Beauty & The Badge

sexy in any line-up, policewoman barbara schantz promotes law and ardor

Springfield, Ohio, dozes under gun-metal skies this morning, an aging Middletown waiting for a train that never comes. Mornings are timeless in Springfield. The self-centered Seventies never groped this far into the cornfields; the Eighties have yet to arrive.

Most of the structures in Springfield are made of crumbling brick. They huddle around a new utilitarian town square that is the only bow to modern architecture in all of Clark County. It is seven A.M. The town is silent except for the squeals from a flat man's squeegee as he scrubs the windows at the Steak 'n Egg Kitchen, which stays open 24 hours. A conservative black-and-white police car glides past, headed east toward the square. The patrolman at the wheel is 5'3" tall, weighs 107 pounds and wears a delicate gold chain around her neck.

A crackling dispatch from the radio directs Barbara Schantz back to the north side. She acknowledges, makes a U turn without signaling and accelerates up North Street to the day's first disturbance of the peace.

Patrolwoman Barb Schantz feels no quickening pulse. She knows this call is much more likely to involve an angry bride than homicide. "There's always a potential for violence when you go out on a call," she says. "But most times, you have to calm down a domestic argument or take a dogbite report."

A dogbite report? Angie Dickinson never did dogbites. Barb shrugs her blue-uniformed shoulders. "This is a pretty quiet town. You have to follow a dogbite through to the very end. Usually what happens is that the people who called in just ran across a dog and pissed it off in some way--they got too friendly with it. That's no problem. The easiest dogbite of all is when somebody's own dog bites him. You can get all the information right there."

She pulls to the curb in front of a peeling white house in a run-down section of the northeast side. She punctuates her deliberate walk to the door with unhurried glances to both sides.

"This is supposed to be a theft that didn't even happen here," she says quietly, "but you never know."

It turns out somebody has orchestrated the theft of a flute from a school locker. The thief is probably interested in the instrument's silver plating; Springfield has only one professional flutist and he has a flute.

After interviewing the fluteless student's mother, Barb takes ten minutes to fill out the report she'll turn in at the end of the day. There have been no further calls for her, so she'll cruise this sector of town until the next insistent static from the radio.

Barb worries that the public sees policework as an exercise in muscle and blood. She seldom has to break down doors or tackle fleeing criminals; in three years on the force, she has never fired her service revolver except in practice.

"All people think of is the violence. Nobody asks me, 'Do you write good reports?' 'Do you keep an eye on your businesses?' That's a lot of what I do.

"The fighting that does happen isn't 'You punch me, I punch you,' It usually involves trying to put cuffs on somebody while he's resisting, pulling his arms away. Well, we don't want to take on anybody one on one--one officer will put a choke hold on while the other locks the cuffs. The choke hold is a really good method of subduing a person. It doesn't injure him, but he'll go 'Llllggg! and think he's dying. He'll stop the resistance."

She pulls the car over and offers to demonstrate the choke hold to the reporter who has been following her around. She grips his left arm at the wrist, pinning it behind him, then reaches up and pushes her right forearm firmly into his Adam's apple. He goes "Llllggg!" and nearly dies.

"That's usually all it takes," she explains as the writer rubs his neck. She jumps back into the patrol car and resumes her north-side cruise.

Born in the village of Enon, Ohio, Barb Schantz (concluded on page 192)Beauty & The Badge (continued from page 171) was 17 when she married "the first boy who ever liked me." They were divorced less than two years later. She packed up clothes and an infant son and moved to the big city of Springfield--population 72,253. She was only intermittently employed. The two of them lived for a year and a half on the $3.72 an hour she made as a secretary at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a half hour's drive away.

In 1979, she ignored the advice of friends and family and joined the police force. She is now one of two women in the ranks. There are 148 men.

She believes only two percent of the men are in favor of women police. "Then there's the 48 percent who think policework is not the place for a woman, but they'll work with you," she says. "I can live with that. But then there's the other 50 percent. They're out-and-out against women in police-work. They go out of their way to screw with you if they can; they don't want to work with you; mostly, they talk behind your back.

"The police thing is a macho image. They're the last of the cowboy heroes. Women look up to them; they've got uniforms and they carry guns. Suddenly, having a woman be able to do the job is kind of a put-down for them."

She makes a sharp left at a ramshackle intersection, squealing the tires as she responds to another call.

"I'm glad I'm not working tonight--Friday night. The drunk-and-disorderlies will be spilling out all over the street."

Asked if the work is worth all the tension and backbiting, she touches the badge over her breast. "I've been a police officer three years. From the very first, they told me, 'You're gonna get your ass kicked, you're gonna get yourself killed.' So far, I haven't gotten my ass kicked. I haven't gotten anybody else's ass kicked. It's been worth it.

"I don't want it to sound like I don't like the job. I do. There's a camaraderie on the force and I'm part of it. All the ass cutting is like that in a big family. They'll talk about the girl behind her back, but they'll protect her, too, if they can."

The new dispatch has taken her into one of the city's better sectors. She drives a little faster than the speed limit, staring out at the road as it curves into an affluent neighborhood.

"I'm happy I joined the force. I've always been one to 'go for it,' to do something that took a little courage. Being a policewoman is part of that. So is being in Playboy.

"The whole thing with the magazine has been an exciting surprise for me. I wrote to Playboy a few months ago and sent them some pictures of me, suggesting they do a pictorial on women in policework. They called back to say they were interested in doing a pictorial on me!"

She is reminded that being in Playboy could cost her her job. "Yeah, it could. When I told my chief about it, he read me the riot act. I went home and cried. I won't cry where people can see. . . .

"Proceedings could be brought against me, and I'd have to go before the Civil Service Commission. The chance is there that I might be fired, even though being in Playboy doesn't have anything to do with being a good police officer."

She finds the right address, parks and gets out. There is no activity in front of the house, no lights on inside.

"I've been unemployed before," she says. "Really down and out. And I'm still here. The worst that can happen is that I'll wind up on the street again. I know I'll survive."

The large house sits quietly behind a front lawn littered with dandelions. She is a patch of blue on a field of green and yellow. Looking left, then right, she walks up to the door.

" 'I've been a police officer three years. So far, I haven't gotten my ass kicked.' "