Would hiring more female cops reduce police brutality?
Men dominate policing work, and they are also disproportionately more likely than female officers to be the subject of excessive force lawsuits and lawsuits with big payouts.
The Washington Post cites those statistics in a column that asks whether hiring more female officers would curb police brutality.
The article cites a 2002 report from the National Center for Women and Policing that found the average male officer in a big-city police force costs taxpayers between 2 1/2 to 5 1/2 times more than the average female officer in payouts in excessive-force lawsuits.
In Los Angeles, for example, male patrol officers outnumbered women by 4 to 1, but payouts involving men exceeded those involving women by 23 to 1.
University of North Florida criminology professor Ellen Glasser thinks more women officers would be beneficial, though she notes that some female officers would still be aggressive. “I will say that women can’t rely on greater physical strength, so they generally rely on relationships and talking to people,” she told the Post. “With more women officers, I think we would see fewer shootings and a different style of community policing.”
New York Magazine takes the theory a step further and cites psychology studies from the 1970s suggesting that men and women are similar in their psychological traits, except that males are more aggressive.
A 1983 New York Times story says social scientists noting the differences define aggression as behavior that hurts or intends to hurt others, rather than qualities such as assertiveness and competitiveness. The Times also reported that the differences could be attributable to parenting that encourages or tolerates more aggressive behavior by boys than girls.
Hat tip to the Marshall Project.
