Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Who made history first?

Metro Police have a new mystery to solve, but at least the gumshoes won't have to go far to investigate.

The department has long assumed that Las Vegas' first policewoman was Annabelle Plunkett, who served from 1945 to 1973.

But when Lauraine Z. Painter died last month at age 90, her family claimed she was the town's first female cop.

While there is little more at stake than bragging rights and historical accuracy, this is one cold case that Lt. Dennis Larsen wants to solve.

Larsen is the department's de facto historian, one of just five officers still around from when the Las Vegas Police Department and Clark County sheriff's office merged in 1973 to form Metro.

To determine which woman was the first female officer, Larsen said, he will pull records from storage, interview retired cops from the 1940s and relatives of Plunkett and Painter.

The Sun's research found that both Painter and Plunkett were on the force in the mid-1940s but their roles were not well defined in news stories of that era.

"This is open to interpretation," said Nevada Museum and Historical Society historian David Millman, noting that there apparently was a fine line between clerk and cop when it came to women on the force around World War II.

According to a Nov. 15, 1944, Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal story, Painter joined the police force as a clerk, replacing a woman named Sue Morris.

A story in the March 6, 1945, edition, about an FBI training course at Las Vegas High School, made reference to "a feminine trainee Mrs. Lauraine Painter, clerk and policewoman of the Las Vegas department."

And Painter's family has a newspaper clipping with a hand-written date of March 10, 1945, which said Painter was "recently raised from status of clerk to policewoman."

"To date, she has not had any very vicious characters to deal with ... and has not been compelled to use judo or similar tactics," the clipping said, noting that one of Painter's duties was to frisk female suspects.

Plunkett, on the other hand, made the news in the Jan. 19, 1948, issue of the Evening Review-Journal. A story announced Plunkett's appointment as the department's first "official" policewoman - without explaining what "official" meant.

Painter, in her own writings, makes a strong argument that her role as a policewoman was as official as it gets - and that Plunkett followed in her footsteps.

"I was a policewoman," Painter wrote on the back of an 8-by-10-inch photo of the city's police force in the mid-1940s. The photograph, which was not specifically dated, showed Painter standing next to her friend, Plunkett - among uniformed male officers and standing away from other women.

"I had a gun and a badge (but) no uniform. I received patrolman's wages ($150 a month)," the notation read. On the back of a photo of Annabelle Plunkett that also came from the Painter family archives, Painter wrote that Plunkett "took over my job as policewoman when I went to (work for) attorneys for more pay."

Painter left the force in 1945 to work for three years at a local law firm, her family said in a recent interview.

In the vernacular of their time, brunette Annabelle Plunkett and blond Lauraine Painter were, by all accounts, a pair of feisty dames.

In one newspaper account, Plunkett was described as packing a wicked right cross and being handy with firearms.

Painter, who in her prime was 5 feet 4 inches and weighed 120 pounds, often told stories of her cop exploits that included arresting a vagrant for shoplifting a lemon from a downtown market and taking him to the city jail, where he died that night from a cold.

After Painter died on Dec. 2 of a heart ailment, her family sent a letter to retiring Sheriff Bill Young, inviting him to the funeral of the town's first female police officer.

The department sent flowers to Painter's Dec. 8 graveside services at Woodlawn Cemetery and assigned Larsen to check into the claim that, if true, would change whom the department for several decades has touted as its first woman police officer.

Larsen believes one reason for the discrepancy is that Plunkett was with the department for 26 years, while Painter left after just two years and was simply forgotten.

"You tend to think that because Annabelle was so well known and was here for so long, she had to be the first," said Larsen, a resident since 1960 who during his early years on the force worked with Plunkett.

Plunkett retired in 1973, and little is known of her later years.

According to Social Security records, Plunkett died on July 27, 1989, at age 63. The death certificate was issued in Nevada. The Sun was unable to find any of her family.

Born in Elko, Plunkett came to Las Vegas as a 10-year-old. By her 20th birthday in 1945, she had become a police clerk/stenographer, and then a part-time policewoman. Records indicate she did not receive formal police training until 1955, when the department's juvenile division was founded.

Larsen said it was common for early policewomen to be assigned to juvenile or communications and that the first patrolwomen were not deployed to Las Vegas streets until the mid-1970s.

"Policewomen are given no opportunity for advancement," Plunkett, a mother of two, told the Sun in a Sept. 26, 1971, article.

Plunkett said she resented that no woman had ever been invited to take the sergeant's test, while experienced male officers routinely were invited to take promotional exams.

Plunkett maintained that women were more than qualified to serve as desk sergeants or as sergeants in the juvenile, communications and jail divisions.

In 1968 the Breakfast Exchange Club of Las Vegas named Plunkett Police Officer of the Year, citing her "outstanding record of striving for the betterment of all police officers."

Painter joined the police force after working as an insurance secretary at the BMI plant in Henderson.

She quit working in 1948 to start a family with her husband, carpenter Edwin Painter, a veteran of the battle of Iwo Jima whom she married prior to World War II. The Painters also had two children, both born in Las Vegas. Edwin Painter died in 1985.

James Edwin Painter, the couple's older child, said he had no intention of opening a can of worms when he informed Metro his mom was the first local woman officer. But he believes the record needs to be set straight.

"We have a terrible sense of our history in Las Vegas," said Painter, a Las Vegas Hilton stagehand.

"If Mom had known that Metro had determined that Annabelle Plunkett was the first woman police officer, she may or may not have made a fuss about it. Our family has always accepted that Mom was the first local woman police officer. If she was, she deserves to be recognized for it."

Lauraine Painter's daughter, Anne Bove, a real estate investor, said the issue "is about my mother's legacy."

"Being the first woman officer meant she was more than just a mom and a homemaker," Bove said. "It was a neat thing to be a woman police officer in that time. She set the standard for women on the force today."

Metro's roster at the end of 2006 showed 209 policewomen and 166 female corrections officers, including 39 sergeants, seven lieutenants and four captains. After the new year, one woman was promoted to deputy chief, Metro spokesman Officer Martin Wright said.

Larsen said an exhibit at a new police museum at City Hall will pay tribute to Painter, Plunkett and all women officers, regardless of whether it can be determined who the first one was.

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