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Police officer adapts to a new gender
Source: http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=91040&ran=218024
In 1994, Robert Monell under-went surgery to become female and changed his name to Roberta. Six years later, Roberta rejoined the Portsmouth police force and worked her way to detective. PHOTOS BY MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT.
By AMY JETER, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 23, 2005PORTSMOUTH — A light morning in General District Court, and Detective Roberta Monell sits for hours in the same spot, anchored in the corner of a second-row bench.
She wears a mock-turtleneck top and a blazer. Her badge on her belt, her gun, gold studs in her ears, and a short blond wig. She’s waiting to testify about a grand larceny.
Around her, officers buzz in and out, joking with her and grumbling.
In the hallway, one female cop gives Roberta an air-kiss. One lady she doesn’t recognize yells, “Hey, woman!†Another looks her up and down and up again.
Roberta has grown used to looks like that. Not everyone is happy to see her.
She returned to the Portsmouth Police Department in 2000 – six years after becoming a woman and 16 years after working on the force as a man.
She wanted to show everyone that she hadn’t totally changed. She was still the same person in many ways – maybe even a better person now. And if they didn’t buy it, they’d at least have to face her.
“It’s not so much that I wanted to go back to police work,†said Roberta, now 61. “It’s that I wanted to go back to the same exact police department in the same exact job doing the same exact thing as I did as a man. So I could prove that I could do the same exact thing as a woman that I could as a man.â€
Roberta would learn that earning respect is one thing, acceptance, something else.
As a child, Robert Dawson Monell Jr. was a loner. Kind of tough, could even be mean sometimes. He played football and the trumpet at Cradock High School and got into race car driving.
Early on, he had urges to try on his cousin’s dress or have his mother paint his fingernails bright red. It wasn’t hard to figure out that people didn’t like it when a boy did that. He pushed those desires back, deep inside.
He married twice, became a Shriner and worked as a shipyard machinist.
Since graduating from high school, he ha d always thought about being a police officer . Something about protecting the meek and misunderstood, he thought.
The first time he applied, in the late 1960s, Robert couldn’t get on the Portsmouth police force. At 5-foot-6, he was too short.
In 1978, with the height requirements gone, the department hired him.
Robert quickly gained a reputation for thoroughness. His brother David, who worked with him as an auxiliary officer, said Robert would gather and document the information that made the investigator’s and prosecutor’s jobs easier.
Richard Lodge, sergeant of the burglary squad at the time, said Robert “had a good way about him, a good personality, a good rapport with street criminals.â€
He received merit awards, and people such as the sheriff and city manager wrote to the department to commend him for his handling of incidents from a purse-snatching to threats against a General District Court judge.
A newspaper photographer snapped Robert’s picture in the early 1980s, as one of the detectives escorting a man out of a standoff. He looked like Kevin Spacey, grim and tough, with a receding hairline and aviator glasses.
He and his second wife, Flora, bonded with other officers and their wives, and would occasionally go out to dinner with them.
But things changed for Robert in 1984. Portsmouth Police Chief E. Ronald Boone was convicted in U.S. District Court of perjury and fraud and sentenced to four years in prison. The men had been friends.
About that time, Robert was sent down from the detective bureau, back to the streets. It wasn’t the same anymore. He got out of the department.
The next time Robert put on a police uniform, he was a she.
Flora knew all about her husband’s feelings. In private, Robert could experiment with how he dressed; she didn’t care.
Robert felt happy, free, as though he could be himself without being ashamed, if with just one other human being.
Then, in 1993, Flora died of cancer.
Within months, Robert decided it was time to become Roberta. What held him back before – possible embarrassment to his wife – was no longer a factor. And if Flora accepted him, with all of his secrets, maybe the rest of the world would, too.
What followed were months of cross-dressing, electrolysis and hormone injections. There were visits to psychiatrists and lawyers, then breast implants, cosmetic surgery and finally the two-part, seven-hour gender-reassignment operation – all of it costing about $70,000.
Robert thought the transformation would make him feel right when he looked in the mirror. He didn’t think it would solve every problem that plagued him.
