No one said being an Orthodox woman cop would be easy

The Lower Hudson Journal News published a story on Baile Glauber, an Orthodox woman who recently graduated from the Rockland Police Academy.

A newly hired town police officer has been given Friday nights to Saturday evenings off to accommodate her religious beliefs.

The special work schedule afforded Officer Baile J. Glauber has raised concerns among other officers, said Officer Dennis Procter, the department’s Police Benevolent Association president.

“I hope the town is not going to give special treatment to one individual for religious observances and not give other officers the same opportunities,” Procter said. “We all can’t always make temple or church or spend weekends with our families.”

It’s tough to be an Orthodox woman cop. First the fellow officers don’t want you getting special religious treatment. Then the peanut gallery at a popular Orthodox Web site don’t think you’re one of them.

Here are a few of the comments at The Yeshiva World site:

• How can an orthodox let alone an ultra-orthodox woman carry a gun? which I assume a police officer must do? Isn’t it an issur d’oraysa? (the poskim have given only very specfic heterim).
• I would think there were tznius issues here as well. A police person sometimes has to get physical. This doesn’t sound like something a really frum woman should be doing.
• How will she arrest a man? ask her husband to hold him? or she’ll only arrst females?
• A female police officer, by definition, cannot be Orthodox Jewish. She may claim to be Orthodox, like I can claim to be the Pope, but Orthodox it doesn’t make her.
• Did she get an exemption from wearing pants too? Or does tzinius (and other halachas) not apply when inconvenient?

The blogger DovBear offered this response to Glauber’s Orthodox critics:

Everyone following the thread here? If you wish to be absent from work on shabbos, for the sake of keeping the seventh day holy, you still might not be frum enough to win any respect from this crowd.