Exclusive: Health secretary to extend role of watchdog, which backers say helps hold service in England to account

Yvette Cooper has abandoned plans to abolish the NHS’s independent patient champion after an outcry from MPs across the political spectrum.

The health secretary has decided to keep and extend the role of Healthwatch England, which was due to be axed as part of the government’s reorganisation of the health service in England.

axe the Health Services Safety Investigations Body.

end councils’ automatic representation on the boards of ICBs.

remove the requirement for a nurse on every NHS foundation trust board.

• People magazine has awarded 38 men the coveted title of Sexiest Man Alive.
• Mel Gibson was the first to receive the title in 1985. Noah Wyle currently holds the crown.
• Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, and Richard Gere have each been selected twice.

Noah Wyle has been named the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.

People published its inaugural Sexiest Man Alive issue in 1985. Since then, 38 different men have received the title, with four of them being named Sexiest Man Alive twice.

The vast majority of the men on this list are white actors; only five men of color have been selected for People's famous cover. They're joined by a few musicians, one star athlete, and one Kennedy.

Continue reading for a list of every man who's received the title, listed in reverse chronological order.

2026: Noah Wyle

Noah Wyle rose to fame as Dr. John Carter in NBC's medical drama "ER," alongside former Sexiest Man Alive cover star George Clooney.

Wyle was nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series at the Emmys several times in the 1990s, though he never won.

Two decades later, Wyle returned to the world of medical dramas as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch in HBO Max's "The Pitt" — and finally won his first Emmy for outstanding lead actor in 2025. He also won for outstanding drama series as an executive producer.

Wyle, 55, continued his winning streak into 2026, taking home a second consecutive best actor Emmy and the title of Sexiest Man Alive.

"You get into this because you are a natural observer. Then that privacy is immediately taken from you if you get any notoriety," Wyle told People of his acting career. "It could be a hard thing to reconcile. It took me a long time. 'The Pitt' gives me the opportunity to do it differently than I did the first time — with a little bit more presence and a little bit more composure."

2025: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey was an award-winning theater actor when he rose to global stardom as Lord Anthony in Netflix's Regency romance series "Bridgerton."

Bailey has since received an Emmy nomination for his role in the Showtime series "Fellow Travelers," made his big-screen debut in the 2024 musical hit "Wicked," and landed a leading role in the 2025 summer blockbuster "Jurassic World: Rebirth."

Bailey received the Sexiest Man Alive title ahead of the premiere of "Wicked: For Good," in which he reprises his role as Prince Fiyero. He is the first out gay man to grace People's most famous cover.

"It's a huge honor. Obviously, I'm incredibly flattered. And it's completely absurd," Bailey told People.

"When I was really young, I was very confident about who I was, and maybe I lost that as I grew up," he continued. "We're all sort of trying to get back to the origin, aren't we? But I was swimming in the sea about an hour ago with a good gang, and I felt all right in my skin."

2024: John Krasinski

John Krasinski rose to prominence as Jim Halpert on NBC's hit sitcom "The Office," which wrapped its nine-season run in 2013.

Three years later, Krasinski transitioned from supporting roles in rom-coms like "It's Complicated" and "Something Borrowed" to the leading man in Amazon's action series "Jack Ryan."

Krasinski also made his name as a director with 2018's "A Quiet Place," in which he co-starred with his real-life wife, Emily Blunt. The horror movie's rare box-office success led to a sequel in 2020 and a prequel in 2024 starring Lupita Nyong'o.

"I had to pitch the studio like 54 times before they said yes," Krasinski told People. "I'm pretty sure someone said, 'Sorry, is Jim from 'The Office' going to direct this?' And I went, 'Oh, it's John, but we'll get there.'"

2023: Patrick Dempsey

Patrick Dempsey starred as Derek Shepherd, aka "McDreamy," for 11 seasons on "Grey's Anatomy." The role drew a passionate following, including many supporters of his character's will-they-won't-they relationship with Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo.

Although Dempsey had been featured in People's Sexiest Man Alive issue several times before, he didn't take the crown until 2023, eight years after he left the hit show.

