Excerpts from an oral hisory of

Senior Commander
Deborah Gilbreath Montgomery

Part I - Testing To Be Hired

Hi, I am Debbie Montgomery [1]. In 1975 there was an injunction that [Judge] Miles Lord had put on the Saint Paul Police Department in 1971. It had been filed by the NAACP, so it was specifically about hiring African Americans. At that time the percentage of population in the City was 4% or 6% African Americans, but they only had four or six African Americans on the whole Police Department. So [Judge] Miles Lord in his injunction said, you have to have that percentage of African Americans on the department. For four years the Union held up hiring. And, then in 1975 they said it was a life safety issue and so they posted fifty new police officers, of which Miles Lord said ten had to be African American.

Ron Jones who was an EEO officer for the City of Saint Paul at that time, he came to me and said “Debbie, I need you to take this test,” he said, “you’re the only woman I know that can pass it, and if you can’t pass it then I’m going to challenge them to say it’s discriminatory against women.” He says, “You know, we’re fighting for African American, but they don’t have any women on the job neither.” I wasn’t going to take the test and he’s begging me and begging me, so I went ahead and said, “Okay, I’ll take the test.”

I didn’t want to be a police officer. In 1975 I had worked for the city since 1968, I had a masters degree and had held several positions. Then I was administrative assistant to Larry Cohen. To be a police officer was a $10,000 cut in pay, so, I said, this is a no-brainer. I didn’t want that job.

2,000 people signed up to take the test, 450 of them were women. We went through the written test and then we got to the physical agility, I was the only woman out of 450 women that passed the physical agility test. They had a huge number of men that had passed it.

Back in 1975 and probably today, there was seven parts to the test to become a police officer. You had to take a Civil Service exam, and then you had to take a physical agility test a psychological exam, a medical exam, a demonstration school, and you had to shoot a gun. They show you gory pictures in the demonstration school to see how you’d react seeing somebody that was cut up or shot to see if you were going to be able to handle it, because you’re the first person on the scene, so they wanted to see that.

In the demonstration school we had to use a gun. They didn’t teach us, they gave us a gun and they’d give you a simulation to see whether you’d shoot or not shoot in an appropriate time. My scenario was I went into the dark room, a door would open up and somebody came through the door. Mine had a guy like the janitor and he had a broom in his hand. They’d look to see how long it took you to make the determination and then whether or not you shot or not. Some others came through the door with a gun in their hand and then they’d want you to shoot.

When they did mine, on my psychological, the psychologist didn’t rate me high because he thought that I wouldn’t shoot. But remember I didn’t have to because the guy in my scenario had the broom. But when he wrote me up, on his evaluation he said that he didn’t think I would shoot.

When I went into the after evaluation, he pushed me on whether or not I was going to shoot somebody, and they kept pushing you and pushing you and pushing you. I was twenty-nine and a-half years old, I had four kids, my youngest was two and a-half. So I finally told this guy, I said, “Listen, mister, I don’t know anything about a gun and hopefully I’m going to learn that when I get into academy, but I’m going to come home to my family, so this isn’t an issue if somebody is coming at me with a gun or a knife and it’s my responsibility to make sure I come home, I’m going to use whatever tool is handed to me to take care of that situation.” He ended up signing off on me, but it’s interesting because in my background that was one of the questions on whether or not I would be able to shoot somebody.

So, I went through all the parts of the test and I passed it. Then I wrote a letter and said thank you for the opportunity to take your test, but no thanks I don’t want the job. Because I just took the test to help the city, I didn’t want the $10,000 a year cut in pay, this was a no-brainer.

[1] Deborah L. Montgomery served SPPD beginning September 8, 1975 to July 31, 2003. She became the first Black woman to become a sergeant November 8, 1987, lieutenant May 29, 1998, commander January 1, 2000, and senior commander February 8, 2003. Montgomery was the first female to complete the same academy as male recruits.

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