WILLIAMSBURG — Vanessa Beltran starts every shift by testing her stun gun, putting on her body camera and having a meeting about what to expect over the course of the day.
She and her fellow police officers joke with each other before they leave the station for patrols, and then things get serious.
“A typical day, honestly, I can’t even describe. It always keeps me on my toes,” Beltran said.
Beltran’s dashboard radar sounds like an endless muffled siren coming through a speaker, and then there’s the chatter on the radio. Officers rush to the scene when they hear that other officers are engaging with people — either due to a traffic stop, someone loitering where they shouldn’t be or any other of a wide range of reasons.
“We definitely have each other’s back. Any call that I had that’s like a domestic, there’s always somebody that’s like, ‘backup en route.’ And I think the camaraderie that I’ve experienced here is one of the best I’ve ever had,” Beltran said.
Beltran is one of eight female officers in Williamsburg’s 45-member police department, or roughly 17% of a force that covers the city of 16,000. Last year, the department joined the 30×30 Initiative, a national effort to increase the amount of female police officers to 30% by the year 2030. In doing so, Williamsburg joined about 360 law enforcement departments across the country that have pledged to increase female representation.
“We want a department that represents our community as a whole,” said police Maj. Ashley Nichols, who heads Williamsburg’s patrol bureau and spearheads the department’s initiative. “We want to have a diverse police department, and the city of Williamsburg, I believe, is 53% female, so obviously we want to represent the female citizens in our community.”
Currently, women account for 12% of sworn police officers and 3% of police leadership in the United States, according to the 30×30 Initiative, a coalition of police leaders, researchers and professional organizations that champions the importance of women in policing. In Hampton Roads, female representation in law enforcement is above the national average, with almost 17% of officers women. Only the Norfolk Police Department falls below the national average.
Still, departments say they want to do better. Besides Williamsburg, four police departments have joined the 30×30 Initiative, including Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Newport News and Suffolk. Other departments, including Chesapeake, are considering.
“Everybody brings certain things to the table that help when you’re dealing with the community, because if that’s who we’re serving, then we have to reflect the community — women, minorities, people with different religious backgrounds,” said Chesapeake police Sgt. Dorienne Boykin. “So, it’s important that we’re all here to service the community because we are in customer service.
“We do so much more than just take people to jail and write tickets.”
The 30×30 Initiative began in 2019 on the heels of a national research summit on women in policing. From there, organizers began working with policing agencies to improve recruiting and strive toward making police departments “truly representative of the jurisdictions they serve.”
“This 30% threshold is where change begins to happen, but it is not our end goal,” the initiative says on its website, 30x30Initiative.org. “While 30×30 is focused on advancing women in policing, these principles are applicable to all demographic diversity, not just gender.”
Part of the initiative’s goals is to spread awareness about the important role women can play in policing.
“This under-representation of women in policing undermines public safety. Research shows women officers use less force and less excessive force; are named in fewer complaints and lawsuits; are perceived by communities as being more honest and compassionate; see better outcomes for crime victims, especially in sexual assault cases; and make fewer discretionary arrests,” the group says.
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Out in the field
Women can help people feel more comfortable in a wide range of situations, such as in sexual assault cases where a female victim wants to speak with a woman, Nichols said. Women are also more likely to use discretion on certain arrests and can help build community relations.
“Sometimes if we arrest a female, they request a female officer to search them, but if we don’t have a female on staff, we’ll reach out to a neighboring jurisdiction to see if they can accommodate that request for them,” she said. “Same with victims of crimes — sometimes they request to speak to a certain gender, so we want to be able to oblige that request whenever we can.”
For the Williamsburg department, which covers the city and often interacts with William & Mary students, community policing is a must. The department is big on proactive policing — stopping issues before they happen.
“You go out and really get to know the community,” Beltran said. “People know your face, people know your name, and you offer resources to them.”
It serves the community to see themselves represented within the department, Nichols said, pointing to a recent school visit where she noticed students were excited because they had not seen a female police officer before.
Beltran said another benefit of having women available on staff is that they provide more options for some harder calls like domestic calls.
“People’s relationships are very touchy. Those can be more high-caliber calls sometimes, (because) you just never know what you’re walking into,” she said. “When you have at least a female and a male perspective, you don’t know who’s going to open up to you. Sometimes even the males (like) talking to me more just because they want, like, a calming voice.”
Williamsburg Police Chief Sean Dunn said the department’s signing on to the initiative speaks to the department it wants to be. That means working to attract, recruit, retain and develop women to not just be patrol officers, but to also move to specialized assignments and leadership roles, he said.