"I'm glad it's happening at this point in my life," he told People of the honor. "It's nice to have the recognition, and certainly my ego takes a little bump, but it gives me the platform to use it for something positive."

The actor founded The Dempsey Center to make comprehensive cancer treatment more accessible. He has also starred in beloved movies like "Sweet Home Alabama," "Enchanted," and its 2022 sequel "Disenchanted."

2022: Chris Evans

Chris Evans is best known for playing Captain America in the MCU, although he officially hung up his shield following "Avengers: Endgame" in 2019.

He has also starred in celebrated films like "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "Snowpiercer," and "Knives Out."

"This whole thing is tough to be interviewed about. It feels like a weird form of humble bragging," Evans told People of the honor.

"My mom will be so happy," he added. "She's proud of everything I do but this is something she can really brag about."

2021: Paul Rudd

Paul Rudd's breakthrough role came in 1995, starring opposite Alicia Silverstone in the popular coming-of-age drama "Clueless."

He rose through Hollywood primarily as a comedic actor, starring in films like "Wet Hot American Summer," "Knocked Up," and "Anchorman." He also portrayed prominent recurring characters in beloved TV shows "Friends" and "Parks and Recreation."

More recently, Rudd is widely known for his role as Ant-Man in the MCU, as well as the critically acclaimed Netflix original series "Living With Yourself."

The 52-year-old actor said his wife was "stupefied" when he received People's coveted crown.

"I'm hoping now that I'll finally be invited to some of those sexy dinners with Clooney and Pitt and B Jordan," he told the magazine. "And I figure I'll be on a lot more yachts. I'm excited to expand my yachting life."

He continued: "And I'll probably try to get better at brooding in really soft light. I like to ponder. I think this is going to help me become more inward and mysterious. And I'm looking forward to that."

2020: Michael B. Jordan

Michael B. Jordan is the fifth man of color to receive People's honor.

He first rose to fame playing quarterback Vince Howard on NBC's "Friday Night Lights," but his Hollywood breakthrough came in 2013, when he starred in Ryan Coogler's directorial debut, "Fruitvale Station."

That same year, at the age of 26, he was featured in People's first annual Ones to Watch portfolio. 

He has since starred in major blockbuster films, including the 2015 "Rocky" sequel "Creed" and the MCU's 2018 masterpiece "Black Panther."

Jordan has also made a name for himself as a passionate activist for racial equality, marching in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020.

At 33, he described his Sexiest Man Alive title as "a cool feeling."

"When my grandmother was alive, it was something that she collected, and then my mom naturally reads it a lot and my aunts as well," he told People. "This is one that they're definitely going to have a special place for."

2019: John Legend

John Legend is only the fourth man of color to be chosen and the third-ever musician — all three of whom have starred as coaches on NBC's "The Voice."

At the time of his crowning, the "All Of Me" singer had released five critically acclaimed R&B albums, two of which had been certified platinum. His Sexiest Man Alive title came shortly after the release of "A Legendary Christmas Deluxe," the deluxe edition of his sixth studio album and first Christmas album.

Legend's wife, Chrissy Teigen, had an extremely on-brand reaction to her husband's announcement: "all downhill from here," she tweeted.

"She's proud of me," Legend told his fellow coaches on "The Voice." "You know, she makes fun of me almost all the time, but she hasn't even been snarky about this. She's like legit proud of me. I finally impressed my wife!"

2018: Idris Elba

Idris Elba became the third man of color to be given the honor. He rose to fame for his role as Baltimore drug kingpin Stringer Bell on HBO's "The Wire" in the early 2000s.

The actor also appeared in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe films as the keeper of the Asgardian bridge, Heimdall. There has even been a fan-fueled campaign to crown him as the next James Bond.

"I was like, 'Come on, no way. Really?'" Elba told People about being named Sexiest Man Alive. "Looked in the mirror, I checked myself out. I was like, 'Yeah, you are kind of sexy today.' But to be honest, it was just a nice feeling. It was a nice surprise — an ego boost for sure."

2017: Blake Shelton

Blake Shelton is the second musician ever to be given People's highest honor.

Shelton's selection, however, did not go over well.

One person quipped: "I don't think he's even the sexiest man named Blake Shelton."

Still, Shelton's love life hasn't seemed to suffer since he received the Sexiest Man moniker. He and singer Gwen Stefani wed in 2021.

2016: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Former professional wrestler and current actor Dwayne Johnson became the second man of color to be named Sexiest Man Alive after his celebrated voiceover role in Disney's "Moana."

When he heard of his Sexiest Man title, he told People, "I said, 'That's awesome.' And then what went through my mind was just how cool and exciting it is. And then I thought, 'Wow, we've pretty much reached the pinnacle.' I'm not quite too sure where we go from here. I've done it all, this is it."

2015: David Beckham

Despite being the first and only athlete to be honored with the annual cover, David Beckham told People, "I never feel that I'm an attractive, sexy person."

Beckham's wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, would likely disagree. 

In 2019, the couple's son, Brooklyn Beckham, was also featured in People's Sexiest Man Alive issue. 

2014: Chris Hemsworth

Chris Hemsworth has stolen hearts as Thor throughout Marvel's "The Avengers" franchise, which made him a natural pick for 2014's Sexiest Man Alive after "Thor: The Dark World" hit theaters the year before.

2013: Adam Levine

Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine became the first musician and second non-actor — out of only five total — to grace People's Sexiest Man Alive cover.

Levine made headlines in 2022 after Instagram model Sumner Stroh came forward and said that she'd had an affair with the singer. Stroh said that Levine, in fact, had asked her if he could name his next child with wife Behati Prinsloo "Sumner." 

Levine denied having an affair with Stroh but admitted that he had "crossed the line." 

Prinsloo and Levine welcomed their third child in January 2023. 

2012: Channing Tatum

Channing Tatum nabbed the cover after his star-making turns in "Magic Mike," "The Vow," and "21 Jump Street."

2011: Bradley Cooper

"I think it's really cool that a guy who doesn't look like a model can have this," Bradley Cooper told People after being named Sexiest Man Alive.

"I think I'm a decent-looking guy. Sometimes I can look great, and other times I look horrifying," the "Hangover" star said.

2010: Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds' forthcoming role in "Green Lantern" — and his self-deprecating humor — helped him become the first Canadian Sexiest Man Alive.

"The most difficult part is going to be organically working this title into a conversation with random strangers," he told the magazine.

2009: Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp landed on his second cover on the heels of his role in "Alice in Wonderland."

He has since fallen out of favor with many fans. Depp has been repeatedly accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, a claim that she continues to maintain. He denies it.

2008: Hugh Jackman

Hugh Jackman was named Sexiest Man Alive after his turn as Wolverine in "X-Men: The Last Stand."

2007: Matt Damon

Matt Damon was given the title after his third "Bourne" movie rocked the box office.

2006: George Clooney

George Clooney became the third man, after Brad Pitt and Richard Gere, to win People's honor twice.

2005: Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey scored the cover for People's 20th anniversary of Sexiest Man Alive after he became known for starring in popular romantic comedies, like "The Wedding Planner" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days."

2004: Jude Law

Jude Law scored People's most famous cover in the early 2000s.

"He's the most beautiful man who ever walked the earth — an absolutely perfect oil painting," Naomi Watts told People in 2004.

2003: Johnny Depp

In 2003, Depp had charmed the world as Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

2002: Ben Affleck

The world couldn't stop talking about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in 2002.

"Chicks gravitate to him," Affleck's friend Kevin Smith, a director, told People at the time. "The word on the street is that he's the ideal man, chatty, gorgeous, generous, and intelligent."

2001: Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan was known as James Bond when he landed on People's coveted cover.

2000: Brad Pitt

In 2000, Brad Pitt was already a movie star — but coming off his wedding to Jennifer Aniston and his iconic role in "Fight Club," People decided to bestow Pitt with his second Sexiest Man Alive title.

1999: Richard Gere

When Richard Gere was named the Sexiest Man Alive in 1999, his ex-girlfriend Diane Von Furstenberg spoke glowingly of the decision.

"He walked like a biker, and that attracted me," she told People. "I knew I was going to get my hands on him."

1998: Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford's 1998 cover recognized his role as a blockbuster heartthrob thanks to "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones."

1997: George Clooney

Clooney secured his first Sexiest Man title while portraying the brooding Dr. Doug Ross on "ER."

1996: Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington became the first man of color — and the first of only five total — to grace the Sexiest Man Alive cover.

1995: Brad Pitt

A long-haired Pitt made the 1995 People cover after his much-celebrated starring roles in "Legends of the Fall" and "Interview With the Vampire."

Keanu Reeves was retroactively named 1994's Sexiest Man Alive.

Technically, "John Wick" star Keanu Reeves never starred on People's cover; the magazine didn't select a Sexiest Man Alive in 1994.

But the editorial director retroactively bestowed People's honor on Reeves in 2015.

1993: Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford

In 1993, People forwent the Sexiest Man Alive cover in favor of naming a Sexiest Couple Alive. The magazine chose the newly married couple Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere, who split one year later.

1992: Nick Nolte

In 1992, People explained Nick Nolte's appeal as his being a "big-lug Adonis with the heart of gold."

1991: Patrick Swayze

In 1991, Patrick Swayze had become one of Hollywood's most popular leading men, thanks to "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost." The actor died in 2009.

1990: Tom Cruise

By 1990, Tom Cruise had already starred in a string of blockbusters, including "Top Gun," "Risky Business," "Rain Man," "Cocktail," and "All the Right Moves."

1989: Sean Connery

Sean Connery was 59 when he scored the coveted cover, making him the oldest Sexiest Man Alive to date.

1988: John F. Kennedy Jr.

John F. Kennedy Jr. — known in 1988 as political royalty, but something of a rebel — is one of only two winners to have died in the years since his cover. Kennedy was killed in a plane crash in 1999 with his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette.

1987: Harry Hamlin

Harry Hamlin made the cover during his five-year stint on the NBC legal drama "L.A. Law" as attorney Michael Kuzak.

The "Clash of the Titans" actor is now married to "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Lisa Rinna.

1986: Mark Harmon

Mark Harmon received the second annual honor — largely thanks to his starring roles on two hit shows, "St. Elsewhere" and "Moonlighting."

1985: Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson was named People's first-ever Sexiest Man Alive after his star-making turn in the original "Mad Max" trilogy.

In the years since, Gibson has become a controversial figure thanks to rampant antisemitism, racist rants, and a recording of him making a death threat against his ex-girlfriend.

Ahead of his 2025 inauguration, President Donald Trump named Gibson as one of his ambassadors to Hollywood, tasking them with bringing business back to the film industry.

In Wilbert L. Cooper’s new memoir, The Black Shield, he tells two intertwining stories: the history of the city’s Black Shield Police Association, one of the country’s oldest Black policing organizations, and the multigenerational narrative of his own family, embedded in the police force. Both of his parents and sister are retired Black Cleveland cops, and on his mother’s side, there’s been a Cleveland cop in the family since 1950. In this book about race, policing, and power, Cooper examines the complex duality of the Black cop, what it was like for his parents to navigate an institution that was hostile to their own community, and, ultimately, what this all has meant for him.

This excerpt combines the prologue and a chapter focused on his mother’s beginnings in Cleveland’s police department. Two individuals mentioned spearheaded legal efforts in the 1970s to diversify the department: Fred Johnson, the association’s president who led a lawsuit over the department’s discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, and Jean Clayton, a policewoman and the organization’s secretary whose parallel lawsuit disbanded the segregated Women’s Bureau and integrated women into the department. Below, Cooper recounts how his mother, Gayle, walked through the door that they opened. But it was not without a struggle.

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The gun was always there. I used to see it in flashes as Dad would get ready to leave the house. After he doused himself in spicy cologne and sliced a plastic comb through the waves of his jet-black Jheri curl, I would catch that 9-millimeter sliding between the small of his back and the belted waistband of his blue jeans. 

Mom had her own. She kept it in her purse. One of those big leather bags, the kind they show behind the counter at Dillard’s, with shiny metal clasps and countless compartments. Her gun would be in there with red lipstick, a double-sided compact mirror, and her bulky pager. I knew the gun was there because I sensed its heft whenever I’d have to move the bag off the kitchen table to do my homework. It felt like a bowling ball in a pillowcase.

Dad used to store his 9-millimeter above the fine china, on top of the large, baby-pink Victorian-style cabinet in our dining room. One time while he was sleeping, I climbed on top of the pink-velvet-upholstered chairs to get a good look at it through the scrollwork. When I came face-to-face with the gun, I was too intimidated to actually pick it up and play with it.

It took a few moments for me to work up the gumption to run my little fingers across the raised bumps of its grip. Then I touched the ridges of the slide and the smooth, cold, hard barrel from where bullets burst. And just that alone felt crazy to me. Even in the dusty, mundane space of the cabinet, the stock-still object pulsated with wild energy. It was like petting a tiger.

Even now, it’s overwhelming for me to imagine that all that calamitous potential to take life, to inflict pain, to inspire fear, to demand subservience, to have your way with the world, to finally be the actor instead of the one who is acted upon—was right there and it was theirs.

I was 7 or 8 when I saw Dad shoot that gun. It must have been the summer, because I still remember the heavy outside air kissing my arms and legs, the suburban sunlight beaming on me. I see that light reverberating off the concrete, making vivid every blade of green grass in the yard and every goose-egg stone in the gravel strips. But I cannot hear the gunshot. I cannot tune in to the boom. All I sense is the fear, because it is so foreign. I’m still there. Standing in the driveway. Stuck and dumbfounded. Until Dad’s shouts break through, begging me to run inside before those crackers come back, commanding me to have Mom call the cops.

Have you heard of Pastor Leon McCray? The man of faith who saw two White people dumping a refrigerator on his property. When McCray tried to stop them, the duo threatened him. One of the Whites ran off to grab three more racists. McCray says that’s when they all ganged up on him. That’s when they told him that his “Black life didn’t matter.” The beating didn’t stop until McCray pulled out his gun. When the police showed up at the scene, they handcuffed McCray and put him in the back of the cruiser. His assailants laughed and waved at him as he was taken off.

But at least McCray survived. You know that many of us aren’t so lucky: The police shot and killed the father Philando Castile during a traffic stop after he told them he had a firearm. The police shot and killed the father John Crawford while he was carrying a pellet rifle inside the Walmart that retailed the damn pellet rifle. Police shot Emantic F. Bradford Jr. at a shopping mall while they were responding to a call about gunshots at the mall. Witnesses say they killed Bradford as he was trying to direct shoppers to safety.

These killings now give shape and sharpness to that immense and totalizing fear I felt in the driveway as a child. That American malice is always there anytime we try to commandeer a power that wasn’t intended for us. Black people are killed or incarcerated every day for much less than what Dad did. Simply owning a gun can put a bullseye on your back. Pulling one on a White man can turn you into a hashtag.

So why did Dad want to call 911? I know that he’d tell you it was because his gun was different from Pastor Leon’s. Dad didn’t buy it at Walmart or Bass Pro alongside camouflage galoshes and fly-fishing rods. He didn’t pick it up at a gun shop with a shooting range full of targets depicting men in turbans and hip-hop gear. He didn’t procure it across state lines at a gun show with bundles of cash and no identification or background check. And he didn’t get it off the street, with scratched-out serial numbers and bodies on it.

Dad got his gun from the City of Cleveland. That’s where Mom got hers, too. Both are tools of policing, the Cooper family business. They hold up those guns and their power to use them as symbols of our freedom in a country that will not stop killing or incarcerating Black folks. When I was a child, I never questioned that contradiction. But to become my own man in the America I inherited, I realized I’d have to try to solve the paradox of my parents.

