She can’t protect herself, but she can protect you.

BUCK writes:

As I was reading your entry, Dear G.I. Jane, about women in combat roles, I happened to be watching Blue Bloods, a TV show about a three-generation family of cops and prosecuters and a police commissioner in New York City. The youngest grandson is a uniform officer who has a very attractive female partner, Officer Eddie Janco, played by Vanessa Ray (above). Officer Janco is raped by a guy who picks her up at a bar. He forces his way into her apartment, beats and rapes her. She is completely defenseless against him. He has no weapon and he isn’t much bigger than she is.

She refuses to acknowledge the assault and rape, then eventually admits to cowering in her bathroom “like a little girl.” She explains that she is afraid to report the crime because the rest of the cops will see her as too weak and too ill-equipted to defend herself. She refuses to accept the help of her male partner, who nontheless presses the issue until she relents and admits to it all. She is obviously relatively weak and diminitive, and exhibits no masculine traits.

The male partner eventually convinces her to deal with it as a police matter. The two of them, in uniform, enter a crowded resturaunt to arrest the offender who is dinning there with a woman. They approach his table.

“You’re a cop?”

“Yes, and I’m here to arrest you.”

The guy smirks.

She tells him to stand up, that he is under arrest.

He stands but refuses to put his other arm behind so that she can handcuff him.

She muscles his right arm behind him as she also forces him to the ground, while her male partner and the crowd watch.

Later she thanks her male partner for helping her to “come forward.”

“No problem.”

I am not familiar with this TV show, so I’m not sure what the intended message was. But, what I took away from this particular “drama,” was that both the female actress portraying the uniformed cop, and the female cop being portrayed, were clearly there for reasons having nothing to do with the critical mission of law enforcement. She was clearly too feminine; too weak and too ill-equiped to be a uniformed cop.

I am fairly well acquainted with a real-life uniformed female cop who fits the TV show portrayal to a tee. On the street, she is always partnered with a male. Many of her duties are public affiairs. She is also well qualified with weapons. She’s gorgeous, and may weigh 110 pounds. Up close and personal, what the guys think about her isn’t, “Thank goodness she’s on the job.”

Weapons, of course, make a difference in many circumstances, more so in the military, but certainly not in all.

A second episode of Blue Bloods shows another female cop jump in and pistol whip a defenseless bad guy twice her size, after her male partner kills the two bad guys on either side of him, and now holds his weapon on him.

Many, if not most, of police confrontations are in close and hand-to-hand.

Are we living this fiction? I hope that when push comes to shove – meaing, in an actual upclose fight – that most females will instinctively have the sense to pull back while males do what need doing. But, at some point, if things continue as they are, the number of females in place will make that impossible.

Please follow and like us: