Pia Kinney-James was the First Black Female Madison Police Officer: The Dance of Integration
Above: Officer Pia Kinney-James; Below: Pia with her brother Officer Bart Kinney at Pia’s retirement party.
Part 3 of 3
by Jonathan Gramling
Pia Kinney-James, the first African American female to serve as an officer in the Madison Police Department, is a home-grown Madisonian whose life is a microcosm of the Black experience in the Madison area. When she joined the department in 1975, Kinney-James was driven by a desire to care for her children and to try to change the Madison Police Department from within. And there was a lot of change to be made from the perspective of being a woman as well as being African American.
“The women were going through crap big time because we were told we weren’t strong enough,” Kinney-James said. “Some of the officers’ wives were jealous and mad because we were riding with their husbands on the night shift. There was crap about that. The women got hassled as much as the Blacks in different ways. And so that organization — I’m still a charter member — became the Wisconsin Association of Women Police for the same thing: support, networking, training. Women couldn’t get the training similar to men. They couldn’t go to the training that the guys went to. This was happening to us as uniform officers as well and throughout the state. We’re now a state organization trying to do the same things: mentor, recruit, retain. Here we are 49 years later dealing with the same stuff that was happening when I was hired.”
Kinney-James became a crime scene investigator and was a good one, in part due to her prior training as a nurse. But even though she was qualified and had put in her time, she still had to prove herself on a different level than anyone else entering a new position.
“My first crime scene was a student who had shot himself in the head,” Kinney-James said. “It was my job to go in and be primary. My sergeant came along with me to see if I was doing the right thing. I had had my training and I had worked with other investigators. There was blood all over the place and he had been there a while
o it was smelly and he was deteriorating. He was still sitting in a chair with his shotgun between his legs. He just sat there and pulled the trigger. I was looking and we had to take photographs. We had to do a lot of things before we actually move in. My sergeant basically pushed me in. He wanted to put my face face-to-face with this guy, this rotting guy. And I turned to him — this is the first time that I could have been written up for insubordination — and took his hand off the back of my neck and shoulder. I said, ‘I’ve got this.’ That was my confidence. I said that I knew how to do it. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t need him to push me into it. And you’re always supposed to take your time. Don’t rush into anything and make decisions and move stuff. Take your time! He was trying to rush me. And I was letting him know that I had it.”
It was a complex environment for Kinney-James. While the police officers depended on each other to get the job done — and to protect each other — there were also barriers, sometimes invisible, that Kinney-James and other women and people of color had to fight through. One of them was double standards.
“I convinced my brother Bart Kinney to join the police department,” Kinney-James said. “That was a very exciting moment for me. We were the first sister-brother team. We lasted 25 years together before I retired. When I was hired, they always talked about someone who could be related to someone. Well I found out that half of the police department had uncles, grandfathers and brothers who were in the department. But yet when a person of color came, they were like, ‘Oh, this is nepotism if they hire both of you.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute. You’ve got three generations of people here. How can you say it is nepotism?’ Bart and I were very proud of that. It was years later when another sister-brother team came. I also asked my brother to be my partner in my retirement ceremony just because I thought it was a novelty to have both of us in the police department for 25 years and he was my kid brother.”
While Kinney-James received support — support that often came undercover because of the racial environment in the department — she had to fight through the barriers of being a woman as well as African American.
“The women were going through crap big time because we were told we weren’t strong enough,” Kinney-James said. “Some of the officers’ wives were jealous and mad because we were riding with their husbands on the night shift. There was crap about that. The women got hassled as much as the Blacks in different ways. And so that organization — I’m still a charter member — became the Wisconsin Association of Women Police for the same thing: support, networking, training. Women couldn’t get the training similar to men. They couldn’t go to the training that the guys went to. This was happening to us as uniform officers as well and throughout the state. We’re now a state organization trying to do the same things: mentor, recruit, retain. Here we are 49 years later dealing with the same stuff that was happening when I was hired.”
Kinney-James became a crime scene investigator and was a good one, in part due to her prior training as a nurse. But even though she was qualified and had put in her time, she still had to prove herself on a different level than anyone else entering a new position.