By the time the Black Shield had forced the hand of the Cleveland Police Department in 1977, Gayle had given birth to another child—a little boy named Geoffrey. Now with three kids, she was even more entrenched in a wrathful marriage and farther away from the working world. And losing her uncle Lloyd, which felt a lot like losing a father, only made her feel that much more alone. When he died, the dream of becoming a cop and the freedom the job promised died with him. 

It was at the moment that she’d almost completely resigned herself that it all came raging back. She opened up an issue of the Plain Dealer to find that people who’d taken the test with her and were lower than her on the eligibility list were being appointed to the police academy. And quickly, her despondency turned to confusion. And then her confusion turned to anger. She said to herself, “I know my number is higher than this and they’ve gone eighty past me and I’m not getting called?!” As she started to look into the issue, she found out that the city had expunged her from the eligibility list. “They were trying to lose Black folks’ stuff,” she told me. The city claimed it was because her addresses had changed and she hadn’t notified the civil service. To get back on the list, she had to go to court. “They claimed I had moved, but I owned my own home!” she said. “I told them, ‘I bought this house, I haven’t gone anywhere.’” As soon as she prevailed in her hearing, a White officer walked up to her in court. He simply said, “I’m from the academy.” He took her information. And then he said, “You will start the police academy on Monday.”

Later that same night, Fred Johnson called Gayle’s phone. It was the first time she’d ever spoken to the man. Lloyd was never big on the Shield Club, and Curtis was much closer with her younger brother, his namesake, who would join the police department five years later. Gayle didn’t have a complete idea of what the Shield Club had been up to at that point, or of how much it had shaped the situation she was walking into. Because of all the lawsuits, more than 40 percent of her classmates would be people of color and women. But the department they were entering was only 9 percent Black or Hispanic, and 2 percent women. For his part, Johnson stressed the struggle happening in the city to resist the change that Black women like Gayle represented. The academy was framed as a contentious environment controlled by people who were intent on destroying Gayle’s professional prospects and her spirit.

Despite the reforms that resulted from the Shield Club and the Women’s Law Fund cases, Gayle was still put through a series of tests, during which she could still be expunged. She had to meet with a psychiatrist, who asked her questions about her affiliations. Although this test had been revised thanks to the efforts of Fred Johnson and the Shield Club, it remained biased. As many of us conclude from a life living in this country run by White people, Gayle figured the best way to stick around was to hide herself. Her strategy was to answer every question like a White man of modest intellect.

In the 1970s, Gayle had spent a few years in the Nation of Islam. Although she never really let go of Jesus, she converted aesthetically and culturally to satisfy the whims of her second husband. She traded her hot pants for conservative flowing dresses. And instead of sweet potato pie, she started baking bean pies. When she did make a Polish Boy, she did it with beef sausage. She even traveled to Chicago once for Saviours’ Day to see the honorable Elijah Muhammad with her own eyes. But she put all that behind her when she found out that her proud Muslim husband was sleeping with a fellow “sister.” By the time she took the psych test to become a police officer, she’d gone back to straightening her hair and listening to gospel music. But some of the political knowledge she gained from the Nation, especially its perspective on America, stuck with her. She understood things differently than most—like the “riots” that happened in Hough and Glenville. She saw them as a natural reaction to the way her people had been done in this city and done in America. To her, the people who stormed the streets weren’t criminal. The crimes being committed were by the landlords renting rat-infested apartments and the Board of Education shoving kids into overcrowded schools and businesses charging a premium for rancid meat. She had a lot of ideas about these sorts of things, but none of them could feed her kids or free her from her marriage. And so she kept them to herself during her psych test.

The new hires were also required to do a complete physical examination. This was especially humiliating for Gayle. The whole ordeal was a perverse take on the idea that if women want to be in the academy, if women want to do what the men do, then they have to go through the exact same processes. For the physical exam, this meant standing around nearly nude to be ogled by their peers. “They made us stand up there in paper gowns and these guys were trying to catch glimpses at us. And they make you do stuff in the gowns so the gowns get all torn up. My breasts and everything were just hanging out,” Gayle recalled. She was so thoroughly humiliated that a fellow female in the academy came to her with some Scotch tape to try to cover her up. “They did that kind of thing because they wanted us to quit. The guys didn’t want us, their wives didn’t want us, it was terrible. They treated us like new meat, picking out which one they were going to take.” 

