Bulletin E-Edition:
more photosFanchon Blake, 88, who moved to Bend in February, played an integral role in breaking the LAPD's glass ceiling in the 1970s. She also served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was the only female recalled to duty during the Korean War, she says.
Photos by Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
A pivotal force
Blake redefined police culture with historic sex-discrimination suit against the LAPD
By David Jasper / The Bulletin
Published: November 24. 2009 4:00AM PSTFanchon Blake offers a sturdy handshake as she welcomes a visitor to her apartment at Fox Hollow Assisted Living Retirement Community in Bend, where the 88-year-old has lived since February.
In the living room hang several of her oil paintings; their collective quality belies the fact that Blake only took up painting at 75.
Among them is a painting of a small cottage under a giant shade tree, Blake's depiction of White Oak Lodge, in the hills north of Los Angeles.
“I spent three of the happiest years of my life there,” she says. She had no playmates but for her dog and went to a one-room schoolhouse. “And I had the time of my life.”
She and her parents lived there from 1928 to 1930. “I loved them dearly,” she says. She speaks especially proudly of her mother, who ran post offices in Utah and California.
“She was fantastic,” Blake says. “I say she was 100 years ahead; she was actually 200 years ahead of everybody.”
The same, perhaps, could be said of Blake.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1973, Blake “filed a sex-discrimination lawsuit against the LAPD, which, after seven years in the courts, was finally resolved in 1980. The department then agreed to two historic consent decrees, vowing to increase the number of women on the force until 20 percent of sworn officers are female. And it pledged to increase minority representation to equal the minority representation in the Los Angeles work force.”
Blake, who's writing a memoir about her life, says she joined the U.S. Army in 1941 and stayed until 1947, “when I got married for the second time, which lasted six months. That put me out into the world to understand that I had to take care of myself.”
After being discharged, she worked briefly as a service clerk, then learned the LAPD was hiring.
“When I saw that, I went for it. And I made it,” she says. She went to work for the LAPD in 1948.
There were women on the force already, but not many.
As for the reception men gave her and the other new recruits, Blake says this: “The Victorian era did not stop at the change of the 1900s ... the men got an attitude about women that we were second-class citizens. That's the only way I can describe it to you.
“When I first went on LAPD, we were not allowed to promote beyond sergeant,” she recalls. “But you've got to understand that both the male and the female species was going through this same transformation together.”
That transformation was the late 1960s and early '70s. “That's when the advocates began to surface,” she says, citing Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem “and all those wonderful women who came out and started us thinking differently. I'd say from 1963 to 1973 we were trying to get organized and take care of ourselves.
“I had been very active in the Police Women's Association, and so you can bet your bottom dollar that life was not pleasant for me. Because I was the one who would speak up,” she said. In 1969, after some 20 years with the department, Blake began chomping at the bit for a promotion from detective sergeant to the next level, lieutenant.
She took her complaints to the City Council and the Police Commission. When that failed to spark change, she went through the courts, filing a lawsuit accusing the LAPD of sex discrimination.
“I filed the case in 1973 and it wasn't cleared up until 1980, when we won it,” she says.
The L.A. Times reported that the city of Los Angeles agreed to pay $2 million for recruiting and training of women and minorities. The money also provided “monetary relief” for Blake, who received $50,000, as well as other women on the force, who received anywhere from $2,000 to $12,000, depending on length of service.
During the time of her lawsuit, she says she fell in love with the newspaper, “because they were on it like a rooster going out to crow,” she laughs.
Health issues would curtail her remaining time with the LAPD, but while she was there, it “was like walking through hell. They moved me out of Investigations and put me back on the desk.”
Asked for specific instances in which she was punished or harassed, Blake replies, “They were just nasty.” Later in the interview she says, “They did things like tail me and scared the hell out of me, because I had a family and so forth, and I didn't know what they would do.
“They tapped my phone,” she says. “I wasn't stupid. I was an investigator, (but) I couldn't prove very much of it.”
Her supervisor “got caught in all this because he was my lieutenant. He came to me and he said, ‘You are not to leave this room unless I give you permission to leave,'” she says. “They wanted me right under their thumb.”
She stood up for herself, though, telling him, “‘Do yourself a favor and call your boss and find out what has happened. Because, since I filed that case, I now belong to the Attorney General of the United States, and I'm not going to take any garbage from you guys.'”
After he made that call, she told him, “‘I will not give you any trouble,'” she recalls. “‘You assign me to any police duty. I will always say “OK.”'”
Later on during 1973, Blake suffered a stroke. She retired in December of that year and went on to security work at Los Angeles Air Force Base El Segundo.
“But I wasn't doing too hot, and I just stepped out of going to work,” she says.
She then moved to the Northwest and lived for a time at an artist's colony in Bellevue, Wash. She lived in Eugene for the last 10 years before moving in February to Bend, where her niece Shelley Maurice-Maier lives.
Her work for women and minorities hasn't been forgotten, nor would she let people forget. “Every time somebody got promoted on the department that I heard about, I'd call them up and say, ‘Congratulations. You did your part,'” Blake says.
In addition to her paintings, there's a raft of framed articles on her wall from the likes of the Eugene Register-Guard along with plaques from various organizations. The handcuffs she used in service are displayed in a shadowbox on the wall.
“I wasn't doing very good when I came here to Fox Hollow (Assisted Living Retirement Community). ... When I look back on it now, I was really on my way to say goodbye to Mother Earth. You haven't lived till you've been to la-la land,” she says. She recently had shoulder surgery and raises her arm in the air like an eager student. Other medical issues are being resolved.
Her grown son is 50 and recently retired from the California Department of Forestry: She calls him “the light of my life.”
“I have one granddaughter, period. I wish I had more.
“She's in her 20s and finding her way in the horse world,” Blake says proudly. “Everybody should have a goal.
“I had ambitions. I would have loved to have been the chief of police. And when I was in the Army, I would have loved to have been a general,” Blake says. “But I have to tell you that my mission in life turned out I was going to be an advocate.”
David Jasper can be reached at 541-383-0349 or djasper@bendbulletin.com.
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