Women in the Police Force

Women make up half of our population. Yet the National Policing Institute reports only about 12% of women are police officers. A very small percentage of female police officers actually rise to leadership roles in departments all across the country. One of those women, Kristen Ziman, became her hometown's first female police chief in Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago Museum and joins us now to talk about how she rose from patrol officer to police chief. And also, you're going to tell us about a new book that you have authored. Yeah. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Can you take us back to when you knew you first wanted to become a police officer? Yes. My father before me was a police officer, but, it was, this weird detachment I had. It was this hero guy in his uniform. But the day that I knew I wanted to be a police officer, I was ten years old, and I was riding in the back of our station wagon with my dad, who was off duty, and, we were driving down, just the roadway, and he said, stop, don't move. And he jumps out of his car and he's in his jeans and, you know, and, and he goes to this accident scene. So people just had just had a crash and he shorts pulling people out, and I am glued to the window. I'm watching this. And one thing I remember noting, even at ten years old, was all the cars that were whizzing by. And I was like, that's so crazy that my dad stopped. That was my first moment. The second one came maybe a year or two later. Same drill, I knew it, don't move. And we were on the tollway this time, and my dad runs out of the car off duty and starts trying to wrestle with a guy who had just smashed into a tollbooth, and he was a drunk driver, and my dad was trying to wrestle the keys away from him. And I remember in that moment thinking, this is what first responders do. They run towards things that other people just run away from. And in that moment, at 11 years old, I was I was like, this is what I'm going. You were brave and courageous and ten and 11 years old or so. I was the coolest thing in the world to stop and help people when they needed help. And it was also really adventurous. It was dangerous. And I thought that was cool. And you became a patrol officer, and you rose all the way to become the first female police chief in Aurora, Illinois. Yes. Tell me about some of those roles that you played. For sure. So Aurora is the second largest city in the state of Illinois, about 30 miles and due west of Chicago. My hometown. And I didn't want to be a cop anywhere else. It's it's a big city, but it's a mid-sized police agency. About 320 sworn. And I, all my friends went away to college, and I became an intern at the police department as a police cadet at the tender age of 17. Oh my goodness. So I grew up in my police department, both literally and figuratively. And if you would have looked at me and said, you will become the chief of police in this organization, I would have laughed at you in that moment because there were no women in rank when I started in my police department, so I had nothing to aspire to. You don't know what you don't know. So it just never occurred to me that I could move up in rank. And then eventually two women were promoted to sergeant and I thought, wow, that's really cool. I was a patrol officer at the time. And plus we have, you know, in our lives, all of us great mentors that look at us and see things that we don't see in ourselves. And one of my lieutenants looked at me and said, you should take the sergeant's test. And I thought, are you are you talking to me? And it was the coolest moment because I felt so empowered, and I did that, became a sergeant. And then no females had ever reached the rank of lieutenant in my police department. So I had one of those moments of, oh, no, I can't, I can't pursue that. There's no way. And then that whole, y me turned into, wait a minute, why not me? And I pursued that. I became the first female lieutenant in the history of my department, and then I became the first female commander. And then went on in 2016 to become the first female chief in the history of my police department, which was a proud moment. More so for, for me, and my children, because that's, you know, that visibility really matters. And you were encouraged and mentored by male police officers, and there were no there really were no women in rank to call mentors. They just weren't available. Why do you think that is? Well, just look at the numbers in general. We have 12% of women in law enforcement, and that's in the United States. And those who rise to, level executive levels in the police department, obviously, just by the sheer percentages, are smaller and smaller and women in chief's roles, the CEO roles are less than 1%. So there just weren't any, you know, just they just didn't exist. So men existed. And I give so much credit to those gatekeepers that I call them affectionately that that let women in and saw our value. Now, you were police chief at a very pivotal time. There was a terrible mass shooting, in your city. How did that affect you? And and how did you have the perseverance and the resilience to get through that awful time? Well, in order to answer that question, let me back up a few years. I became the police chief in 2016, and one of the first things that I did was my staff down and said, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? And we've, you know, we've all experienced or at least, you know, the headlines of mass shootings, whether