It's a large police force and it's a large country. There are so many different divisions. I was so fortunate. It was the luck of the draw that I ended up in B.C., which is E division, and happened into a detachment where the superintendent was a great leader and was very open to this idea. My first five years were in that detachment. We even had a second superintendent take over who was equally a feminist. In those five years, it was a brand new idea to have women in policing. We didn't know how to do it, but we figured we could do it and we did. We did it differently, but we did it well.
I never had any thoughts on that. I heard about other female members at that time who were in situations that were hostile. There was still hostility within that detachment—it was 120 members—but we were police officers. If you push us, we'll push you back, and if you can't push back, you're in the wrong job.
After you get transferred and end up in a situation where the leadership is either absent or toxic, you really get some humble pie handed to you. I did get that. I recorded it all in the book.
It's definitely a matter of leadership and accountability and rooting out systemic abuse of authority, harassment or bullying. We're not even getting into crimes of sexual assault. I would still be very curious to see how many.... I was shocked by Merlo Davidson, that this was actually occurring. I mean, we're police officers. We solve crimes; we don't commit them. However, sometimes we do. It's in my book. Sexual assault was something new.
With regard to harassment, it's about leadership and accountability. It's the organization's responsibility to make sure that the right leaders are identified, that they are given the appropriate education and that toxic leaders are dealt with, are eliminated, especially in policing. We have more power than the average person, and we have very strong personalities. We can do a lot of good, but the wrong person can do an awful lot of harm.