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Some items in the archives
give us a glimpse of past attitudes toward equality and civil rights.
One example is this 1971 letter from the Chief of Police to the Civil Service
Commission explaining why women's roles in the police department should be limited.
He said it was, quote, "completely inappropriate to consider
assigning women to duties which they are neither
physically, psychologically, nor emotionally capable of performing," end quote.
Among the duties he thought were unsuitable were crowd control,
homicide and sexual assault investigations, and management of prisoners.
He also claimed it was, quote, "fairly obvious," end quote,
that they should not hold command positions.
He endorsed a separate career ladder for women
in the department where they could be promoted
to sergeant and lieutenant, but only in areas
such as community relations, personnel, and internal investigations.
The director of the Women's Division in the City's Office of Human Resources
protested the sex segregated promotional tracts,
saying that advertising certain positions
as male only violated the Civil Rights Act and other state and local laws.
We can imagine that the Chief
would have been surprised
to learn that 43 years after he wrote this letter,
insisting that women were unsuited for command positions, the City
of Seattle appointed Kathleen O'Toole to be his first female Chief of Police.
To learn more about this and other records in the Archives, you can email us at archives@seattle.gov.
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