we've experienced them individually or personally, but we all touch it in some way or affected by it. And so, of course, we talked about a mass shooting could be the worst thing, you know, mass violence, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster. We started spitballing all of the things that could happen, and I asked them a second, very pivotal question. I said, are we prepared for that thing that is coming? We don't know when. But, you know, it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when. And so they looked at me and they said, actually, we're not we need better training. Our equipment was expired. And so in 2016, I relied on those training officers and our Swat team, commanders, to get us ready. I said, you tell me my job is to hear you and to sell it to my city council and to the decision makers in my city. And we got ready. And so from 2016 to the worst day of my professional career was February 15th, 2019. And it was 124 in the afternoon on a Friday. And I'm sitting in my office with another, with another executive, member of the police department and we, we hear this call of an active shooter at, a manufacturing plant. It was a workplace shooting, and we stumbled over each other, got in the car, and we're only about four minutes away from the scene. And as we're driving there, I am hearing that they found, five victims that were deceased, that this man who was getting terminated had killed them in the manufacturing plant. And then I'm hearing over the radio that one officer shot, another officer shot. So ultimately, five people were murdered on that day, and five of my officers were shot trying to stop that mass shooter. And that was the worst day of my professional life. But I will say, because of that preparation, up until that date, those officers continue to pursue that shooter and do exactly what they were supposed to do. So we are still we've healed from our physical wounds of that event, but we're still dealing with the emotional wounds and the beautiful souls that we lost in. Your officers took out the gunman that they did. Yes. They had a 90. It took it took 90 minutes to find him in a 300,000 square foot warehouse. But they found him and he opened fire on our officers again. And, and they shot him. Did you learn anything from that experience that you carried forward? What would that be? Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, preparation is everything. And you know that. Of course, that's that's my profession is to be prepared for the unthinkable. But I'd love to think that we could prevent the unthinkable. But a lot of times we're reactive. We're going to go where the calls are coming from. And so, you know, we have to not just prevent, but we have to prepare for it. So the lesson I learned was preparation is key in any organization. But the other thing that I learned that I guess I wasn't quite expecting was the level of vulnerability that same father who taught me, you know, to run towards things also taught me, never cry. There's no crying in policing. Never let them see you sweat. Never say that you're afraid. Don't give them any ammunition. And it was in that moment that I forgot everything he taught me. And I learned from our police officers that, you know, this is bigger than us. And it's okay to fall apart. And I, I learned that from, you know, our patrol officers who were on the scene that day and from the community who wrapped their loving arms around us and so I learned that day that vulnerability is actually the cornerstone of strength. And there's nothing weak about, I was going to say, expressing it is okay. Yeah. And it can help you heal. Yeah. What would you say is the current state of policing in our country today? So it's interesting because when you say policing, you, we paint it with a broad brush. And so federal law enforcement and local law enforcement are painted with the broad brush. So if we lump in what is happening right now in terms of our federal immigration enforcement, I would say that we aren't in a good place. Here is the interesting part about law enforcement is that we go through ebbs and flows, and we have done so through the history of law enforcement. In the 50s, in civil unrest, police were were not well revered. And, you know, and then then fast forward to nine over 11, you know, where we had police and fire running into buildings. And so I call them the ebbs and flows of policing. But through that, that is a through line of consistency where there are wonderful human beings with great hearts and first responders who will put their lives on the line every single day to sacrifice themselves for people they don't even know. And that's a common theme there is. Then we have, of course, post George Floyd, the other worst day of my career, when the protesters came in and set my city on fire. And so what this is, to answer your question, is that law enforcement is still at its core, at its at and its good core, is out there truly doing the work of democracy. And we have to have it. We saw what happened post George Floyd when people said, let's defund the police, let's abolish the police. And that was tried and it didn't work because in a democracy we have to have checks and balances. Now that is not absolving bad police misconduct. We absolutely have to be certain that we remove those bad police officers and we hold them accountable. But the majority of police officers come to work every day. And truly, our our integrity, you know, with the foundation of integrity and mission driven.