New Hampshire has a growing number of female police chiefs, but leadership still remains male-dominated

Dawn Shea didn’t always know she wanted to be a police officer. Before she attended the police academy, at 32, she worked at a bank. Then, in insurance, managing coverage for colleges and universities.

It was a stint living with a friend in Merrimack, her hometown, that piqued Shea’s curiosity about law enforcement.

Shea watched with interest as her friend, who did bike patrol in town, came and went to work, hearing the swish-swish of her nylon windproof pants going in and out of the condo they shared.

That friend, Denise Roy, suggested Shea try out being an officer part-time. Something clicked, and Shea never looked back.

At the start of this year, Shea was sworn in as Pembroke’s first female chief of police.

It was a designation Roy earned in Merrimack when she became chief in 2017. She retired in 2020.

“I would be lying if I said that isn’t really cool for me. It’s an honor, a piece of history,” Shea said. “Watching [Roy] progress and become the chief, that was neat to watch. I didn’t know if I would ever reach that achievement in my career.”

Shea said she has leaned on female mentors in the industry, like Roy, who taught her how to stand out in the right ways. The capital region has seen several female chiefs in recent years, including Beth Tower in Allenstown, helping bolster growing numbers statewide.

While her historic role is meaningful, she doesn’t view herself as a trailblazer.

“I want to be valued for and recognized, I guess, for being a good police chief,” she said. “Not being a good female police chief.”

New Hampshire is ahead of national averages for the number of law enforcement leaders who are women. At the same time, the Granite State is behind national averages for all female officers, despite a slow but steady uptick in representation.

Today, New Hampshire has twelve female police chiefs out of more than 200, nine of them working at the local level, according to state data. A decade ago, the state had five. While the actual number of female chiefs more than doubled, that’s an uptick of around two percentage points to 5.5%.

Nationally, 3.6% of police chiefs and 14% of sworn officers were women as of 2020, the most recent data available from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

While New Hampshire has seen some growth in the last decade, it’s modest.

In 2016, just under 8% of officers statewide were women. Today, that figure is about 11%, or 407 sworn law enforcement. State Police have 30 female troopers, up a few from 27 a decade ago.

Of 90 total officer positions in Concord, 15 are held by women, which is nearly 17% of the force. In 2016, the city had ten.

About a quarter of Pembroke’s 13-officer force are women, outpacing national and state averages. This isn’t new for the department – it hasn’t changed since Shea got her start there, she said.

In the chief’s view, that number is indicative of the culture at the department. While law enforcement is a male-dominated field, it’s not equally male-dominated everywhere.

“You can’t blame policing as a profession completely,” she said. “I think some agencies are more progressive than others. That’s a reality.”

Shea started her full-time career as an officer in Pembroke, where she gravitated to detective work. She was promoted to detective sergeant before going to Bow for two years and then Allenstown for another eight. Then, three-and-a-half years ago, rising chief Gary Gaskell asked Shea to come back as his lieutenant.

They worked closely together, she said, and it meant her selection as chief gave the department continuity.

“We never disagreed in the direction to take this agency,” she said. Among the biggest priorities, she said, has been a workplace culture that supports morale and individual accountability.

“I can’t compete with a budget of Hooksett or Concord, I can’t compete with that salary,” Shea said. “But we can compete in other ways. We can make it a good place to work. We can make it a place where people, the men and women, are the best selling point of whether this is a place to work or not.”

On the other side of public safety New Hampshire has above-average numbers of female firefighters, but is far behind the national average for female fire chiefs.

Nationally, about 9% of firefighters, volunteer and career, are women, according to federal data from 2020 (the most recent available), and about 6% of chiefs.

By comparison, just under 11% of the 5,096 firefighters in the Granite State are women. Notably, though, only two out of the state’s 228 fire chiefs are women – or less than 1%.

Locally, Concord has three female firefighters currently on staff. It has never had a female chief of its fire or police department.

Shea, like most female officers, has been on the receiving end of negative stereotypes about women in the field, whether that’s an assumption that a male officer is the one in charge of a crime scene or doubts about a female officer’s capabilities in a physical altercation. Female officers face added scrutiny, she said, both from the public and peers.

Shea spends time at the state police cadet training academy, a program for teens. Every year, her team has “a talk” with female cadets. While no one gets any slack as officers, she said, there is an understanding among women that the standard is higher.

“You’re going to have to work harder. We expect a little bit more from you,” Shea paraphrased from her remarks. “Not only out there, but in here, to some degree, male officers tend to look at you as, maybe you’re not as strong.”

“But,” her advice concludes, “we have our own set of strengths.”

Studies have found that more women in police work not only improves workplace conditions for other female officers but also improves public safety in their communities.

Women officers are less likely to use excessive force, less likely to be named in complaints or lawsuits against departments, and more likely to be viewed favorably by their communities, research from across decades shows.

The 30×30 Initiative, which advocates for changes to help support and recruit female officers, encourages its partners to have 30% of the force to be women by 2030. In New Hampshire, only Manchester, Portsmouth and UNH have signed on to its pledge.

Shea didn’t point to specific changes peer departments could make to both bring in more female officers and bolster them towards leadership, but she sees department culture as a major factor.

“There is still some of that ‘good old boys club’ type thing,” she said. “That might not be a popular statement to make, but there’s truth to it.”

She does, however, think things are changing as numbers inch upwards.

“We work professionally to make differences in people’s lives,” she said. “Just by being who I am and attaining this position, that’s not how I thought I would make a difference. But maybe it does, and maybe that’s how our numbers grow.”

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