Outtake: (Un)Paralleled: Methodological Tensions of Researching as an Educator Among Police

“Have you ever been here [the police training center] before?” asks a middle-aged woman police officer I am about to interview. She wears a black police baseball cap with the police emblem on the front panels, her hair pulled into a ponytail with blonde wisps of hair poking out from under the cap’s edges, black utility police pants, black sneakers, and a gray shortsleeve police polo with a silver pen clipped inside the pocket on the sleeve.

I shake my head no.

“There’s a lot of really cool stuff in here from over the years.” She leads me down the hall, turned along the left wall, showcasing pictures from each police academy class and going to a 1966 picture. “When women first joined, they were called matrons and wore civilian clothes. By 1967, we had our first women officers, but they had to wear skirts—Can you imagine doing police work in that? They’re wearing pumps! And look at their badges. They were more petite.”