Kauai Woman Spring 2005

A Job Like No Other

It’s something new every day for Kauai’s six women police officers, working in a challenging and predominately male business

By Pamela V. Brown

As an 8-year old child, Regina Ventura had been taught by her parents to respect police officers, so when a cop barked rudely at her while she was riding skateboards with her friends near a Kauai school parking lot, she was shocked and surprised – and a career was born.

“He scared the Hell out of me the way he talked,” she said. “I told myself that’s not the way it should be.” She knew right then that she could – and would – do it better.

Despite her petite stature, Shelly Rodrigues’ family had long been accustomed to her “dangerous hobbies” and doing the unexpected, like spending years in the Air Force as a crash fire fighter – the only woman in that fire department.  

After leaving the Air Force and preparing to move home to Kauai, she saw an ad in the newspaper for police recruits here. “I knew I wanted something exciting,” she said. “Not a desk job.”  

Regina Ventura (Photo by Ron Kosen/Photo-Spectrum)

When they joined the Kauai Police Department, both women definitely got something exciting and have been thankful ever since. Only the third female to join Kauai’s police ranks, Ventura, 48, has spent 25 years on the force, achieved the rank of lieutenant, is the commanding officer of the vice narcotics division and last fall was one of the three finalists for the chief’s job. With 10 years on the force, Rodrigues, 37, is an assistant sergeant for one of the Hanalei police squads.  

Ventura and Rodrigues are joined by four other female officers, creating a small, select group of women who work in a predominately male field. Barely 4 percent of Kauai’s 140 Kauai officers are female, falling far below the industry’s national average of 10 to 15 percent women. In a few cities including Albuquerque. N.M. and Tucson, Ariz., women comprise one-third of the police force and in San Jose, Calif., a full 50 percent of the force.

Police Chief K.C. Lum thinks that maybe more women don’t apply for the department because the media portrays the job as days filled with wrestling violent and armed criminals – a great exaggeration, Lum said. If other women could feel current female officers’ job satisfaction, “they may change their minds and come into the force.”

Other than their tremendous job satisfaction – which most female KPD officers enthusiastically confirmed – it’s not possible to stereotype Kauai’s lady cops, other than to say that they all enjoy their jobs and all possess single-minded determination to do what they set their minds to, regardless of other people’s opinions.  

Shelly Rodrigues (photo by Pamela Brown)

None of the clichés that might come to mind are applicable: they’re not rough and tumble chicks, none of them set out to prove anything to men by joining the force, and though they all seem to respect each other, they don’t band together in an “us against them” mentality.  

“It’s always been ‘us’ and ‘we’ as far as the men and women,” said Sgt. Vicki Fonoimoana, 40, who has served with KPD for eight years and worked the previous eight years for the Honolulu Police Department.  

They are women who love the variety and excitement of facing new circumstances each day, the challenge of using their minds to diffuse situations and the chance to help people, whether or not their help is recognized or even appreciated by the recipient.

“I just really enjoy my job,” said Darla Abbatiello, 45, a patrol officer on the west side of Kauai who has been with KPD for 15 years. “I like to help people. That’s what I’m there for.”

Gotta be a little crazy

To cope with the multitude of challenges of being a cop, the women of KPD have learned to appreciate even the smallest gestures of gratitude, the balance their close friends and family help them maintain and the wry sense of humor that comes with the territory.  

“You’ve gotta be a little crazy to join the police department,” Ventura said. “Has anyone ever spat on you? Do you ever call a police officer to come to your house to have a cup of coffee?”

Darla Abbatiello (photo by Pamela Brown)

Add to the mix the public’s often mistaken perception that police are unfeeling and uncaring, and it’s no wonder why many cops’ best friends are other police officers.  

Once, at a grisly automobile accident scene which Ventura had seen happen and in which a woman died, Ventura stifled her natural emotions in order to complete the investigation and clear the road for traffic. “One guy asked me if I was a robot because I didn’t cry at the scene. ‘You don’t have a heart,’ he said to me. It hurts. I’m not going to lie to you. She’s lying there dead. But I had to do my job,” she said. Of course it affected her: “I didn’t eat for three days after that.”

