Nothing you do is right. It doesn’t matter that you follow policy and procedure to the letter. The sergeant is watching, waiting for you to screw up or looking for an excuse to claim you did wrong. He wants to make an example out of you as the only female officer in the squad.
Uniform shirt wrinkled? Too many pronouns or prepositions used in your report? Patrol car tires underinflated?
I could go on with the list of petty, inane-sounding grievances, but anyone who has been unfairly targeted in the police workplace has probably experienced similarly ridiculous scrutiny from a supervisor.
Maybe your supervisor is not the problem. Perhaps a group of officers behave so unprofessionally that you begin to consider leaving the profession. Locker room hijinks, cliquish behavior and the targeting of other officers create an unwelcoming work environment. To make matters worse, ranking officers not only condone the behavior but participate in it.
Or perhaps one officer singles you out with an insulting nickname, makes you the butt of jokes in front of colleagues, tries to physically intimidate you or damages your personal property.
If you have experienced this kind of behavior, these scenarios may sound familiar.
I have written and presented extensively on issues surrounding sexual harassment...
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