obitoftheday: Obit of the Day: 1st Latina on the LAPD After working at Lockheed-Martin during World
obitoftheday: Obit of the Day: 1st Latina on the LAPD After working at Lockheed-Martin during World War II, Josephine Serrano found herself out of a job when soldiers returned from the front and women were no longer needed. She went to work in a drug store until a co-worker told her that the Los Angeles Police Department was looking to hire a new group of female officers. Ms. Serrano applied to join the force along with 200 other women. Only 21 would graduate from the police academy in 1946. And within six months there were only nine left including Ms. Serrano who was the first Latina to serve on the LAPD. The daughter of Mexican parents, she was born in Arizona before they moved to Mexico after her brother lost a leg in a mining accidents. They had to hurriedly flee north when another brother was threatened with death by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The family would settle in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood in east LA. Joining the LAPD at the age of 23, she and her fellow female officers were not treated in the same way as their male counterparts. They received no diploma upon graduation, no gun, and no uniform (they were not yet designed). Paid $200 a month, women were assigned to either juvenile detention or the Lincoln Heights jail. Ms. Serrano ended up at the latter, where the officers were forced to wear nurses uniforms in place of the not-yet-ready police attire. Later, after she and her colleagues were issued guns, Ms. Serrano walked a beat in LA’s Pershing Square. They worked undercover in a dress, high heels, hat and gloves. Josephine Serrao, who married Jack Collier in 1948, retired from the force in 1960 due to a back injury. She passed away on February 25, 2014 at the age of 91. As of October 2013, the LAPD had 842 Latina officers on the force, 45% of all women serving. (However they make up only 8.5% of the total force of 9,909.) Sources: LA Times, Women’s Peace Officer Association of California, Sworn Personnel by Rank, Gender, and Ethnicity Report (SPRGE) (Image of Josephine Serrano Collier, circa 1948, modeling the newly issued LAPD policewomen’s uniform. The photo is courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Museum and via KFWB-AM) Also of interest on Obit of the Day: Johnnie P. Jones - One of Atlanta’s first eight black police officers -- source link
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