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Alice Stebbins Wells was a reserved and kindly woman, small and slight in stature. Dressed in everyday street attire, she stepped onto the Los Angeles trolley one day in late 1910. Wells didn’t wear a helmet, nor carry a pistol, handcuffs or a club. But that didn’t stop her from exercising her authority as a newly appointed Los Angeles police officer—the first policewoman in the city’s history and one of the first in the United States.
At the time, police in Los Angeles were authorized to receive free rides on public transit while on duty. Following protocol, Wells reached into the lapel of her coat and showed her shining police badge, No. 105, to the conductor. The man looked at the object in her hand, and then at Wells herself. “Nice try, lady,” he reportedly said. Unwilling to let her take a seat, the conductor accused Wells of using her husband’s badge.
Wells returned to the police station and reported the incident to the chief. Before long, the Los Angeles Police Department permitted its first female officer to wear a more feminine uniform of her own design, along with a special “Policewoman’s Badge No. 1.” There would be no more mistaking Wells’ official standing.
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In the early 20th century, the U.S. was undergoing a period of widespread reform. Rapid industrialization and urbanization had created a host of issues, including poverty, domestic abuse, poor working conditions in factories and political corruption. Proponents of the progressive movement sought to address these problems through government intervention and social activism, proposing such changes as regulating big business, banning alcohol and increasing women’s rights. Amid this sea change, many reformers began calling for the expansion of women’s roles in policing, especially on issues affecting women and children.
National groups like the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the League of Women Voters and the Daughters of the American Revolution spoke out about the need for female police officers to protect the country’s most vulnerable populations. Reformers argued that women, with their natural maternal instincts, could help clean up society’s moral problems. As Wells said in a 1914 address to a Methodist church, “Municipal motherhood—policewomen—is the hyphen, so to speak, between the home” and potentially salacious commercial venues frequented by young people, many of whom were left to their own devices while their parents worked at factories.
America’s cities were notorious for red-light districts where impoverished young immigrant women seeking social freedom were lured into prostitution. Child labor and street crime were rampant, with some youngsters turning to theft for sustenance. Amusement parks such as Coney Island in New York were especially vulnerable to immoral behavior due to their crowded and chaotic nature, which made it easy for predators to target those who were left unattended. Dance halls also served as entertainment spaces for free-roaming young adults, who gathered after long hours of factory work to socialize, dance and meet potential partners without parental oversight.
Prior to Wells’ appointment in 1910, national women’s groups had convinced officials in multiple cities, including Jersey City, Chicago and Boston, to employ female police matrons at jails, psychiatric hospitals and other public law enforcement institutions. A matron, in the words of the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, “cares for lost children and small boys who may be under arrest; for penniless women and girls who may be in need of a night’s lodging; [and] women and girls arrested on suspicion [of indecent behavior], a respectable percentage of whom are, after all, innocent.” As criminologist Alice Neikirk wrote for the Conversation in 2023, matrons “did not go on patrol or have powers to arrest,” and for the most part, they weren’t formally appointed or fairly compensated for their work.
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Historians have long debated which pioneer in the field of women’s policing holds the title of the U.S.’s first policewoman, as opposed to police matron. (The country’s first female private detective, Kate Warne, was hired by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1856 and is largely seen as the first woman to work in investigative law enforcement of any kind in American history.) Recent research supports the claim of Marie Connolly Owens as the first female police officer. The Canadian-born Owens served the city of Chicago from 1891 to 1923, holding powers of arrest and the title of detective sergeant as she investigated child labor law violations and chased down wife deserters.
Another candidate is Lola Baldwin of Portland, Oregon. In 1908, the city placed Baldwin in charge of a police division dedicated to the protection of young women, rewarding her for her success in a similar but more limited role at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Wells’ supporters, meanwhile, argue that she “was the first U.S. woman to wear a police badge and uniform and exercise the full powers of a police officer, equal to those of her male counterparts,” according to the Los Angeles Almanac.
Wells was a former theology student and social worker who became convinced that reform efforts would go much further if reformers were public officers with proper police credentials. “At least one policewoman is necessary for each city,” she told the Joliet Evening Herald in 1912. “She would not try to take the place of a man, but would be able to do many things much better than a man police officer can.” While male officers focused on patrolling the streets, putting down riots and responding to other violent crimes, “a woman could see to the regulating of amusement places and could accomplish a good deal in eradicating the causes of crime and immorality,” Wells said.
To lobby for her appointment as Los Angeles’ first policewoman, Wells convinced 100 influential citizens to sign a petition, which she then presented to the mayor’s office. She touted her background in helping women and children toward the right path, away from vice and loose morals, through her pastoral and mission work in New York and Los Angeles. Utilizing her contacts with national and local women’s groups and organizations, such as the city’s Friday Morning Club, she secured her appointment from the police commissioner on September 12, 1910.
“I expect to introduce into municipal affairs the woman’s point of view, which, added to the man’s, makes the perfect point of view,” Wells, then a 37-year-old mother of three, told the Los Angeles Record. “If the world needed but one point of view, why were the minds of men and women made so radically different?” she asked.
