By Kathryn Gregory
Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It’s a tough job running the Charleston Police Department’s patrol division, but apparently they’ve got the right woman for it.
In fact, the department got the only woman who has ever single-handedly run the division, which is the home base for more than 90 officers, ranking from patrolman to lieutenant.
“It’s tough, but I’m working to ensure the mission of the department,” said Lt. Cathy Peal, who has been with the department since 1994 when she came in with the same recruit class as current Police Chief Brent Webster.
Peal helps coordinate training, manage schedules and deal with many of the day-to-day activities of the patrol division.
“Everybody wants a leader,” she said. “I try to give them that.”
Peal took over the reins as patrol commander in August and she is still getting her feet on the ground. She said that she probably had to adjust to her position and get it together much quicker than previous commanders because of the death of Patrolman Jerry Jones, who was killed by friendly fire in September.
“I had to maintain a sense of leadership and calm in the face of that tragedy,” she said.
Peal thinks that being new may have helped her try to keep the division together.
“None of us had ever dealt with this before,” she said. “We were all trying to think straight and I tried to be there as best as I could.”
The lieutenant acted as a pseudo den mother to her officers, who sometimes felt that they had no place to turn.
“We leaned on each other a lot,” she said.
Webster said he thinks Peal’s most beneficial qualification is that she is a leader, but also a friend.
“The people that are most successful are the ones that communicate and realize compassion is a big part of the job,” he said.
After the Jones shooting, Peal stepped up and made sure the officers under her command knew they could turn to her.
“When something like that happens, it’s so emotional and in a management role you feel like everyone else does, but you’re sifting through the facts and trying to deal with everything [and] sometimes it’s hard to be there for everyone,” Webster said. “But her door is open.”
Dealing with the calamity of an officer’s death may be the hardest thing Peal has had to deal with since she took over, but that doesn’t mean the rest of her job is simple.
Peal worked in the patrol division for more than 10 years before she was transferred to the professional standards, or internal affairs, division. But getting back to the patrol division was something she couldn’t wait for.
“The patrol division is the backbone of the department,” she said. “They really do the nitty-gritty work.
“If we didn’t have these guys working 12-hour shifts, we would fall apart,” she said. “None of the other offices could exist without patrol.”
Peal said when she started in the force in the mid-1990s, it was really hard for her as a woman, one of very few on the department at the time.
“I was actually seven months pregnant when I applied,” she said, laughing. “I had to work hard to keep myself to the same standards as the other offices. It’s a do-it-or-fail scenario.”
Peal didn’t fail. She moved up in rank, paid her dues and put in her time to get to the patrol division commander position.
“I’m truly honored,” she said.
Peal hopes that her achievement within the department will show women and other minorities that they can excel in a traditionally male profession.
“It’s not easy and it’s hard work,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman to be a good police officer.”
Lawrence Pierce | Gazette photos
Lt. Cathy Peal, the first female patrol division commander for the Charleston Police Department, explains how she organizes patrol officer shifts.
Lt. Cathy Peal, who took over as the Charleston Police Department’s first female patrol division commander in August, talks about many of the joys of her job, including the one-on-one interaction she gets with many of the patrol officers at the police department.
Copyright 2009 Charleston Gazette