Starting left to right - Pam Cercek, Jim Hartshorne, Pam Engle , Roger Whomes, Chuck Sheehan, Bob McDonald, Norm Miller, Len Nevin, Joe Whitcomb, Dennis Tucker, Kelly Dean

In a report about jail overcrowding in Reno during June 1981, the Reno Police Honda Patrol was credited with an average of 12 arrests a day during the week and 30 arrests a day on week-ends. Here is a graduation photo of one of the courses offered to qualify to work the patrol.

THE GATES OF EQUALITY ARE OPENED
by Jim Gibbs

The sex discrimination legal action taken by Pam Engle against the City of Reno and her resolve to work the streets of Reno as a police officer changed the playing field for women hoping for a career in law enforcement in Reno Nevada. Chief James Parker never appeared to accepted his faults in how he approached employing women, but he had no choice but to adhere to the demands of the Equal Rights Commission and the Courts.

Pam Engle was the first woman in the history of the Reno Police Department to truly work the streets of Reno as a uniformed police officer wearing the same uniform, wearing the same equipment and accepting the same assignments as her male counter parts. Those were the days when you got out of your patrol car it was expected that you had your uniform hat on. She did that also.

The gates of equality would be opened and more women would join Engle on the department. In late 1980, Pam Cercek would graduate from the 14th Northern Nevada Police Academy, it would be the second academy for the year as Reno attempt to booster the ranks of the Reno Police Department in a still thriving economy. Pam Creek would already have a family relationship with the police department in so much that her sister was married to Lt. Richard Kirkland who in 1980 had replaced Lt. Jim Hartshorne and was in charge of the Reno Police academy that Cercek would attend.

Chief Parker would resign a few years after the Engle case which allowed her to hit the streets. Parker cited health as the reason for his retirement. The City of Reno would again turn to an outsider from California for leadership. City Manager Chris Cherches mentioned a list of 15 priorities that had been given to the incoming chief. One of those priorities was to make a commitment to carrying out the city's affirmative action program to hire more minorities. If the term "minorities" included woman or not, is not known, but changes would be made and more women would eventually be hired.

Chief Robert Bradshaw would assume control of the department June 1, 1981 and come on with an iron fist. He would struggle with his relationship with the rank and file officers, most specifically, the elected leaders of the Reno Police Protective Association. But he would seemingly respect the equal rights of women officers in law enforcement. In fact, his own daughter, Kim Bradshaw, would join the Washoe County Sheriff's Department about the time Chief Bradshaw would retire from Reno’s top cop position. Five years later in 1996, Kim Bradshaw would switch departments and join the Reno Police department. She rose to the rank of sergeant before retiring herself.

The 15th Northern Nevada Police Academy which actually began after Chief Parker announced in January his intended retirement began on March 1, 1981. The academy would graduate on May 20, 1981 just a week before the announcement that Robert Bradshaw would be the next Chief of Police. The 15th Northern Nevada Police Academy showed more progress toward equality for women. The Academy would have three women in the class: Jan Novak, who had served an internship with the police department, Shirley Gilletti. who had worked for 3 years in records as a civilian before pinning on her badge and Linda Shepard. All three women would all be successful in their careers with the Reno Police Department illustrating that the work of Pam Engle had truly brought Reno to the next level of equality for women.

Shirley Gilletti would stay with the Reno Police Department for over 20 before retiring. Linda Shepard would rise to the rank of lieutenant and along the way become the Reno Police Department’s first female SWAT team member and a member of the Mounted Patrol. Jan Novak would have an amazing and impressive career in law enforcement that would extend to the national level.

In 1981, Chief Parker elected to offer a new image to the Special Weapons and Tactics team (SWAT) which was organized in the early 1970s. The SWAT team would become the Special Operations Response Team (SORT). The team, or more approximately, teams, would continue to be called out to address potentially violent incidents, but their duties would expand to special operation 24-hour activities. In addition to SWAT responsibilities, the new SORT teams would take on activities which replaced old units such as the downtown patrol and plainclothes street unit. SORT would be made up of 4 teams of 6 officers and each team would have a sergeant. Two female officers were initially assigned to SORT.

The change to SORT was not overly popular with the existing 1981 SWAT team. When SORT was first created, several officers decline to move from SWAT to SORT. Part of the undercover activities of SORT was using officers as decoys for strong armed theft and prostitution stings. Even some local citizens took offense to the sting operations claiming entrapment.

In one somewhat bazaar case that was protested, the family of an 82-year-old man arrested for soliciting an act of prostitution by SORT. The family claimed he was blind and deaf and he thought he was being offered assistance by the policewoman when arrested. Chief Bradshaw, in his response, said there was no evidence that the man was blind. While he was wearing hearing aids when arrested, he did not have a "white cane" and signed his name when booked. Bradshaw also pointed out that the policewomen assigned to SORT were specifically trained to avoid entrapment and would not have arrested the man unless he asked the undercover policewoman for sex and offered her money.

After a about three years, SORT was split up creating an actual separate SWAT team that went back to the traditional on-call role. Eventually the activities of SORT as a team were abandoned and the members of SORT were absorbed into an on-call SWAT team. With that, Linda Shepard became Reno Police Department's first female SWAT officer.

Linda Shepard would rise in rank to sergeant and then lieutenant. Interestingly, she would not be the first in either rank. The first female lieutenant goes to Sarah Brown way back in the late 1940s. But back then, Brown was able to bypass being a sergeant through the quirks of a new civil service commission It would take nearly 35 years longer for the Reno Police Department to commission a woman as a sergeant. The honor of being the first female sergeant with the Reno Police Department would go to Shepard’s academy classmate Janice Novak in December 1983.

Jan Novak would achieve the rank of sergeant at light speed, only 2 1/2 years after graduating from the police academy. Officer Novak also gets credit for being the first female officer assigned to the Reno Police K-9 unit. Officer Novak worked with her K-9 partner "Nick" from 1982 to 1983. But these achievements would be just the beginning of Novak’s amazing law enforcement career.


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