For a brief time between undergraduate and graduate school, I worked with the Atlanta Police Department. I spent just enough time there to convince myself I did not want to work in law enforcement at any level - county, state, or federal. The dirty jokes, the open hostility, the denigrating remarks about women's capabilities and frailties, the contemptuous laughter all combined to confirm my feeling that this was not for me, at least not in the early 70s, not until women had become more accepted in law enforcement.

Almost thirty years later, women have made great inroads into law enforcement. There are now many women working in police departments all over the country. But, the climate of sexism, while much improved, has not disappeared. It may be more subtle, but it's still there.

In a profession in which stereotypical male macho characteristics are valued and encouraged, women will always be somewhat marginalized and forced to struggle to fit in.

So, how do the women in law enforcement cope? One coping strategy I saw at the Atlanta Police Department was familiar to me from my classes in sociology. It was used not only by women, but by minorities who were in much the same situation as women in the early days when the white male hegemony in law enforcement was being broken down.

When a woman, or a minority group member, joined a police force, they were confronted with a set of stereotypical expectations. In the case of a woman, most male police officers thought she would be "weak" or have a tendency to be overly lenient with suspects. Some thought she would not have the courage to confront violent situations, and would put them in danger if they partnered with her. Others thought a woman would be moody and unpredictable and they were unsure that women would side with "the boys" in a tough situation, i.e., maintain the "blue wall of silence."

Incoming female police officers were made painfully aware of these stereotypical and negative attitudes. A woman determined to survive in a male dominated police culture had to try to negate these attitudes. She, therefore, walked into the academy and later, out on the street with something to prove. She had to prove she was tough, courageous in the face of danger, and could be relied on to support "the side."

What sometimes happened was that women became more macho than the machos in order to win the acceptance of their male colleagues.

I have been thinking about this phenomenon a great deal in the past few weeks as Janet Reno twists in the wind over the Waco revelations.

When the Waco standoff began, I was teaching in Michigan, and I remember telling a classroom full of students that it would only "end in tears."

What I meant was that from years of experience I knew that the probability of disaster in a situation like Waco was very high. It is almost axiomatic that when a group of enforcement-minded men gather together, armed to the teeth, with an enemy or a perceived enemy in their sites, they're going to start shooting.

In police work it's often talked about in relation to high-speed chases as "tunnel vision." The officer gets an adrenaline "high" from the chase and ceases to pay attention to anything except running down the suspect. In this case, armed men spent days in Waco working themselves into a "high" anticipating the conflict with Koresh and his followers. It was almost inconceivable that they would simply put down their guns and stroll off. Any provocation would have been enough to set them off, and if there had not been a provocation, one would have been created.

The officers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were going to end that stand off with violence. David Koresh had questioned their authority, refused to do what they had told him to do, and nothing, NOTHING, gets up the noses of people used to compliance more than open defiance (especially the defiance is being broadcast around the world)..

Janet Reno was theoretically in charge of the situation at Waco. But, Janet Reno was a new Attorney General, a new woman attorney general, and she had her own set of prejudices to fight in order to be accepted in that position. She did what many ordinary street cops do. She stood by her man, or in this case, her men and almost unquestioningly supported the actions of the ATF, the FBI and all the other federal agents involved in the fiasco. She accepted the FBI's line that immediate intervention was necessary because of allegations of child abuse inside the compound. The logic that risking killing these children was better than letting them be abused never made sense to me. But, Reno bought it. She didn't push an aggressive investigation afterward even after men, women and children died. And she accepted the FBI's assessment that nothing improper had been done.

This stand may have won her support within federal law enforcement as "one of the boys," but now, unfortunately, it has permanently tarnished her reputation.