside till later.

  “I deal with it after I get back in my patrol car, especially after I’ve been in a chase. I don’t always realize I’m afraid until I get out of the car and find that my knees and hands are shaking.”

  At the same time, she’s prepared to protect herself.

  “I don’t have any problem with drawing my gun whenever it’s necessary. I like myself too much to get hurt.”

  Still in the process of proving herself as a new trooper, Gail has built up a sense of trust among her co-workers by “doing my job the best way I can.” Along with Dee Parton and the handful of other women troopers across the state, she hopes that eventually female patrol officers won’t be such a novelty in North Carolina.

  “Unfortunately, not too many women want to be troopers,” she admits.

  That wasn’t the case with Leah Weirick.

  Interested in law enforcement since she was a teenager, Leah was influenced by an uncle who was a city cop and an aunt who was a detective.

  “I’d see her name in the paper whenever a drug bust occurred and I guess that impressed me.”

  She chose the highway patrol for a career because she considered it “top of the line” in law enforcement. After graduating from cadet school in 1986, she was sent to Bryson City, a remote mountain town in the westernmost part of North Carolina. She was twenty-three and
single.

  Athletically built, with cropped brown hair, clear gray eyes, and a pretty smile, Leah was stunned when she heard about her new assignment.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I had been told that no females would be put in this part of the state because people in this area just weren’t ready for women or minorities. It was like the patrol wanted us to come out here and prove ourselves. There’s not always a backup trooper readily available either, so I worked lots of times completely alone in places where help was an hour away.”

  As the new trooper in town—and a female at that—Leah felt she had to work twice as hard to prove herself. Community reaction to “that lady trooper” was mixed at best.

  “I’d walk up to investigate a wreck with my training officer, carrying a clipboard to take notes, and people would ask if I was a secretary. Or they’d call me ‘Honey,’ and I’d have to look at them a certain way until they backed up and said, ‘Excuse me, I mean ‘Ma’am.’”

  Dressed in uniform, bulletproof vest, and wearing a hat and sunglasses, she is often mistaken for a male officer.

  “The vest makes me look thirty pounds heavier (she is five feet seven, 140 pounds) and from a distance it’s sometimes hard for people to tell that I’m a woman. Men will get out of their cars and say, ‘What’s the problem, sir?’ I don’t even correct them anymore. When I do, it comes as a shock to them that I’m not what they thought.”

  As a rule, she finds women drivers more difficult to deal with than men. Other female troopers have said the same.

  “I’ve had women drivers crying their eyes out because they think they’re going to get a ticket. Then when I walk up to the car and they realize I’m a female officer, the faucet turns off just like that [she snaps her fingers]. I’ve found that most women don’t like to be told what to do by other women. When Bob [Leah’s training officer] stops them, it’s ‘Yes, sir,’ and they go pay the ticket. I can stop that same female and she’ll argue with me about it.”

  Another female trooper tells of an incident where she stopped— and surprised—a young woman who was speeding.

  “As I pulled up behind her in the patrol car, I saw her primping in her rearview mirror—putting on lipstick, combing her hair. I’m sure she was hoping to flirt her way out of this one. You should have seen the expression on her face when she turned around and found a lady trooper. Her whole attitude went from sweet to sour in about ten seconds.”

  According to women officers, more than half the complaints they receive on the job come from other females.

  “I think I’ve already proven to law enforcement people I work with that I can do the job,” said Leah, “but it takes longer for people in the community to accept you. I still run into individuals who say, ‘So you’re the one I’ve heard about.’”

  Not only her sex, but her size has worked against her.

  “I stopped a man one time who was absolutely one of the hugest people I’ve ever seen and he was pissed when he got out of his truck. He came stalking back to me just glaring. The only thing I could do was stare him in the eyes to make him think he didn’t bother me. That kind of situation puts me on the defensive and I don’t like it.”

  Those who argue that women are too small to handle the job physically fail to remember that since height requirements no longer apply in the highway patrol, there are dozens of men troopers who fall into the same short stature category as women. In addition, women must pass rigid physical requirements to get into patrol school and learn the same defensive tactics as men. If that fails, they can resort to “the great equalizer”—their .357 Magnums.

  Nevertheless, there are some situations on the road, says Leah, that no trooper—male or female, large or small—should tackle alone.

  “When you pull up behind someone and several people get out, you’d better get back in your patrol car and call for help. Because whether you’re a man or a woman, you can’t handle four potentially dangerous individuals.”

  What bothers her more than fear on the job is the way women troopers are perceived socially, especially by men.

