The Dayton Police Department is joining a national initiative to attract more women to a career in law enforcement.
The 30-by-30 Initiative aims to increase the number of female officers by 30% in law enforcement agencies nationwide by 2030.
The motivation is simple. "Research shown that an agency's culture changes when you have at least 30% representation of a minority group," Officer Cayce Cantrell said.
Cantrell has been with the Dayton Police since 1999. She said female officers can have a positive influence on a department’s culture.
"Women help as far as de-escalation. women are known to be more empathetic. Women have less uses of force, and there are less complaints when women are involved in a police department. also having a female officer on scene helps bridge the gap between the uniform," explained Cantrell. "If you have stronger listening skills and you're more empathetic, we can humanize the badge and bridge that gap to the public."
Currently, Dayton has 324 sworn officers, 52 are women. That’s about 16%.
The department is reviewing policies such as mentoring and lactation facilities, as well as hiring and advancement procedures to reduce barriers for current and future female officers.
"We do have lactation rooms, but can we make them better? Can we have more for nursing mothers in the department? How can we help with women if they want to come on the department and they have childcare issues? Those are things that we're going to look into to see if we can make any improvements on the department and make sure that we can mentor each other," said Cantrell. "We'd like to establish a mentorship program to make sure that women are getting equal opportunities for training and that when they're trained at maybe through the mentorship program, we'll have more women that want to promote up into the ranks of the department."
Now through March 1, the Dayton Police Department is accepting applications for their fall cadet class.
