Meet the trailblazing woman serving as Rochester’s first female police captain

For the first time in Rochester’s 171-year history, a woman has been promoted to the rank of police captain.

Capt. Jennifer Hodgman, a 21-year veteran of the force, will oversee Rochester Police Department‘s Community Services Division, the department announced this month.

We recently sat down with Hodgman, a self-described hockey mom of two, to learn how she rose up the ranks in a field where only 3% of executives nationally are women. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: As a young girl, did you know you wanted to get into law enforcement?

A: No, not at all. A lot of people in my family are medical professionals. And so that was just kind of the natural progression as I was going to go to school to be a nurse, which is what a lot of people do around here.

And I got into nursing school, I became an EMT and went to Winona State [University] and just figured out that I really didn’t like a lot of the gross things that medical staff have to deal with. So I switched to criminal justice.

Because I believe in public service and, as a police officer, you really get an opportunity to act with a wide variety of different people at various points of their life. And while we see the majority of people on their worst day, we get to also interact with a lot of just really good people.

Q: You’re the first woman to reach the rank of captain in Rochester history. What gave you the confidence to be the first?

A: I was fortunate enough to have some really good mentors who worked alongside me, and I saw the things that they were doing, and I thought to myself, “Hey, I can do that stuff, too. There’s no reason why I can’t.”

So, I just kept going along with that natural progression of the training I needed to do. For instance, I just recently got back from the FBI National Academy where I spent 10 weeks. That was a dream of mine ever since I got started because it meant that my name gets on a plaque on the wall downtown in the government center, and there were no female graduates from that.

Q: What message does it send to girls out there who may be thinking about a career in law enforcement?

A: Since the announcement, I have had friends commenting, sending me photos with little snippets saying, wow, this is such a great role model for our girls to see that, “hey, you can do this,” right?

With policing, there are gender imbalances. Everyone knows that it’s a predominantly male field. And to show that you can be a female, and you can rise up to some of these different levels as your male peers, I think is fantastic.

I’m constantly showing my daughter that life is about goals, setting goals and working as hard as you can to achieve those goals, and then re-evaluating the goals. And sometimes things happen and we have to kind of change how we’re going to get down that road.

During my career, I’ve put in for [different jobs and promotions]; I haven’t gotten everything. It’s not been like that. Everyone faces adversity at some level in their career. What’s important is how you react to that, because everyone’s always going to watch. And now is my time to shine.

Q: Nationally, about 12% of officers are female. Why is that still so low?

A: I think the times are changing and we are going to start to see more women entering the field. We are getting ready to do hiring this summer and we have a lot of women who are going to be in that hiring pool. So, for me, that’s very exciting.

But it’s difficult to be a female in law enforcement because shift work is hard when you’re a mom and you’ve got kids. Scheduling can be difficult at times. The chief has asked me this, too — I’m the only promoted female in the department, and so he’s asked, “What are the barriers? Where do we need to do better?”

And we have a lot of young females right now who are all in different parts of their lives. Some of them are just getting married. Some of them are just wanting to start families, and it can be hard to make that decision. It can feel like you’re either going to be a really good cop or you’re going to be a really good mom. And it’s difficult to blend those. But it’s something we continue to work on, and we are fortunate to have a forward-thinking chief when it comes to this.

Q: When you’re in public, is there ever a disconnect when you tell people you are in law enforcement?

A: I never really paid attention to it until I was at a different position in my career. But recently when I was in Washington, D.C., for the FBI Academy, my husband and I signed up for a law enforcement tour, which would just be a group of us cops, and a lot of people had their spouses with them.

And a guy asked, “Are you here for the law enforcement tour?” We said yes. And the guy points to my husband and says, “I could see you coming a mile away. I knew you were one of us.” And my husband starts laughing. He’s like, “Actually, my wife’s the cop.”

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