The First Women In American Law Enforcement

Women found a place in early-twentieth-century police departments in part because the idea of what police were for was in flux. A hundred years later, we're accustomed to images of police as militarized soldiers in the never-ending war on crime. But in the early decades of the last century, policing was as much about promoting social welfare as preserving law and order. Female officers tended to runaways, enforced child labor laws, and searched for missing children.

Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession