Shhh! It’s won’t be official for another eight days, but Busting the Brass Ceiling: How One Heroic Female Cop Changed the Face of Policing is already available on Amazon. The back cover copy reads:
Fanchon Blake didn’t understand what she was getting into when she filed a discrimination complaint against the LAPD with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1973. And she sure didn’t realize that the complaint—and she—would make history for women and minorities. She just knew that she would never be able to change the LAPD’s discriminatory culture from within. So she sued, thereby initiating one of the country’s landmark Title VII cases with little to no help from anyone. That betrayal of the LAPD’s codes of silence and loyalty, however, would not go unpunished. Despite the ensuing verbal abuse, silent treatment, and intimidation, she pushed on. Seven years later, her heroic efforts would finally make it possible for women to bust through the brass ceiling.
The official pub date of Busting the Brass Ceiling, November 20, 2020, marks the 40th anniversary of the consent decree that would set precedent across the country. And since the U.S. Department of Justice wound up consolidating its employment discrimination lawsuit with Fanchon’s case, that consent decree would change the face of policing on both the gender and race fronts, abolishing the virtually all-white, male “clubs” that had previously existed.
Even after co-authoring Fanchon’s memoir Busting the Brass Ceiling, I still can’t imagine the guts it took to stand up to the LAPD and fight for her rights in court. Her story is quite a ride. So are her observations about policing.
Busting the Brass https://www.amazon.com/Busting-Brass-Ceiling-Changed-Policing/dp/0999858483Ceiling offers astute insights into the police status quo—including the propensity to violence and the role women can play in turning that around. Fanchon’s prescient words, which could have been written today, provide answers to many current questions about policing. Even more importantly, her case reminds us that while legal recourse can often seem unbearably slow, changing laws changes society.
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