Fred Johnson made himself available to all the Blacks in the academy because he was prepared for the city to try to find excuses to fail them. Gayle didn’t think she’d have a problem. She was voted the vice president of the academy class and consistently scored high on all of the interstitial tests. Those high scores were attained by studying alongside her new girlfriend. But when they both got good grades on a test with similar answers, they were accused of cheating and threatened with expulsion from the academy. Fred Johnson had to step in and help them prove that they’d arrived at the same answers because they’d been preparing together.

After passing the academy, but before they could be sworn in as officers, they were also required to take a qualification test administered by the State of Ohio that evaluated their skills. Cadets could fly through the academy with high marks and still get disqualified to be a police officer. Although policewomen in Cleveland had been in the academy before the 1970s, they weren’t required to take the qualification test because officers in the women’s bureau didn’t carry guns. Anticipating that they would do whatever they could to disqualify her, Gayle prepared for the test with the desperate intensity of a woman fighting for her life. “To prepare for the running test, I used to run up and down the steps whenever I’d put the kids down for nap,” she told me. To make her qualifying time, she outran some Vietnam veterans, who threw up before they crossed the finish line. The state also required people to do a series of chin-ups and push-ups and dips that demanded upper body strength that seemed to favor the male physique, but Gayle fought her way through those. When she finally had to take her shooting test, the last phase, it was 19 degrees below zero. In 1977, Cleveland was in the midst of one of its coldest winters ever. But one of the essential rules of the academy was that it never canceled or postponed qualification tests for any reason, in an effort to help simulate what it’s like to be a police officer and have to work when everyone else gets the day off. And so Gayle stood at the outdoor range with the soft skin of her red-nailed fingers sticking to the ice-cold metal of her gun, her body involuntarily shivering, hoping the icy air didn’t tank her shot.

The first night Patrolwoman Gayle Smith reported to the Fifth District of the Cleveland Division of Police in the winter of 1977, her supervisor showed her two things: the coffee machine and the broom. It was expected that she would be the shift’s glorified janitor. But she bucked back. “I did not go through all that training to do no housekeeping. I came here to be a police officer,” she remembers saying to him, surprised by her own candor. Ridiculous as it seems now, perhaps this kind of insult by her male colleagues should have been expected. After all of the efforts by the Women’s Law Fund and Jean Clayton to break down the formal barriers in the CDP, women still constituted only 2.3 percent of the police force when Gayle started. The assholes she was working with had almost no experience working alongside women as equals and little incentive to see them as such. Gayle was basically a guinea pig. Ironically, it was because of Jean Clayton, Gayle’s initial inspiration to become a lady cop, that the women’s bureau was dissolved and lady cops ceased to exist. Although Gayle had been intent on following Clayton’s path, she found herself involved in something entirely new.

While most of the male cops were unhappy with the gender integration of the department, a lot of the women officers were displeased, too. They were especially pissed at Jean Clayton and her damn lawsuit. These were women who had no interest in being partnered with men and participating in a form of policing that oriented itself around violence and punishment. There were certainly fair criticisms of the women’s bureau, from its troubling focus on purity to the fact that its diversion efforts and empathy weren’t as equally distributed to Black suspects as they were to Whites. But I wonder if the department would be less lethal and repressive today if the men on the Cleveland Police Department had become more like the women and their women’s bureau. Instead, the women became more like the men. After the women’s bureau closed, some of its important work, such as sex crimes, was shamefully ignored or mishandled. Gayle would see this firsthand. But first she needed to get out of coffee duty.

