'Women can be as brave as men': Dinner event celebrates female Milwaukee police officers
WEST MILWAUKEE, Wis. (CBS 58) -- To be an effective patrol officer, one must be able to handle the heat. But D'Andrea Johnson felt a different kind of discomfort Monday night. She was assigned to cut up steak.
"I don't really cook this quite often," she explained. "I'm a pescatarian, so I only eat fish stuff."
Johnson was among eight women from the Milwaukee Police Department chosen to participate in a dinner meant to celebrate women in law enforcement.
The event was hosted by Paradigm Shyft, which aims to bring together people from different corners of the criminal justice system.
"It seems like we're always trying to find something that's different about us. Well, let's try to find something that's the same, and promote and highlight that other group," the group's co-founder, Adam Procell, said. "So, you don't ever see a formerly incarcerated male highlighting women in law enforcement, so any time we can just highlight something that's different, we feel that's important."
Procell said the events always revolve around bringing together people to prepare a meal, eat it around the same table, then clean up after one another.
"Because, at the end of the day, we all have to eat, so it's something we can all find a common ground in," he said.
Previous dinners brought together the victims of crime with people who'd been convicted of crimes. The list of past guest cooks included Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, Fire Chief Aaron Lipski and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.
In this case, the dinner aimed to bring together women from different parts of the police department. Johnson works in District 7, and she likely wouldn't interact much with Jocelyn Kalmanson, an officer assigned to the Republican National Convention planning committee.
Kalmanson said she jumped at the chance to celebrate women in law enforcement. She said her idols growing up were her uncle, who worked for MPD, and the fictional superhero, Wonder Woman.
"Making a little girl feel like she can be whoever she wants to be is something that I wish I had more of when I was a kid," Kalmanson said.
Johnson said the gathering meant a lot to her because she remembered struggling to push through at the academy, then feeling like she wasn't always respected as one of the smaller officers on the force.
"For me being, you know, five-feet [tall,] being little a little woman officer, sometimes they don't take you as serious as they will a lot of the men officers," she said.
While developing confidence was a bit of a process, Johnson said she's ultimately motivated by the conversations she's had with young girls while staffing different community events.
"Little girls say, 'oh I wanna be a police officer, but it's only for boys,'" she said. "And then I have to tell them and explain to them that it's not only for boys. Women can be as brave as men."