Police Women on (UNPAID) Traffic Duty

One hundred years ago today … Women police reserves of the NYPD were deployed to the streets to guard children against “reckless motorists” at school crossings 

The Herald reported Five hundred and sixty-two women arrived for duty at 156 Greenwich Street and were dispersed among the five boroughs. The department’s usual traffic officers had been pressed into service for “special duty guarding milk wagons and distributing stations” during the current milk strike. (“Women Traffic Police Obeyed at 500 Crossings.” New York Herald, 9 November 1921, p. 24.) 

Also in the Herald: the women would “receive no pay.”

– Jonathan Goldman, Nov. 28, 2021

TAGS: gender, women’s history, police, safety, cops, children, car, pedestrian, accidents, salary, inequality