Penny Harrington

Police officers in Portland, Ore., had a habit of stonewalling and sidelining Penny Harrington — until she became their boss.

Born in Lansing, Mich., in 1942, Harrington joined the Women’s Protective Division (WPD) of the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon in 1964. The WPD handled what was considered “women’s work,” emotionally grueling investigations into child abuse and sexual assault, Harrington wrote in her 1999 autobiography “Triumph of Spirit.” 

Emboldened by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Harrington threatened a lawsuit if she wasn’t transferred out of the women’s division. The threat was enough to make her the first female police officer in Portland.

In 1972, she became the city’s first female detective, clearing the path for others behind her by pushing for classification changes so men and women could apply to the same positions. That earned her harassment and hate mail — and, in 1980, a promotion to captain. 

When an outsider mayor, Bud Clark, won election in 1985 on a pledge to overturn a police department plagued by corruption scandals, his first move was to hire Harrington as chief. Harrington stepped into her new role in January 1985. In June 1986, a special commission produced a damning critique of her leadership and she resigned. 

She went on to work for the California State Bar Association and directed the National Center for Women in Policing from 1995 to 2001.

“I did my part. I’m tired,” she told the Marshall Project in 2018. 

— James Bikales