It took some convincing, but eventually Gayle got her first assignment outside the district. After roll call, she would be taken to White City Beach, a former park on Lake Erie that in the 1940s was home to attractions like Bonavita the lion trainer, along with fishing and a yacht club. After natural disasters hurt the park and desegregation saw the City of Cleveland give up on supporting community spaces shared by both Blacks and Whites, White City Beach went the way of Euclid Beach. By the 1970s, it became a dumping ground for garbage and a place where the city parked vehicles that were towed to clear the streets for snowplows or as the result of car wrecks. That year, it was overflowing with gnarled automobiles. It had been the coldest Cleveland winter of the century, complete with “superbomb” blizzards and scores of days that were more than 20 degrees below zero. There were more than one thousand cars down there at White City Beach, but not another soul in sight.

“They dropped me off at White City Beach every night and stuck me in a shell of a car that was up on bricks and cinder blocks, with a wire heater inside of it. There was no bathroom. They’d leave me there all night and they’d come back and get me in the morning. I was just down there by myself in pitch blackness and cold. Even if I had wanted to get out, I couldn’t go nowhere. If someone had tried to steal the cars down there, there is nothing I could have done about it. It was demoralizing.”

Mom told me this in the kitchen, where I’d often heard her talk about the bad early days on the job. I’m not sure whether this was the first time I was really listening, or if she was telling it differently. Usually, her stories were never this detailed and specific. It was just “racism” and “men being nasty.” Perhaps because I was taking a real interest, she started accessing parts of the story she had often left untouched in her recounting.

There is a feeling of humiliation that stings long after an event has passed. It doesn’t just hurt because of what was done, it hurts because you feel as though you had some agency in the matter. That you let it happen. When she started telling me what it was like, I could feel her own surprise at the disregard she had endured. In the zone car with White partners, she was beneath speaking to. These were men who would greet a dog if they saw it on the street, but wouldn’t say one word to her. In this sense, despite the lawsuit and the consent decree, not much had changed on the job since the late 1950s, when White officers would “throw a shoe” to avoid being paired up with Curtis and Fred Johnson.

“When they finally had two guys take me out, they put me in the back seat where a prisoner would sit. And they didn’t let me touch the radio. They were supposed to show me some things. But instead, they got out of the car and went to eat. They just left me locked in the back of that car without saying anything. I’m just beating on the door and everything.”

It wasn’t until an old, White, Catholic officer who looked like Santa Claus decided to take Gayle under his wing that she finally got to learn a bit about real policing. The rotund veteran with snow-white hair explained to Gayle the first time she got in the car with him exactly why he was willing to teach her. It wasn’t that he was pleased about working with Blacks or with women. He simply realized the futility of resistance: “If we get rid of her, they will just send another one of them down here.”

“It was crazy to have me on the job that length of time and nobody taught me nothing except what I learned in the academy,” she remembered of her time wasted on frivolous assignments. “When he took me out, the first thing he ever told me was this: He said, ‘Okay, kid, what time is it?’ I looked for my watch. He said, ‘That is the first rule. Don’t you ever take your eye off anybody. If they ask what time it is, say you don’t know or your watch is broke. But you don’t look down.’”

It was with Santa Claus that she got to see how the men handled sex crimes now that the women’s bureau was closed. The first rape call that they ever responded to together involved a White woman. The lady had walked three doors over from where she lived to bum a cigarette from her neighbor. Before she could get back home, three men had grabbed her off the street, dragged her into a car, and took turns raping her. While Gayle was wrenched by the story, calling back to her own experiences of sexual abuse, the veteran was incredulous. “He talked to that girl so bad, I felt sorry for her,” she remembered. “He asked her, ‘What were you wearing?’ ‘Why were you out at that time of night?’ ‘What did you expect was going to happen?’ It was horrible . . . I will never forget it. That girl ended up not even filing.”

It was also alongside Santa Claus that she finally proved she could be real police, like the men. The call was a robbery at a drugstore that drew several cars to the scene. The suspect was a young Black man who managed to run out the back door. To show her tenacity, Gayle took off after him ahead of the rest of the cops, moving just as she had when she was training for the department’s entrance exam, going up and down those steps. