The D.C. police department is moving breast-feeding officers from desk jobs to the street, but the officers union says the lactating cops face special difficulties on patrol and great discomfort in wearing their bulletproof vests. The police union and the department are now in the midst of arbitration over the issue after Chief Cathy Lanier refused to back down on a policy shift. In November, Lanier issued a new directive designed to push officers claiming illness who were actually healthy from desk jobs back to working a beat on full duty. But the union says the policy change had another consequence: breast-feeding officers could no longer sit in an office near the equipment and private space they need to pump milk for their babies.
“As far as breast-feeding, we have installed lactation rooms in our facilities and we have a clear policy covering the matter,” Lanier said in a statement to The Washington Examiner. “Our members are able to pump while on full duty.”
Police union chief Kris Baumann said that’s not enough.
“I’m concerned about creating reasonable accommodations for breast-feeding officers,” Baumann told The Examiner. Baumann said he’s not asking the department to require breast-feeding officers to stay behind the desk, but he wants them to have the option.
After the new policy was issued in a November, a group of nursing officers applied to remain on limited duty, documents obtained by The Examiner show. In late January the officers received a reply.
“With this notice you are being provided a copy of the [department’s] Lactation Accommodation Policy,” it read. “The implementation of the accommodations contained within this policy allow for members previously on limited duty to return to full duty.”
The lactation policy effective on Jan. 27, 2011, details nursing officers’ rights to private space for pumping, a new federal requirement. But in its grievance filed with the department over the issue, the union says the policy is “only practical if the female nursing member is working in an office setting, where she is not required to wear body armor.” The policy, the grievance says, fails to recognize the “physiological impact” of tight-fitting armor across officers’ chests, which officers must wear when they’re on the street.