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The police chief assigned Wells office space in one of the two jury rooms in the department building, where she could keep office hours and meet with suspected victims. The new policewoman’s main duties included supervising and enforcing laws relating to dance halls, skating rinks, penny arcades, movie theaters and other places of public recreation. “To me, this work is a dignified and important part of applied Christianity,” Wells said. “The part of my work dealing with public amusements is not primarily to protect individuals, unless absolutely necessary, but to see that these places are kept safe and wholesome and so that they may not be sources of congestion and danger to many.” While Los Angeles police officers at the time were enrolled on a six-month probationary period, Wells received an emergency appointment, allowing her to get right to work in the newly created position.
Although Wells had the power to arrest offenders, in most instances, her presence alone was enough to deter inappropriate behavior. Soon, local dance halls were forced to adhere to the policewoman’s new regulations, from changing their provocative business names to installing better lighting to barring men from approaching women without a formal introduction by an usher. “Places I have access to [include] the girls’ dressing rooms of the lesser theaters. A [policeman] could never go there,” Wells pointed out. She argued that this access allowed her to better learn about and listen to young women’s concerns.
Wearing a long dress and a coat with her badge pinned to the lapel, Wells patrolled Los Angeles’ seediest spots. At arcades, she turned her attention to cleaning up Mutoscopes, coin-operated devices that functioned similarly to a flipbook, displaying a short sequence of silent, moving images for a penny. Though popular with young children, the machines often showed adult-themed and promiscuous materials. After inspecting the most notorious of the city’s arcades, Wells told the Los Angeles Herald that “there was hardly one that was not suggestive.” She added, “Of course we will have these taken out.”
Within months, Wells admitted to feeling pulled in many directions. In addition to walking her beat, she was often called in to conduct the questioning of women taken into police custody. Unlike male officers mainly trained in law enforcement and crime suppression, Wells had a religious and social work background that led her to act as a mediator in family disputes and domestic violence. Male police officers often dismissed these types of cases as private family matters, leaving women and children without much legal protection from their abusive husbands and fathers.
Recognizing the need for specialized services, Wells established a bureau dedicated to assisting women in need, as well as a missing persons department for women and children. More modern sources suggest she was involved with the Minnie Barton Home, a safe haven for women released from jail that also served as a halfway house for young offenders and victims of abuse.
Between 1912 and 1914, Wells embarked on an extensive speaking tour of schools and women’s clubs in 73 cities across the U.S. and Canada. She collaborated with other reformers to host lectures that raised awareness about female delinquency, women’s hygiene and the importance of sex education. Wells even taught young women how to escape an assailant. “Scream first. Then use the first weapon [at] hand,” she told a crowd in 1913. “Don’t forget the trusty hat pin.”
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In her 1925 book Women Police: A Study of the Development and Status of the Women Police Movement, social worker Chloe Owings described the blatant discrimination experienced by Wells. Though Los Angeles’ first policewoman spoke favorably about her treatment and the support she received from her department, not everyone took her position seriously. Beyond the trolley incident that led to Wells receiving a special badge, Owings wrote:
Many journalists presented the situation in a half-comic manner and pictured the woman police officer in caricature as a bony, muscular, masculine person, grasping a revolver, dressed in anything but feminine apparel, hair drawn tightly into a hard little knot at the back of the head, huge unbecoming spectacles, small stiff round disfiguring hat, the whole presenting the idea in a most repellant and unlovely guise.
Wells also had to make do with a lower salary than her male counterparts on the force. She earned $75 a month (around $2,500 today), while policemen received $102 (around $3,400 today).
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Nonetheless, the position of policewoman was such a resounding public relations success that Los Angeles soon expanded its roster to three female police officers and three police matrons. By 1915, at least 16 cities, including Chicago and New York, had appointed women to their police departments. The mayor of Milford, Ohio, a small community of 1,500 people, went so far as appointing Dolly Spencer the nation’s first female police chief in 1914.
After her speaking tour, Wells returned to Los Angeles. In the years that followed, she founded or led multiple organizations dedicated to promoting the ever-growing number of women in police departments across the U.S. She also convinced the University of California to host the first-ever course specifically designed to train policewomen in 1918. The ever-busy Wells stayed with the Los Angeles Police Department until 1940, serving as the curator of its museum for the last six years of her career. After retiring, Wells remained active in lecture work and the cause of women in policing. She died on August 17, 1957, at age 84.
Today, the National Policing Institute continues to study the positive outcomes of female police officers that were first observed by national women’s groups in the early 20th century. A recent study of more than 50 jurisdictions demonstrated what Wells pointed out over a century ago: namely, that “the difference in attentiveness, responsiveness, compassion and help offered by women officers resulted in heightened community satisfaction,” particularly in marginalized communities. Thanks in part to the foundation laid by Wells in Los Angeles in 1910, the U.S. is now home to an estimated 96,000 female police officers.