While these and other innovations may help produce a more accountable police force, we still have a long way to go. And we need to hire more women police officers. Unfortunately, police work is portrayed inaccurately on television and in movies — every confrontation with a suspect (aka skell, perp, dirtbag) must end in a chase over chain-link fences, a dramatic tackle, and a brutal fistfight. The reality is that 80% to 95% of police work is nonviolent service solving problems within the community. Even so, women officers have proven themselves just as capable as men when forced to deal with violent confrontations. And they are better at not provoking them.

Study after study for the past 40 years extolls the virtues of women police officers. A 1974 Police Foundation study concluded that women encountering angry, drunk or violent individuals were as capable as men in resolving the problem. More important, women acted “less aggressively and they believe in less aggression.” A 1988 study of 14 years of U.S. and international research concluded that women were effective at reducing violent situations: “Policemen see police work as involving control through authority, while policewomen see it as public service.” In 1992, following the riots after the Rodney King beating, a study concluded, “Many officers, both male and female, believe female officers are less personally challenged by defiant suspects and feel less the need to deal with defiance with immediate force or confrontational language.” A 2002 study of excessive force complaints in seven major cities concluded that male officers were 8.5 times more likely than women officers to sustain an allegation of excessive force, and 3 times more likely to be named in a complaint of excessive force. Another study concludes that the reduction in crime in the U.S., U.K., and Canada is in part related to the increase in female police officers in each of those countries. One can’t help but wonder how the October 2015 case of the defiant school girl tossed from her desk and dragged across the room by the South Carolina power-lifting deputy would have turned out if a female officer had been sent. In fact, I can’t help but wonder how many of the 2,813 people killed by police since May 1, 2013, might be alive today if the call had been answered by a female cop.