  “When we wear the bulletproof vest, it hides our shape, so people don’t always realize we have one. I’ve had guys walk up to me in the health spa and say, ‘Hey, you’re thirty pounds lighter than I thought!’ But they still won’t ask me out because they are intimidated by what I do. And the fact that I make more money than a lot of them is a problem too. The ‘big’ salary in this county is $13,000. I make more than that and they know it. They also know I live by myself, take care of myself. I’m independent. Some men are still threatened by that.”

  She sees herself getting married, having a family, and staying on the patrol in the future, but only if she finds someone “who can deal with it.” So far, that hasn’t happened to the handful of North Carolina female troopers currently on the patrol. All are single or divorced.

  Despite the drawbacks, there is a force that attracts and binds women like Weirick, Cloer, Poole, and Parton to the highway patrol.

  “All of our reasons for joining are about the same,” said Leah. “We’re interested in law enforcement. It provides something different every day. We don’t have to sit behind a desk. We are our own bosses. We can go anywhere on patrol at any time. And the work is a challenge—just as getting into the patrol is a challenge.”

  She says the first thing a woman who is interested in becoming a trooper should do is talk at length with other female officers.

  “I talked with Dee before I joined but I still didn’t realize what it was like. You must be physically fit. But you also have to be psychologically prepared. One officer asked me how I put up with getting screamed at during cadet school. I grew up with it—my dad was a screamer—so I was used to it. But if you’re not accustomed to being cussed at or told that you’re useless, etc. [all basic training tactics at cadet school], you don’t need to be there. Because you won’t make it.”

  “I know what’s it going to be like,” said a female cadet, fresh out of patrol school. “I’ll be the only female stationed in my area, so I’ll be in the limelight. Some of the people I’ll be working with have never even seen a trooper before. So I’m gonna be watched. I’ll do the best job I can, but I’m nervous about it.”

  “Right now,” said another female trooper, “it’s still a man’s world on the highway patrol. You’re the lowest there is. As a result, you must have more confidence in yourself than you’ve ever had before. And you have to grin and bear it—no matter what.”

  While a growing number of male troopers are beginning to realize that women patrol officers will add to—not detract from—the overall strength of the North Carolina Highway Patrol, there are still plenty of hard-core antifeminists in the organization who are unhappy with the new direction the patrol is taking.

  “There’s a place in law enforcement for women, but I don’t think it’s on the road,” said one fifteen-year veteran. “I haven’t accepted the fact that we must have female officers. There are too many dangers they simply can’t handle—-physically, mentally, or emotionally. If I call for help, I want someone who can deliver when they get there, because I don’t call for help unless it’s a bad situation. When it happens, I don’t want someone with me I have to wonder about—can they handle it or can’t they?”

  “The thing that concerns me about women officers,” said another male trooper, “is their safety. Because of a woman’s physical makeup, a group of men are more apt to resist arrest and give them trouble. I also worry about a female trooper getting raped on the road and having it reported in the newspapers. That wouldn’t look too good for the patrol.”

  Interestingly enough, both men admit they’ve never worked with a female trooper and have heard nothing but praise for the three women officers who patrol in their district.

  “If we’re going to put women on the patrol, let’s help them do well,” said a retired highway patrol captain. “I think it’s bad management, for example, to send them to isolated rur
al places where they are not easily accepted and have no backup help. There are numerous other areas where they could do a good job and be happy. I’m not saying it’s deliberately done by the entire patrol but it’s likely there are one or two people in management who’ve said, ‘Let’s throw them out there and they’ll quit.’”

  Whether the patrol likes it or not, however, female troopers are here to stay. In 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, color, or creed. Congress then extended the law to include state and local agencies. Police forces around the country—many with deeply embedded attitudes about male superiority—could barely contain their distaste for the new ruling. Yet, as upholders of the law, they were forced to comply.

  In 1979, a recruiter position was established in the North Carolina Highway Patrol to enlist females and minorities. Currently, there is one member in each of the patrol’s eight troop districts whose specific role is to seek out qualified applicants.

  Leah has already been informed that, along with her regular duties as a trooper, she’ll be required to spend two days a week traveling throughout her district for recruiting purposes. She says she will do her best to explain the job, its risks, its hazards, and its rewards, as realistically as possible.

  “What people need to realize most is that, as women troopers, we’re just doing our job,” she said. “We’re not trying to prove anything or be something we’re not.”

  A little more tolerance and understanding from the general public would go a long way in helping all women law enforcement officers gain the respect they deserve, adds Trooper Dee Parton:

  I stopped a lady on the interstate one morning for speeding. “What’d you stop me for?” she snapped.

  “I clocked you at seventy-two miles per hour in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone.”

  “Well, that’s really something. Here I am on my way to an Equal Rights Amendment rally and I get pulled over by a lady trooper! Can’t you give me a break?”