Gail 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.

Gail Cobb was born in Washington, D.C., on August 17, 1950, the second of five children, and grew up living in a row house near the intersection of 14th and D Streets in Northeast, Washington, D.C. Cobb's family moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1930s.

Her father was Clinton Cobb, a correctional Captain for the District of Columbia who applied to the Metropolitan Police Department ("MPDC") in 1953.

He was rejected because he was shorter than the mandatory height requirement of 5 ft tall.

Cobb's mother, Gloria Cobb, worked as a crossing guard at Kingsman Elementary School when she met Cobb's father at Cardoza High School.

Cobb's sister, Denise, became a schoolteacher.

As a child, Cobb attended Catholic elementary school and was described as an average, but creative and energetic student.

Then, she attended Elliot Jr. High School, Eastern High School, and the now-defunct St. Cecilia's Academy.

Upon graduating St. Cecila's Academy in 1969, Cobb wanted to become a successful fashion designer.

However, she had little means and knowledge on how to go about doing so and ended up becoming a long-distance operator at the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.

At the age of 19 yrs old, Cobb gave birth to a son, Damon Demetrius Cobb, on February 26, 1970.

Her son's father, whom Cobb had met and dated in high school, took no responsibility as a father.

Cobb raised their son as a single parent.

In October 1973, Cobb applied to MPDC to become a federal police officer, much to the surprise of her family and friends.

She graduated with her 34-member Metropolitan Police Academy Class in April 1974, of which 13 police cadets were women.

At the time, it was the largest graduating class of female police officers in the United States.

Gail Cobb was well-liked by her trainers, who noted she was hard-working and committed to serving her community.

She spent most of her patrol work on foot and volunteered for police training to get a motorcycle license, in addition to taking night classes to learn sign language.

Late in the morning of Friday, September 20, 1974, around 10:30 am, two men, John Curtis Dortch, a 29-year-old Howard University graduate and former U.S. Army soldier from Silver Spring, Maryland, and John William Bryant, a 24-year-old man from Washington, D.C., began making their way to the Eastern Liberty Federal Savings and Loan bank at 21st and L Streets NW, disguised as construction workers, and each carrying a loaded sawed-off shotgun and handgun.

They intended to rob the bank.

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 was still on probationary duty six months out of the academy and was assigned to foot patrol duty downtown, a block away 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.

Gail Cobb served in Washington, D.C., the Nation's Capital, as a uniformed federal police officer of the Metropolitan Police Department for less than one year.

She was the first female MPDC officer to be killed in the line of duty, as well as the first African American female law enforcement officer to be killed in the line of duty in the United States.

She is survived by her son, Damon Demetrius Cobb, and is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland, near the border between Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Maryland.

Cobb's funeral was ornate and large, even by Washington, D.C.'s standards.

The streets leading to Holy Comforter Catholic Church in Southeast, Washington, D.C., were lined with hundreds of police officers, some coming all the way from Hawaii, all standing at attention.

(MPDC became a non-federal local police department in late 1987) 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.

Gail Cobb was five feet tall.

Damon Demetrius Cobb is currently serving a life sentence in prison at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, after being found guilty of first-degree murder in a 1992 killing.

Cobb's parents stated in 1996, they believe his mother's murder (when Damon was 4 yrs. old) deeply influenced his life and led to his current legal predicament.