CHESAPEAKE, Va. — In honor of Women's History Month, the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office has an initiative to retain more females in law enforcement.
Several female deputies with the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office are learning defensive training tactics.
Chesapeake Sheriff Dave Rosado says their goal is to increase the number of female deputies, teaching defensive training to new deputy recruits.
"It’s beneficial to have women instructors. It’s a male-dominated field. So it’s intimidating going into this training session," Sheena Gregory, a Chesapeake Sheriff's deputy said.
Gregory has been with the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office for 10 years. She's training to become a defensive tactic instructor.
"Having females there to help new female recruits get through is beneficial," Gregory said.
All 13 female deputies in the class learned defense training tactics while going through drills and scenarios with instructors. Some of the deputies were put in a scenario where they were being robbed with a fake gun put to their head. They had to physically defend their way out of the situation.
The Chesapeake Sheriff's Office has 109 female deputies, which Sheriff Rosado says makes up nearly 30 percent of their force.
"The focus of this class is to graduate as many female instructors so we can be aligned with [the] 30/30 initiative: to have 30 percent of females in law enforcement by 2030," Rosado said.
Rosado says they've made an effort to get more female instructors involved with the initiative.
"There was a lack of female instructors, so this class was put on to increase our number of female instructors," Rosado said.
