No More Women to Get on Police Force

From The Indianapolis News, Wednesday, October 11, 1922: No more women will be appointed to the Indianapolis police department during his administration, Mayor Lew Shank announced today. “The police department is no place for a woman. We can’t use them in patrolling districts and there are more of them in juvenile court now than are needed,” he said. In his campaign last year, Shank criticized the work of the women’s division of the police department. There are now twenty-three policewomen, and Herman Rikhoff, chief of police, announced the system of assigning policewomen to patrolling districts will be abolished tomorrow, and all women will be removed from duty at police headquarters with the exceptions of two teams of women detectives, the prison matrons, and an information clerk. In the future, men will be named to fill vacancies in the women’s division.