Page 5 - Bella.September

“There’s not too many of us. I like a challenge though. Challenges are meant to be conquered. Rules are meant to
be tested.”
– DeQuita Miller
But when it comes to law enforcement, the situation can be trickier for some women.
DeQuita Miller, a school resource officer with the El Do- rado Police Department, said she thought there were more women involved in the department before she arrived.
Though she soon found there weren’t as many as she thought, she said that didn’t make her want to rethink her decision.
“There’s not too many of us. I like a challenge though,” Mill- er said. “Challenges are meant to be conquered. Rules are
meant to be tested.”
Miller said when a woman enters law enforcement, if she’s
not sure of herself, she will be tested as officers want to know that the other person has their back. But she noted the diffi- culties women can face based solely on gender stereotypes.
“Being a woman nowadays comes with so many stereotypes in itself,” she said. “Women are viewed in so many different ways but in the social world a woman’s image seems to get more attention when it’s based around being sexy, which poses another conflict when wearing the title of ‘police offi- cer.’”
Miller said she wants her fellow officers to feel safe with her, adding that if there was an incident at Barton Junior High School, where she works, that she needed to call backup for, she wouldn’t want them to “think of me as a woman in dis- tress, only an officer in need of backup.”
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BELLA – September 2017 – 5