TAMPA, Fla. — Donna Lusczynski got here to Tampa more than three many years in the past to grow to be a marine biologist. Instead, life took her in a really completely different route.
“Happened to meet some law enforcement officers and became interested in school,” she remembered. “I immediately got hooked and changed my major.”
After she graduated from the University of Tampa, she took a job with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in 1991. She advanced through the ranks and hung out engaged on avenue crimes, narcotics, vice, and inner affairs. In 2018, she grew to become Chief Deputy of the division.
After a more than 30-year span, Luczynski stated she’s satisfied that regulation enforcement is not a “good ole boys club” as more and more feminine position fashions take positions in departments just like the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’m very fortunate to be in my position as chief deputy, but we have female colonels, we have female staff members in every type of position within our office,” she stated.
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However, Luczynski stated the sheriff’s workplace has more work to do.
From 6 p.m. to eight p.m. on Tuesday, she’ll host a recruiting occasion looking for out more women who’re occupied with regulation enforcement careers.
The occasion will occur on the Falkenburg Road Jail Assembly Room at 520 N. Falkenburg Rd. in Tampa.
“We’d like females old, young, all types of diversity,” Luczynski stated. “We want to make sure our organization reflects the community we serve.”
According to a 2019 report by the National Institute of Justice, throughout the nation, “the percentage of women in law enforcement has remained relatively stagnant for the past few decades.”
According to the report, women symbolize lower than 13% of whole officers “and a much smaller proportion of leadership positions.”
The report concludes that there’s little or no verifiable analysis on the best way to improve these numbers, enhance recruitment efforts, and enhance retention and promotion of “exceptional women officers.”
A separate 2016 report, written by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, discovered that — throughout the nation’s sheriffs’ places of work — females represented only one out of each seven workers. Also, about one in eight “first-line supervisors” have been feminine.
According to data maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has a greater illustration of women inside its ranks.
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According to the FDLE’s Criminal Justice Agency Profile Report 2021, women symbolize about 21% of the sheriff’s workplace’s regulation enforcement workers and 25% of its corrections workers.
Lusczynski, nonetheless, stated there’s all the time room for more throughout the division and career as a complete.
“We are really committed to it, and we’re really prioritizing it,” she stated.