GPD rolls out maternity policy

0
509

GREENFIELD — A maternity policy is making its way into the books at the Greenfield Police Department — for the first time in the agency’s history.

More women are moving into a line of work that historically has been dominated by males, officials said. According to a study done by the Federal Bureau of Investigators in 2013, the most recent numbers available, women make up 11.6 percent of all sworn-in police officers in the country. That’s slightly up from 10 percent in 2001.

The Greenfield Board of Works and Public Safety recently approved a general order by Police Chief Jeff Rasche enacting a maternity policy for the police department. That makes GPD the first agency in the county to have a maternity policy specifically written for the department. The Hancock County Sheriff’s Department and various other departments around the county follow the general maternity guidelines established by the municipality they serve.

Deputy Chief Matt Holland said a female officer brought the lack of a policy to department leaders’ attention. She declined to speak to the Daily Reporter, citing a desire to keep her privacy.

The department policies had no language regarding how to manage the workload of pregnant officers, Holland said.

“She felt it was an area that needed to be addressed,” Holland said, “and we agreed.”

GPD has three female sworn-in officers currently and three civilian employees on its 45-person staff that includes 26 patrol officers. Holland said that’s a pretty typical percentage of female employees for the department even though it ebbs and flows from year to year. GPD’s percentage of 11.5 percent female officers is almost exactly on par with the national average.

A few of the officers are in a phase of their lives when having children is a possibility, Holland said. No officers are currently pregnant, but department leaders wanted to make sure protocols were in place for the future.

Holland said they have had pregnant officers in the past, and the department followed the policy of the city of Greenfield. He said those were each taken on a case-by-case basis. This new policy mostly follows those same procedures but now is official and specific to GPD, Holland said.

The policy is fairly standard, and GPD leaned heavily on other police departments with established maternity policies in place, Holland said. The proposed policy was also reviewed by Greenfield’s human resources team to ensure compliance with city laws.

The two main points of the new policy aim to ensure the protection of the unborn child by limiting the type of work officers perform while pregnant and offer job protection while a pregnant officer is assigned to “maternity duty” and after they return from maternity leave.

Around the halfway point of the pregnancy, with input from the pregnant officer’s doctor, the policy requires GPD to evaluate whether the officer should be assigned to maternity duty, which would avoid firearms training, patrol duty, standing for long periods of time and exposure to exhaust fumes or other potentially hazardous chemicals or fumes.

Officers on maternity duty would generally be tasked with writing reports, conducting interviews or gathering information via computer or telephone. The policy also says the duties should be as close to the officer’s regular work as possible.

Female officers remain a rarity in the county.

The Hancock County Sheriff’s Department has 66 employees on staff, including 36 sworn officers, three of whom are female. McCordsville has 18 officers and three of them are women. New Palestine, which only employs five officers, has no women currently on staff. Wilkinson and Shirley only have one police officer each, both men.