Manhattan Beach Police Chief Eve Irvine is the fourth female police chief in Los Angeles County history, a statistic she hopes people will ignore.
In the 1980s, Eve Irvine worked the streets.
She wore tight jeans and high heels and teased her thick brown hair – a typical outfit for an undercover prostitute. The tank top under her cardigan was wired, connecting her to a group of back-up officers. Irvine was quite successful in her role, picking up – and later arresting – 20 or 30 ‘johns,’ or men, each night she pounded the pavement.
During the early years of Irvine’s 29-year tenure serving Inglewood Police Department, female officers were commonly put undercover in an effort to combat the city’s problem with prostitution – an idiosyncrasy of being a woman in a male-dominated field.
One man, she recalled, defecated himself upon arrest. Some had drugs, others had guns. Many were married, Irvine recalled.
Another man said, ‘That wasn’t the lady I picked up,’ during her testimony against him in court. “Yes, it was, and you just admitted to picking me up,” she said, triumphantly. “And the case was closed.”
Irvine, a 47-year-old, just over 5 feet tall, with small, stern brown eyes that peek through long lashes, is the first female to serve as the Chief of Police in Manhattan Beach. She oversees a department of 61 people, a role she assumed on June 1 after working every department in Inglewood.
One night undercover, she was stopped by two officers – “Guys I had worked with!” – who didn’t recognize her. “They pulled me over, had me put my hands on the car,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m one of you!’” They didn’t believe her. They lectured her on the city’s problem with prostitution, while patting her down. “I’m on a wire, and I kept saying, ‘Hey guys! Hey guys! Come on out, help me here, any day now. They were in the van, and they were laughing, so I guess that was my rite of passage.”
Caren Lawrence, Irvine’s former partner in Inglewood, said that that was a good thing. “When guys play tricks on you, that means you’re liked,” she said.
Growing up, Irvine couldn’t see herself in a nine-to-five office job – she always wanted to be a police officer. “I wanted to be out in the field,” she said. “I also wanted to get paid the same as my male counterpart, and I knew that in the private industry, that wasn’t happening in early ‘80s.”
Still, the field was male-dominated. In the late ‘80s, 7.6 percent of local police departments nationwide were comprised of female officers, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number of women has since risen to above 10 percent, according to a 2010 report, and is higher among agencies larger than 100 people.
Manhattan Beach Police Department is ahead of the curve with 12 women, or 20 percent. “That’s pretty good, that’s pretty high,” Irvine said, comparing the number to the national average. In Inglewood’s department of 184 members, 23, or 12.5 percent, are female.
Irvine is the fourth female police chief in Los Angeles County. Another is Jacqueline Seabrooks, chief of Inglewood Police Department. She’s been the chief for about four years.
The report found a total of 100,000 women in federal, state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Irvine was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. In 1982, after having moved to Southern California, she became an Inglewood police cadet, a civilian position with nonhazardous duties. When she first moved, she only applied to work for two departments – Inglewood and Manhattan Beach – and was offered a position in Inglewood first. She became a police officer in 1984 and subsequently went through the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Police Academy.
The police academy was a struggle for her, she said, because she didn’t have a military background. She didn’t know how to march, had never shot a gun or used pepper spray. Wearing a uniform and shining her shoes was new. “It was really hard running four, five, six miles, pushups and pull-ups, and academic tests and having somebody just screaming in your face for 18 weeks.”
She worked her way up and eventually served as the first female police captain in Inglewood, a role she served for eight years.
Irvine received her bachelor’s degree in business and management from the University of Redlands in 1997 and her master’s in business administration from the University of La Verne in 2000.
Her aunt, Jan Ogden, influenced Irvine’s path in law enforcement. Ogden is a pioneer in the field – she served as the first female police officer for Hawthorne Police Department in the 1970s, at the peak of the modern feminism movement.
“She broke the glass ceiling,” Irvine said.
“Breaking ground”
In 1973, Irvine’s aunt was required to wear a skirt and pumps, and carry her gun in her purse. “That was my dress uniform at the academy,” Ogden said. “It was ridiculous.”
One day, after having to chase a bank robber in heels, Ogden marched into the chief’s office and told him she refused to continue doing her job in that outfit. “He said, ‘What do you want to wear?’ I said, ‘The same thing guys are wearing,’” she recalled answering. “So I went to the uniform store and purchased some men’s uniforms.” The shirts were so big, her badge fell halfway down her chest.
“They didn’t really know how to deal with my aunt because she was the first,” Irvine said. “She had to get dressed in the closet or something because there really wasn’t a women’s locker room.”
Irvine graduated from the Sheriff’s Academy just over 10 years later, in pants. “It was due to women like my aunt that I was able to become Chief of Police,” she said, adding, “Without them, this would just be a pipe dream to me.”