Far from being a disadvantage, all five women officers of KPD who spoke to Kauai Woman agreed that their gender often works in their favor, even in tense situations in which tempers are flaring before they arrive – especially because they either were born and raised here or have lived here for a long time.

“I’ve gone into bar fights where the people know me and they stop fighting and kiss me and say ‘Howzit Sistah?’ The fight stops, so you’ve accomplished what you were there to accomplish,” Ventura said. “It’s much easier than wrestling with somebody.”

There’s also the fact that most men won’t consider hitting a woman, which calms things down, several of the officers said. The reverse can be true, too: most men don’t want to be known as the guy the lady cop forcibly – and maybe easily – subdued.

In fact, various studies conducted in the United States and internationally during the last 10 years confirm that women police officers rely less on physical force and more on verbal skills in handling altercations than do male officers. A study released in 2000 of the Los Angeles Police Department showed that in assault and battery cases, payouts to victims on behalf of male officers exceeded those of female officers by a ratio of 32:1. During the study period, male officers outnumbered females by a much lower ratio of 4:1.

But sometimes people expect women cops to act a particular way, like automatically favoring the woman in a domestic dispute between a male and female.  “Sometimes women get mad at me because I’m not taking sides,” Abbatiello said. “My badge is just a badge, not because I’m a man or woman. They get very upset.”

Then there was the time that Ventura was overseeing an automobile accident scene while paramedics treated the victim, who seemed to be out cold. Suddenly the victim opened her eyes, looked up at Ventura and said, “Hey, you’re the lady cop who’s always chewing gum.” Thus proving that some people do see more than gender.

A long fight

As the senior member of the six women KPD officers, Ventura remembers the early years when it wasn’t always that way, when a high-ranking male supervisor told her that females should only work in the records department or serve as clerks to officers. “That made me not give up and push harder, work harder, try to be better,” she said. “It’s been a long fight. It’s harder fighting in here than out there (on the streets).”

Several of the female officers confirmed that there is still a hint of the “good old boy” attitude on the force – as evidenced in part by the handful of discrimination and harassment lawsuits that have been filed in recent years, including one brought by patrol officer Abbatiello last year against several of her bosses, including the KPD detective husband of Karen Kapua, one of the six female officers. Due to the pending litigation, Officer Kapua declined to be interviewed for this article.

But all five female officers interviewed confirmed that such behavior is minimal and confined to just a few people. They’re pleased to note that newer recruits don’t seem to have that attitude, possibly because younger generations of men are accustomed to having their mothers be employed, often with high levels of responsibility.

“Compared to the ‘good old days,’ it’s way better,” Ventura said.

When she first came onto the force, Rodrigues said some male officers implied that because she’s petite, she wasn’t qualified for the job. “For me it was nothing new because when I was in the fire department with the Air Force, I was the only female,” she said. “Pulling fire hoses is a lot harder and takes a lot more strength sometimes.”

Besides, Rodrigues said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It doesn’t mean she has to agree. “I’m here and that’s a fact. I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let it affect my job.”

Fonoimoana, who grew up on Kauai, went away for school and worked on Oahu before returning to Kauai, said it seems that some attitudes are a little slow to change here, as evidenced by Kauai children’s reaction each time she visits a school while in uniform. “Kids will say ‘Ohhh, it’s a lady.’ On Oahu it was not a surprise to kids to see a female officer.”

Chief Lum, who took office last September after 22 years on the force, said he hopes the police force can help move island attitudes forward. Times have changed and women officers should be treated equally, he said. “If everyone understands that, then all this perception of discrimination can be gone. Either go along with the progress or be left behind. We can’t use horse and buggy nowadays.”

The women of KPD would second that motion. There’s enough to deal with just being a police officer, whether male or female.

“Lots of people say they want to be a cop to help people. You will be doing that and then you’ll be banging your head against the wall. You deal with a lot of complaints,” Fonoimoana said. “The flip side is there’s always going to be something exciting. This is like no other occupation you could ever have.”

Pam Brown is a freelance writer for Kauai and regional publications and occasionally writes for national magazines. She and her husband Tom have lived on Kauai since 1988.

Contact Information:

Pamela V. Brown

(808) 651-3533 cell

(808) 821-1027 fax

pam@writepath.net

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