Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060173114 ISBN 13: 9780060173111

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1995

Based on interviews with female police personnel throughout the country, a journalist illuminates the experience of being a woman in a dangerous job, including life-threatening situations on the street and discrimination, hostility, and sexual harassment in the station house. $25,000 ad/promo. Tour.

From the Publisher:

The author of What Cops Know and Pure Cop uses the probing journalistic skills that made these books bestsellers to expose what women cops deal with on the streets and in the station house.

From Booklist:

The law-enforcement environment has long been dominated by men, but in the last 30 years or so, the number of female cops has increased. The transition has been painful. Fletcher, whose two previous books--What Cops Know (1990) and Pure Cop (1991)--were oral histories of modern cop life, here focuses on the female law-enforcement experience. She interviewed dozens of female cops across a wide range spanning age, rank, urban and rural environments, and differing job duties. The stories these women tell about their training, their first patrols, life as a partner, and even their encounters with males cops' wives all share common themes, the most overriding of which is how difficult it's been for women to become good cops. Vivid testimony is offered on the humiliations of daily insults at the police academies, on the crude sexual jokes that must be endured the first day on the job, and on the constant agony of living with discrimination and harassment. There's also plenty of anecdotal detail on gender differences in handling street situations: men tend to confront, women to negotiate. Once again, Fletcher provides an extraordinary glimpse inside a world too often seen only in fiction. This is the real deal, and it's as good as any crime novel. Wes Lukowsky