“My first crime scene was a student who had shot himself in the head,” Kinney-James said. “It was my job to go in and be primary. My sergeant came along with me to see if I was doing the right thing. I had had my training and I had worked with other investigators. There was blood all over the place and he had been there a while, so it was smelly and he was deteriorating. He was still sitting in a chair with his shotgun between his legs. He just sat there and pulled the trigger. I was looking and we had to take photographs. We had to do a lot of things before we actually move in. My sergeant basically pushed me in. He wanted to put my face face-to-face with this guy, this rotting guy. And I turned to him — this is the first time that I could have been written up for insubordination — and took his hand off the back of my neck and shoulder. I said, ‘I’ve got this.’ That was my confidence. I said that I knew how to do it. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t need him to push me into it. And you’re always supposed to take your time. Don’t rush into anything and make decisions and move stuff. Take your time! He was trying to rush me. And I was letting him know that I had it.”
And Kinney-James was good at what she did in spite of the micro-aggressions.
“After a couple of years working in the investigative-crime scene unit, an experienced investigator said to me, ‘Pia, I have to tell you something,’” Kinney-James said. “’I was one of those people who didn’t think you would be good here.’ They only had two other female investigators. We were new and I get that. He said, ‘I didn’t think you would be able to make it. And I was one of the ones who complained about you.’ I said, ‘Wow, I’m glad you are telling me.’ And he said, ‘But I have to say that you are the best investigator I’ve ever worked with and I’m glad you are in our unit.’ That was a great pat on the back because we used to call him ‘The Professor’ because he knew so much stuff and he would teach everyone. That was a great pat on the back for me. I knew I was accepted by him and some of his cronies.”
On some levels, Kinney-James was on an island. While one of the reasons she joined the department to promote change from within, especially as it related to African Americans, there were some who she grew up with in South Madison who treated her as if she went over to the other side.
“I was fighting to prove myself all the time for 29 years,” Kinney-James said. “All the time. There were some who accepted me. There are still people who were like, ‘Hmm, I don’t know.’ I did get accommodations. The public did accept me. My Black people turned against me when I first started. And later on, they did not. They thought I was a traitor and an Oreo. I got called all kinds of names going into law enforcement. ‘How could you do that?’ But later on when they knew I was there fighting for them and with them and if they saw me on a call, they would say, ‘Hallelujah, it’s a Black person.’ But for a few years, they didn’t accept me. It was interesting to be in the midst of that, knowing that most people didn’t like you. And even nowadays, people get really uneasy when I am around. I’ve been retired for 19 years and I still have people go, ‘Oh, there she is. She’s going to be collecting information. She’s watching. She’s looking for someone.’ ‘No, I’m not. I’m a citizen.’ I’ve been on that side. I know how people don’t like police officers. They don’t trust police officers. I have had to accept that. I’ve had to get used to it.”
The Black officers — and also the women — learned that they needed to band together for support and to call out the inequities where they found them.
“My relationships with my fellow officers were complex,” Kinney-James said. “There were two groups that we formed in the late 1970s-early 1980s. One was the African American group. We called ourselves ‘LEOMA,’ which was Law Enforcement Officers Minority Affairs to support each other, to recruit more, to retain what we had and then encourage promotions. There were Black officers who left because they couldn’t get promoted. Most white officers were promoted 5-10 years after hiring. And we couldn’t get promoted for whatever reason. And some of those officers left and went to other departments and became sergeants within a couple of years. It wasn’t like they didn’t have those skills. With that organization or committee, we were there to support each other.”
In spite of the difficulties that she had to overcome, Kinney-James is grateful foir the opportunity to serve. It gave her the salary and benefits she needed to raise her children.
“My kids all went to college, which was a goal for me,” Kinney-James said. “I ended up finishing my schooling too later. But that is an accomplishment starting out as a single mom. I was a child mom and then a single mom and an African American woman. I think those are accomplishments that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t put my foot forward.”
By putting her foot forward — and serving with excellence — Pia Kinney-James paved the way for the women and African Americans who came behind her. It was time well-served.
