LOS ANGELES — Angelenos who drive by the Los Angeles Police Department Northeast station may notice it has a new name. It is now known as the Deputy Chief Margaret “Peggy” York police station, after the first female to earn the rank of deputy chief in the department.
“If people ask, ‘Why do you name buildings?’ Well, in my mind there’s two factors: One is for legacy, for a tribute. Who is this person? What did they stand for? But it’s also a statement of values of the building and the organization itself,” LAPD Chief Michel Moore said at Friday’s renaming ceremony, where LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, LA City Councilman Joe Buscaino and more than 100 other friends, family members and colleagues paid tribute to the woman many consider a trailblazer.
York was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1941 but moved to Los Angeles when she was 13 years old. In 1965, she joined the LAPD as a radio operator, eventually attending the gender-segregated LA Police Academy to become an officer in 1968.
At the time, the department had policewomen, not police officers, Moore said. The department’s policemen had only recently been desegregated by race.
“She faced an uphill battle to change the system because when she started working at the department, the only types of jobs female officers were given at that time were either at the front desk, community liaison or working juvenile crimes,” said Los Angeles Police Commission President William Briggs. “But she stuck it out.”
In the 1970s, York became part of the first female homicide detective duo in the nation — “something that was unheard of at the time,” Briggs said.
It was so unusual, in fact, that York is credited with inspiring the hit 1980s television show "Cagney & Lacey." York and her partner, Helen Kidder, investigated homicides in the Northeast division as part of an all-female team because their male counterparts didn’t want to work with them, Briggs said.
“Peggy York proved that she belonged on the job. She was qualified for the job. She showed that her gender was not a factor in how she could do this job,” Briggs said of York, who, with Kidder, was known for yielding more confessions than their male colleagues.
“She really set for me what the model of a police officer should be,” Garcetti said at Friday’s commemoration. “That she happened to be a woman was secondary.”
Women currently account for 18% of the LAPD, though the department has pledged to increase their ranks to 30% by 2030, Garcetti said. “Women bring something important to policing: their experience, their perspective, their ability to connect with so many people in this city at the moments that they’re in.”
Many of Friday’s attendees proved his point. The Los Angeles Fire Department’s first female chief, Kristin M. Crowley, sat in the front row. And LAPD Capt. Chris Waters, a black female, is chief commanding officer of the Deputy Chief Margaret “Peggy” York police station.
“This is the police station where Chief York was assigned to protect and serve the city of Los Angeles as a detective,” Waters said. “I am so proud to stand on her shoulders.”