Later in her career, as more women entered the general work force, Ogden noticed the younger generations of male officers were more accepting of women in their field. “I don’t think women are anywhere near 100 percent accepted, but it’s a lot better than it was when I started,” she said.
Eve Irvine’s husband, Rod Irvine, a police captain at Torrance Police Department, said that into the ‘90s, law enforcement agencies would put on seminars to promote women in policing. In California, his wife frequently spoke on panels before different departments.
Rod Irvine believes women bring different strengths and perspectives to law enforcement. He said women stereotypically make better listeners and can be more empathetic and nurturing. It’s a huge benefit to have women in the department when dealing with sexual assault or domestic violence, or when taking undercover roles, he said.
Eve Irvine disagreed. It depends on an individual’s personality, she said. “If a victim asks for a female, absolutely, but I don’t think that happens very often,” she said, adding, “That would be like me showing up to a radio call and somebody saying, ‘Oh I don’t want a female police officer, I want a male police officer.’ I don’t think that happens very often.”
Women don’t try to act like men when doing their jobs, said Lawrence, Irvine’s former partner. “Rather than going out and trying to do the job like a man, it’s more about strategy,” Lawrence said. Keeping your word, acting quickly, handling your radio calls, bringing one’s own ‘command presence.’ “I can’t stand up there like I’m 6-foot-4 and built like a football giant if I’m 5-foot-6, she said.
Irvine agreed, but with a qualification. “I don’t have the command presence of someone who’s 6-foot-4 and weighs 220 pounds,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m weak. I’ve been in more than one fight.”
On a Christmas day early in Irvine’s career, she and Lawrence got into a fight with a 5-foot-7 man on PCP who was foaming at the mouth and with his obese uncle. “It was a fight to keep my gun,” Lawrence said.
Another time, upon responding to a domestic disturbance call, Irvine was punched in the face. “I was more upset than I was hurt,” Irvine said of the incident. “I just thought, ‘Come on!’ And then the fight was on.” The man subsequently went to jail for assaulting a police officer.
Irvine said she doesn’t want her success to always relate to being a woman. “That novelty hopefully will soon wear off,” she said. “People will just be able to see the good things that I can do regardless of what my gender is.”
And they do. “We hired Eve because she’s a great candidate, who happens to be a woman,” said Councilmember Richard Montgomery.
“She always had a goal”
One day, during Irvine’s early years at Inglewood, a high ranking official in the department asked her about her long-term goals. Irvine said she’d like to make captain of the department.
He scoffed. “The day we have a female captain in Inglewood is the day pigs fly,” she recalled him saying.
Twenty years later, Irvine made captain. A week later, she noticed a flying pig toy at a swap meet. It’s been prominently displayed in her office ever since.
Over the years, when colleagues have asked her about the toy, she’s told them the story. Now she has six flying pigs in her office.
“From the time we were young, she wanted to work every division,” said Lawrence, who describes her relationship with Irvine “like sisters.” “Everything she did with was with the mind of being promoted.”
She worked in patrol, as a field training officer, as a detective on child abuse, sex crimes, robbery, major assaults, and domestic violence, and as a D.A.R.E. officer. “If you work all the areas within the department, then you have a better understanding as a supervisor of how they operate,” Irvine said.
Irvine was hard-working and always focused, Lawrence said. “We used to lead in felony stats,” Lawrence said, about their time as partners. “I don’t know if she thought she’d make chief – that was just the cherry on top of the sundae at the end of the long career,” she said.
Once, Irvine and Lawrence were sitting in a car in plain clothes and a man approached them to sell drugs. After he realized the women were police officers, he ran. “She was holding on to him like a dog holds on to a piece of material,” Lawrence said, describing Irvine’s tenacity. “She wouldn’t let go.”
The two frequently ate chilidogs at the local hot dog stand to “get the scoop,” Lawrence said. One morning during a briefing, officers were presented with a flyer of a man wanted for murder. “LAPD was looking for him, everybody was looking for him,” Irvine said. Irvine and Lawrence looked at each other. They knew exactly who he was and where he would be. The week before, they had stopped him and his friends after they were seen flashing gang signs at cars. “We immediately left the briefing and drove out to the location and said, ‘Hey, can we talk to you for a second?’ and he said, ‘Hey ladies, how’s it going?’ and we put the handcuffs on him,” Irvine said.
They had their fun, too. Once, they decided to have a picnic together. They picked up fried mozzarella sticks from Denny’s, and fried fish from King Fish, a popular fish fry joint in the city. When they got a call to pick up a robbery suspect in custody, they threw the food in the back of the car and were on their way. Upon picking him up, “he smelled the odor in the car and his face squeezed up and he said, ‘Ladies!’” Lawrence recalled. He was accusing them of causing the car’s smell. “We still laugh at that to this day,” Lawrence said.