But when life got rough, it was rougher than expected. Robert’s position as a Navy shipyard investigator was eliminated around the time he started cross-dressing. After the surgery, Roberta left her job as a machinist after a security officer upset her. She sunk into debt.
What’s more, people were not warming up to her.
Her brother David said it helped that Roberta brought him information about gender dysphoria, which causes people to constantly be anxious about their birth gender.
Still, it was hard to deal with. “It’s kind of a selfish feeling of, ‘I wish he wouldn’t do that,’†David said. “It’s more like, ‘What are people going to think of me?’â€
For the next five years, Roberta worked mostly as a trucker. She applied for dozens of federal government jobs over the Internet, and to one local police department: Portsmouth.
On one hand, she wanted to wait until most of the people she’d worked with before were gone. On the other, she wanted to step right back in.
In March 2000, Roberta received a letter saying the city’s Civil Service Commission had rejected her as an applicant to the P olice D epartment. As was customary, no specific reason was provided .
Roberta hired a lawyer and appealed the decision.
In response, Assistant City Attorney Alfred W. Bates III wrote: “I am not aware of the specific reason why Ms. Monell was disqualified. I can only surmise from certain information uncovered in the background investigation as to why such action ‘may’ have been taken.â€
The commission met in April, and Roberta and her attorney argued her case. Two months later, Roberta was declared eligible for hire.
She felt vindicated, “like that’s the way it should have been from the start.â€
Eventually, Portsmouth offered her a job. Within days, she had another offer, with a salary of thousands more, from the Key West Naval Air Station in Florida.
Roberta’s psychiatrist recommended that she leave town, start anew.
She struggled over the decision.
“I thought maybe they’ll accept somebody who’s a police officer,†she said. “I will prove for once and for all that I’m a human being who will at least get some acceptance.â€
More than 300 transgendered people worldwide work in law enforcement, said Julie Marin, co-founder of an international support group called Transgendered Community Police and Sheriffs.
In some of the best-known cases – in Scotland, Ireland, San Francisco and Philadelphia – the officers announced plans to undergo the sex-change operation after working years on the force.
Roberta’s first hurdle was completing the 16-week police academy as a 56-year-old woman. This time, there seemed to be more running tests, her least favorite, but she got through.
She explained herself to her class. They didn’t seem to care much, she thought. “People are just trying to survive,†Roberta said. “They wouldn’t care if there was a chimpanzee in there.â€
It was different on the job, she said.
At a department meeting, officers were told what to expect and to be careful about what they said. Roberta wasn’t there.
She told officers on her shift during lineup. They seemed OK with it, but others were leery of working with her. Most kept their distance at first.
Roberta knew she had to prove herself.
“Cops, when they’re working with someone on the street, the only thing they expect with you is for you to do your work, and if there’s a problem, you help,†she said.
After a while, the discomfort eased. Her colleagues seemed pleased to see her when she came for back up. She felt less alone.
“When you work with Roberta, if you work with her for a couple of days, you can’t help but warm up to her because she is who she is,†said Robert McDaniel, a property crimes detective. “She’s going to go out there and fight with you when you’re in a fight.â€
People wrote to thank her for how she handled duties ranging from recovering stolen golf clubs to notifying family members of a death.
In December 2003, Roberta’s supervisor recommended her for the detective bureau, commending her dedication, investigative skills and friendly demeanor. She was transferred the next spring.
It took just less than four years – a few months more than it took to reach that position as Robert.
She was counting the time, down to the week. By Roberta’s calculation, she had achieved more, with more commendations, in a shorter time frame, as a woman than as a man.
But for Roberta, there is more to being on the police force than just doing the work.
In the law enforcement community, she has clashed with some, won respect from others and sometimes simply made people uneasy.
Twice, Roberta says, supervisors have recommended that she be disciplined, and in one of those cases, she was suspended without pay briefly for failing to follow policy.
Roberta, too, has filed complaints. She formally questioned the decision process after hearing she may not be named detective, but withdrew the complaint when she was given that designation.
Police Chief Frank J. Kitzerow declined to talk about Detective Monell.
