Woman Officer Earns Her Helmet : She Rides Out LAPD’s Motorcycle Training

For many, the dirt track at the Los Angeles Police Academy marked the end of their attempts to become motorcycle patrol officers. For Joanna Brownell, it was the beginning.

It was along this dusty course in Elysian Park that Brownell conquered such grueling motorcycle maneuvers as skidding the bike on its side and, without dismounting, setting it upright again. And the police motorcycle she was riding was about three times heavier than the 250-pound dirt bike that Brownell, 27, of Newhall, rode to a national desert dirt bike racing championship last year.

“You either can ride or you can’t,” Brownell said. Because she could, Brownell graduated from the academy’s motorcycle school last month, and later this summer, she will become the Los Angeles Police Department’s first woman “motor officer.”

About a quarter of those who enter the three-week motorcycle school fail it, said the chief instructor, Officer E. Randy Wiggins.

3 Men ‘Washed Out’

Three women have tried and failed in the last 10 years, mostly because they lacked the upper body strength to ride the bike out of the dirt during the difficult “power pickups” and “scramble races,” Wiggins said. In Brownell’s class of 27, in which she was the only woman, three men “washed out,” he said.

Elsewhere in California, four women have ridden motorcycles for the California Highway Patrol since 1980, although none is now on the state’s motorcycle patrol, spokesman Kent Milton said. At least three women are riding motorcycles for local police departments in California, said Pasadena Police Sgt. C.E. (Gene) Gray, president of the Burbank-based Municipal Motorcycle Officers of California.

Yet motorcycle patrols remain male-dominated areas of police work.

“Sure, it has a macho aura,” said LAPD Officer Bill Mulvihill, a 13-year motorcycle officer. “A lot of it has to do with the uniform: the boots, the helmet, the sunglasses, the leather jacket. Being a motor cop has always been a very prestigious job.”

Opportunities Emerging

Opportunities for women, ineligible for regular patrol jobs until 1973, to join LAPD’s motorcycle force are emerging now more than ever, Wiggins said.

Brownell now rides in a patrol car for the West Traffic Division, which covers West Los Angeles. Graduating from the car to the bike will mark the pinnacle of her police career, she said. Although her colleagues have supported her, she added, some have questioned her motives and expressed displeasure that theirs will no longer be an all-male job. “There’s a lot of old-timers on the job who think that’s the reason I did it: to be the first woman,” Brownell said. “I had a couple of guys come up to me and flat out tell me they didn’t want a woman to make it on the job. They said it was one of the few jobs left on the LAPD that was, I don’t know if ‘sacred’ is the right word, but something like that.

“I told them I happen to be a woman, but this is what I want to do,” she said.