After handling high profile murder and use-of-force cases during her tenure as a press information officer in Inglewood, Irvine became considered an expert in the area – she was asked to conduct media relations training across the nation. In fact, former Manhattan Beach Chief of Police Rod Uyeda attended her lectures during his tenure at Pasadena Police Department. “When I knew I was going to retire,” Uyeda said, of his position as chief, “she became one of people I thought of highly to be my successor.”
Uyeda recalled seeing Irvine’s name in the media during those high profile cases. “When something bad happens at a police department, the police department comes under intense scrutiny,” Uyeda said, referring to use-of-force cases. “Eve would wind up being the spokesperson for the department. That’s where I saw how well she handled herself,” he said.
She also spoke to different departments on how to handle domestic violence cases, including in Torrance, where her husband works. One particular instance made for some “good comedy,” Rod Irvine said.
The week before the training, the Irvine’s had gone Sea-Dooing. Eve was driving the Sea-Doo when her head snapped back and hit Rod, giving him a black eye. “Here I am, going into his department, talking about domestic violence, and he stands up and he’s going,” Irvine said, imitating him pointing to his eye, “I’m like great, that’s perfect.”
Rod Irvine’s not complaining, though. “It works out for me because I have a built-in expert,” he said.
The couple met in D.A.R.E training a little over two decades ago. Rod, a self-described introvert, was planning to grab dinner alone one night when Eve invited him to dinner with a group of fellow trainees. ‘Hey, why not?’ he thought.
The couple has a 20-year-old daughter and two adult children from Rod Irvine’s previous marriage.
In her new field
The Charlie Saikley Six-Man Tournament is one of the busiest weekends of the year for the Manhattan Beach Police Department. This year it drew an estimated 60,000 people to the Manhattan Beach pier.
“The six-man event is the biggest test I could think of for you as the new police chief,” Councilmember Richard Montgomery recalled telling Irvine before the event.
Irvine attended all three days of the event. At one point, she was overseeing the crowd on Manhattan Beach Boulevard, when a three-person train strutted by – the bathing suit-clad beach-goers lay their hands on the shoulders in front of them.
“Excuse me, I got to get on the train,” Irvine joked to members of her department. The officers laughed.
“Isn’t it cool?” the girl on the end of the train asked Irvine.
“It’s awesome,” Irvine said with a smile.
Councilmember Montgomery observed that she’s approachable to residents and participates in community outreach. “She doesn’t dress in uniform every day, which I believe puts our residents and business people at ease,” he said.
Irvine suits up at least once every couple weeks. One week, for example, for the inaugural Mayor’s Youth Council meeting, an assembly at Robinson Elementary School, and the city’s September 11 commemoration ceremony.
Friends and family say Irvine is highly extroverted and socially adept. She enjoys reading, running, and even playing Bubble Blast and Angry Birds on her iPad. Her husband jokes that during a quick trip to 7-Eleven, “She’ll make a friend forever.”
Rod Irvine’s had the same conversation over and over.
‘You’re name’s Irvine? I know this detective in Inglewood…’ someone will say.
‘Yeah, my wife,’ he’ll respond.
‘Oh! That’s your wife?’
“I could be following a dope case or a rape case – there are people that are going to know Eve,” he said.
She may be charismatic and social, but Irvine is more than able to crack down, her colleagues say.
At the six-man tournament, Irvine arrested a woman for being drunk in public. While driving, she noticed the woman in the middle of Manhattan Beach Boulevard in her own vomit. When the police went to pick her up, the woman urinated.
“She looked up and she said, ‘Oh you’re the chief?’ And she says, ‘I’m so sorry,’” Irvine said, imitating the woman’s sobs, at a community meeting about the tournament. “She still went to jail.”
Officer Hank Crossett of the Manhattan Beach Police Department recalled an incident where Irvine joined him on patrol for about five hours. “She just jumped in like she was one of the guys,” Crossett said.
During the patrol, a call came in about a couple of suspicious individuals.
Crossett always carries an extra pair of gloves with him. “I’ve got a two-year-old little girl at home, the last thing I want to do is get her infected her with something I caught at work,” he explained.
Whereas most people would have stood back, he demonstrated, standing tall with his hands linked in front of his body, Irvine “got right in there and gloved up.”
When Irvine was three months pregnant, before her colleagues knew, she was asked to go undercover and buy drugs. So she pulled on her sweatpants and tucked her gun in the band in front of her belly.
“As I walked up to the location, I remember thinking to myself, ‘OK baby, this better be the only time you buy dope,’” she said.