“The chief declines the interview,†said Ann Hope, a department spokeswoman, “because he feels this is not a P olice D epartment issue and is a personal matter.â€
Some officers were also reluctant to talk about her.
“I can’t tell you anything about her. Him,†said Jeffery Whitson, a neighborhood impact officer. “I didn’t think it was weird. I dealt with it. People do weird things.â€
He went on to describe Roberta as a hard worker who takes her job seriously. “She’s not an outcast anymore,†he said. “People pretty much let her do her own thing. Now, she’s well-respected.â€
Those who knew her as Robert and are still working in Portsmouth’s law enforcement community had mixed reactions to the transformation.
“I let him know that I did not have a lot of problems with it because I have a son,†said Jody Davis, a deputy court clerk in Portsmouth’s General District Court. “All I could think of was, if he went through this, how would I react?â€
Ronnie Davis, Jody’s husband and a retired detective, worked in the department when Robert was there and said they vaguely knew each other then. He figured the Robert-Roberta change was none of his business.
“If that’s what he wants, he’s the one that chose it,†said Davis, who is running for sheriff.
He recalled seeing Roberta for the first time in a restaurant.
“I saw an ugly woman,†Davis said. “That’s the truth. I’m not trying to hurt his feelings or nothing like that.â€
Roberta thinks she’s a better officer this time around. She’s older, and life has taught her more.
Plus, she says, living as both genders has helped her understand victims: men fear being physically overpowered, in her observation, while women are afraid of being sexually violated.
“Just the fact that I’ve been both a male and a female gives me more experience than anyone else on the Portsmouth police force,†she said.
These days, Roberta dresses down, mostly. No make up. No fingernail polish. The same as lots of other everyday women, she feels.
But if you ask, Roberta will pull out a snapshot from her attache case. It’s from a party she once attended, and she’s all dolled up, in a black bustier. Her gold-blond wig falls in a soft fringe around her face, and her skin looks translucent.
“I keep that because people don’t believe it’s me,†Roberta said. “They say, no way you can look that good.â€
Outside work, she keeps a quiet life, she says, mostly reading and watching television at home. People don’t invite her out for a beer or to Christmas parties anymore.
Roberta had a roommate for several years, though she now lives alone on her boat. She doesn’t have a lot of good friends but says she doesn’t mind. With new people, Roberta looks for a sign – a smile or a handshake – to know whether she can be comfortable or should keep her distance.
If she dated, she’d be with a woman. But Roberta says she’s not looking for romance. She still carries Flora’s driver’s license in her wallet.
“I know how hard it is for other people to contemplate what I have done,†Roberta said. “I don’t want to impose myself on other people until I’m confident they want a societal relationship with me.â€
Roberta has limited contact with most of her family. When called for this report, her sister said she had no comment.
Her brother David said he ha s gotten used to Roberta. “It’s done,†he said. “It’s not a big deal to me anymore.â€
His wife, Donna, also opened her arms to Roberta, despite some discomfort.
“I still don’t feel close enough to her to say, ‘Let’s go shopping and try on clothes,’†she said. “My biggest concern is being lonely. If something happened and Bobby was terribly ill, I couldn’t turn him away.â€
With her goals in the P olice D epartment mostly accomplished, Roberta thinks more and more about what comes next. She could start collecting retirement now or stay three more years and get more from the state.
When she hangs up her badge, Roberta dreams of traveling out west, to ghost towns and historic places such as Tombstone, Ariz.
She’s certain she’ll be on her own. That’s just the way things are now.
“Everywhere I’ve been, I go by myself, because there’s nobody to go with me,†she said. “People don’t choose to be around me unless they have to.â€
More than a decade after her operation, Roberta now thinks she overestimated people’s ability to accept what is outside the norm .
Nevertheless, she says she regrets nothing about her change. Except, maybe, that she didn’t get to experience life as a younger woman.
“When I look in the mirror in the morning, I’m satisfied with what I see,†she said. “I feel like I’m presenting the world the real me.â€
News researcher Jake Hays contributed to this report.
Reach Amy Jeter at (757) 222-5104 or amy.jeter@pilotonline.com.
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