When Lt. Katherine O'Brien works midnights as the shift commander at the Pittsfield Police Department, and someone comes in with a question or complaint, the person will often look past her and talk to a male officer, many years her junior.
"I just step aside and wait for the male officer to take the information and then turn to me and say, 'OK, what do we do now?'" said O'Brien, a 22-year veteran of the force.
Although the Pittsfield Police Department has seven female officers among its 85 members (only O'Brien holds a rank higher than officer), such incidents show that people still perceive police work to be "a man's job."
That attitude persists despite studies that suggest women, with their communications skills, might be better than men at defusing potentially violent situations.
Former Pittsfield Mayor Charles L. Smith said as much back in 1983, when O'Brien and two other women (Officer Kim Bertelli-Supranowicz, who is now a school resource officer, and one other woman who has since left the department) were first appointed to the Pittsfield force.
He then found his City Hall office picketed by the Pittsfield Police Association, in part, for what some men considered aspersions on their professionalism.
Police Chief Anthony J. Riello, who was president of the association at that time, said the picketing was more about contract delays than the appointment of women. But the issue was a sensitive one.
"At the time, it was tough for her," said Riello, who joined the force after Cormier did, but was there when she left. He said he thought the department made a mistake hiring only one female and leaving her with no support from other women.
By the time O'Brien and Bertelli-Supranowicz were hired, he said, "the mood had changed."
Now, he said, "No one asks how many women or how many minorities. We just hire police officers."
Bertelli-Supranowicz said she has known since the fifth grade that she wanted to be a police officer.
"I just wanted to help people," she said.
Her high school guidance counselor, however, tried to discourage her from seeking a degree in criminal justice, telling her she be would just end up writing parking tickets, she said.
"I keep hoping I'll stop him one day," she joked.
O'Brien's school guidance counselor, likewise, encouraged her to be a teacher or a nurse. But she clung to her dream of becoming a police officer, a goal she developed as a junior in high school in the late 1960s when she attended a seminar on "alternative" careers for women and met a female detective from Rochester, N.Y.
Yet, while they persisted and made careers for themselves, the women on Pittsfield's force say they continue to meet obstacles -- even within the department -- because of their gender.
When Karen Kalinowsky, who was hired in 1986, became pregnant 16 years ago, the department wanted to put her on unpaid leave after only three months, she said, when women in other professions often work right until the baby is due..
"They said they had never been through this before," she said, "I said, 'Neither have I."
Kalinowsky went so far as to hire a lawyer before being as-signed tasks within the station until she took her official maternity leave. She has had two other children since with no work-related problems.
Officer Diane Caccamo, one of the newest female officers, re-members how one woman, who called to complain about a bear in her yard, balked when the dispatcher told her Caccamo would respond.
Others question whether wo-men should be working alone after dark.
"You have to ignore it. Ob-viously some people don't know any better," said Nicole Gaynor, the department's training officer, who was hired in 1999 after 4 1/2 years as a police officer at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Gaynor said the environment in Amherst is much different than she found in Berkshire County. "No one thinks twice about it (in Amherst)," she said.
Here, Gaynor said, she recently had someone ask her, "When did they start hiring female cops?"
She said people often think female officers will be more sympathetic to an offender, less likely than a man to make an arrest or issue a ticket.
Kalinowsky said she thinks it's more that female officers use their brains, more than brawn, although they are trained in defensive tactics just like the men.
"I hardly ever fight," said Kal-inowsky.
She recalled one arrest, during which she was ready to put handcuffs on the suspect, when a male officer showed up to help. Im-mediately, the suspect put on an attitude and was ready to fight, Kalinowsky said.
"I told the male officer to leave and then finished the arrest," she said.
"Part of it is tone," she ex-plained as to why she seldom needs to struggle with a suspect.
"We don't just rely on physical strength," Gaynor added.
Still, the women say they are prepared to fight if need be. All attend the same police training academy as the men, and learn how and when to use physical force.
"When we took the civil service test, we had to do all of the same stuff as the guys did," said Officer Jennifer Jayko, who has been a Pittsfield police officer for five years. "We all had to drag the 150-pound dummy. The fact that some of us have a smaller build just meant that we had to work harder to do the same job."
Most of the women on the force say they have been involved in struggles with suspects at one time or another. They say they tend to be challenged more by other women than by men.
But other than a few cuts and bruises, Jakyo said she has never suffered any serious injuries.
Nonetheless, she said when she is the first to respond to a fight-in-progress, bystanders will shout, "You're going to need backup!"
If she does call for backup, when any officer would, she said she is still willing and able to go in on her own to diffuse the situation.
Or, perhaps, as some say, to prove themselves.
"I was told that I had to get into a couple of fights before the guys will back you up," said Gaynor.
O'Brien agreed. "You have to prove you are able to take a punch and willing to back up the male officers."
Riello said, however, that he has no reservations about sending a female officer on any call -- drug raids, shootings, murders and domestic disputes.
"I have no reservations at all," he said. "They are all capable of handling any call. They're police officers."
In the early days, the chief said, some male officers expressed concerns about whether a woman could adequately back them up on a dangerous call. But he said, "As soon as (women) were employed, I don't recall hearing about it again."
Women do add a different dimension to the police force, but it is not unlike having two male officers with two different styles of handling a situation, Riello said.
"People have got to get away from the idea that you have to be a big, strapping man to do this job," he said. "Our job is not to fight with people. We make arrests and we keep people safe. All officers are trained and capable of doing that."
All are also eligible to be trained as sexual-assault investigators, so that when a rape victim is being interviewed, she or he can choose to speak with either a man or a woman, the chief said.
"It's about who you are as a person," Jayko said, adding that she doesn't believe it is accurate to say that women are better at talking to a victim, any more than it is accurate to say that a man is better at physically subduing a suspect.
"It's about individual personalities. I think it is important to have both male and female officers. It creates some sort of balance that feels right."
Do the women get scared working on the streets of Pittsfield?
"You can't gender-specify that question," Gaynor said. "Every officer, every day, gets scared. The guys can't tell you they don't get scared. If you don't get scared you shouldn't be in this job."
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