Ever see the videos of women trying out to be firemen? Where ONE man could take a ladder and put it up to a window, TWO women were fumbling with it and some of them never even got it up there. Meanwhile someone is burning to death. Breaking down doors? Dragging and controlling heavy hoses? Carrying incapacitated people out of a burning building? But, they let these women pass anyway to fill quotas and they eventually lower standards so that more women can pass them.
When you are trapped on that second floor building and someone is trying to get a ladder up to your window, do you want the one who can do it easily or the one that cannot? Sounds like an easy question doesn't it? When you are trapped in a burning building do you want a weaker person trying to bust down the door and carry you out? If your life was on the line, who would YOU want to show up?
But, I guess lives don't matter. Being politically correct matters. It is not PC to say that women are just not as good as men at some jobs (and vice versa!).
SOME women are qualified, and to them I say: go for it. But if you cannot pass the same requirements as the man who is trying out for the job, then you are riding on the coattails of affirmative action. These days the standards even for male recruits are so pathetic, that they are not even a worthy goal, really, but they are a start. All the standards have been lowered so low that they might as well get rid of them, like the LAPD did with the 5 foot rule.
I had a girlfriend who is now a cop. She insisted on passing all the "mens" qualifications standards. She did all the pushups in proper form (rather than on her knees), all the chinups, and everything. I had great respect for that. I would have no problem riding with this female officer (and to address some other posts above she was VERY attractive, not that that matters a bit to the job....but the point is, attractive women can be good cops too, not just the "butch" ones. They just have to try a little harder to pass the same quals). A woman, if she trains hard, CAN be as strong as a medium sized man, and women should be required to train hard until they DO. Very simply: make reasonable qualifications for a medium sized man, and if the women can't pass it, then they need to workout until they do. No one has any problem with a woman being a cop. It is the unqualified women who go into jobs that they are inferior at, and they get these jobs just to fill quotas, NOT because they are qualified.
There are many men that could not pass the strength tests for a middle sized man either, and to them I'd say the same thing: go workout until you do, otherwise you are an unqualified candidate.
To accomadate weak women, we have lowered and eliminated all standards for strength etc to become a police officer or fire fighter. It sounds nice and fair and all, until it is YOUR ass that is on the line, and then suddenly you want the best person for the job, not the one that filled a quota. When I am working on the beat, I want the best candidate watching my back, not the politically correct one. Polictical correctness like this might work out okay in other fields where lives are not on the line, but where lives are on the line, specifically MY life and your life, then I just want the best person for the job.
There was a shooting recently in my brother's home town where a few cops shot a man who was wielding a tree branch. The cops on scene were mostly women and smaller guys. There were a number of them, and they should have been able to easily disarm a wierdo with a tree branch. But, due to their limitations, they could not wrestle a man with a stick, so they shot him to death. This is not fair to the public. If you had a few 180 pound, physically fit men there, they could have EASILY tackled the person and wrestled the stick from him, but with the smaller (often female) officers they did not have that option, so they shot him. Smaller, weaker officers, no matter what sex, are a liability to their partners and to the public. They invite violence more because they are not as threatening, they are often a liability rather than a help in a wrestling situation (if someone gets a gun away from one of the weaker officers, then I am the one that gets shot. I would rather these officers just stay out of it and step back because they are more of a liability to me than a help) and lastly, these officers are a danger to the public because like in the situation above, they don't have the OPTION to overpower a man with a stick, so they resort right to lethal force and kill him. A larger, stronger officer could have taken the man down by force and saved a life. There are countless examples of this kind fo thing, but you will never see the reports because it is not politically correct to notice the truth.
We all know that when we are arresting a three striker that we would want large men (or exceptionally large strong women) as our partners, but we pretend that it is not a problem because it is politically incorrect to notice things like that. Female officers are okay for the social situations etc, but it all depends on the district you work in and the types of calls you get. Maybe they should have women officers who are not as physicall qualified be part of a special task force that just responds to socail calls? Yeah, I know, that would be some sort of segregation and we can't have that! But, if we think that women have the good (better?) social skills it would make sense to take advantage of that and send them specifically on social calls, while you have the men on standard patrol and responding to violent calls. Okay, so I am dreaming, that makes far too much sense.