Gail A. Cobb

Gail Adrienne Cobb (August 17, 1950 – September 20, 1974) was a Black American police officer from Washington, D.C., the first female police officer in the United States shot and killed in the line of duty. She was also the first uniformed female officer of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) to have been killed in the line of duty.

Career In October 1973, Cobb applied to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia to become a federal police officer. By that time, the federal government had lowered the mandatory height requirement for police officers to five feet, thus removing a barrier that blocked accepting women as police officers.

Two plainclothes police officers were alerted of the robbery in advance, and saw the two men on the street. The officers stopped them and asked them for identification, before the would-be robbers could even get inside the bank. The two men ran off in separate directions. Cobb, who had graduated from the police academy only six months earlier, was still on probationary duty a block from the bank. Cobb, who was writing a traffic ticket at the time, was told by a citizen that they saw an armed man run into a garage. Cobb followed the suspect and confronted him inside the garage as he was in the process of changing out of his disguise. Cobb ordered the man to place his hands on the wall. As she called for assistance over her radio, the suspect spun around and fired a single gunshot at Cobb at close range. The bullet went through Cobb's wrist, shattering a wristwatch that was given to her by her mother as a birthday present, continued through her police radio, where it then penetrated her heart. Cobb died at the scene at 20th Street and L Street, NW, and responding officers arrested the suspect at the scene.

Funeral

Cobb's funeral was ornate and large. Hundreds of police officers lined the street around the funeral venue, some coming all the way from Hawaii, all standing at attention.