Paul Bass Photo
As Stephanie Redding resumes control of the police force, she is finishing up a case that’ll make history. It involves honoring a police chief on a wall of portraits.
It doesn’t involve Stephanie Redding’s portrait. At least as far as she’s concerned.
It involves Treadwell Smith’s portrait. Smith was New Haven’s police chief from 1891 – 1897. With the help of former Assistant Chief Roy Brown, Redding got her hands on an old picture of Chief Smith. She ordered a frame. She plans to add it a wall of history outside her office on the third floor of police headquarters — a wall that has framed pictures of 14 men who have run the New Haven department since Treadwell Smith.
Right. Fourteen men.
Stephanie Redding’s picture isn’t on that wall. But she has run the department too. She’s about to again.
As far as Redding’s concerned, she won’t be making history when she steps in as acting police chief at 5 p.m. Friday. Any more than she did in 2008, when she took the same position.
She’s just doing her job, she said: Keeping the department running for a projected month or two until the mayor brings in a new (apparently male) chief from out of town.
Women have broken lots of barriers before her on the New Haven force, Redding noted. From the day she joined the force in 1986, she said, she’s never had trouble rising in the department or working with her colleagues, she said.
She’s baffled by why reporters keep asking her about being a woman in charge.
“I’ve been doing this so long. When I came on, women didn’t drive the [prisoner transport] wagon. There was no woman on the [patrol] horse. There certainly weren’t any women in these offices,” Redding said in an interview, motioning to the third-floor top-management suite where she works at 1 Union Ave. “There are so many women here. I hope we’re past that.”
The force has 78 women on it, she noted. A woman runs internal affairs. A woman co-directs the patrol division. Women run the major crime and special investigations units.
“I’m proud of the women [who have worked here]. I’m glad how far we’ve come,” Redding said. “[But] we’re just seen as everyone else here. It’s not something I think about every day.”
She might not. But other women in the department apparently think about how Redding herself has pushed through last glass ceiling.
Otherwise, an oversized copy of Women: A Celebration Of Strength wouldn’t be standing up, dominating the rest of her desk.
Two civilian department employees, Karizma Schloss and Sarena Huckaby, gave Redding the book the other day. They bought it for her when they heard that Redding was going to serve as acting chief again. They greeted her with it when she showed up at the office. They were proud of her.
The book highlights women trailblazers — in the arts, in politics, in sports, in the legal system — throughout history. She keeps it right in front of her on her desk. She enjoys leafing through it.
“Gloria Steinem,” she read aloud. “Gee, she hadn’t popped in my mind for a while.”
On her way up the career ladder as a cop, Redding has encountered her share of female barrier breakers who don’t make it into the book. They’ve inspired her too.
She recalled when Colleen Smullen became a cop in 1985. They went to West Haven High School together. Their families were friends.
“When Colleen went on the force in West Haven,” Redding recalled, “I said, ‘I can do that.’”
So she did.
Two months ago, Smullen became police chief of West Haven. Yes, the first woman.
Redding remembered encountering Kitty Coleman Lokites when she joined the force. Lokites taught at the training academy. “It was my first days at the academy. There was a black female instructor who was so sharp. I was impressed.”
Once she started on the beat, she got to know Detective Mary Fish in the locker room. “She was a detective. Yet she always took the time to talk to be me. She was never too busy.” When Fish retired, Redding would still call her for advice.
In 1994, Redding made sergeant. She became district manager for the East Shore in 1996. She made lieutenant in 2000. She served as a SWAT negotiator; she was good at it.
She rose to deputy in charge of patrol, then assistant chief. During her ascent, she never felt at a disadvantage, never treated differently, for being female, she said.
When Police Chief James Lewis announced he’d leave town on Feb. 28, Redding did not apply for the job. Her family lives in North Haven. It wasn’t the right time to move into the city (a requirement for the post) and take on that responsibility, she said.
Mayor John DeStefano said he has whittled down the list of finalists to serve as the next chief. But it will take at least through March to complete a background check and then have the winner finish up at his old job, the mayor said.
Redding said she’s ready to hold the reins. When she did last time, for four months before Lewis’s arrival, the department was in disarray. Yet everyone “stepped up to the plate” and helped the department run smoothly, she said. The department’s in much better shape now. She expects her colleagues to step up again, she said.
She will remain at her desk rather than move temporarily into the chief’s quarters. She’s happy where she is, she said. No plans to wear the chief’s badge, either.
She does have history to attend to. She serves on the department’s history committee. She’s been pouring through cartons of old documents and photos dating back more than a century. The department’s 150th anniversary comes next year; she’s working on a commemoration.
And she’s working on that wall of police chief photos.
Besides Treadwall Smith’s picture, she has found another shot of Philip T. Smith. He was the department’s Cal Ripken: He ran the force nonstop from 1912 to 1943. His photo on the wall looks a bit worn and crumbled. Redding’s about to replace it.
Word has it that plans are afoot to add a female chief’s photo to that wall of history.
Redding said she knows nothing about that.
“We don’t want to talk about me,” she said. “I’m boring.”
Redding, who’s 47, was asked if she could imagine her photo going up there one day — as the department’s permanent chief.
She didn’t have an answer. But she did have a prediction.
“Some day,” she said, “we’ll have no more firsts.”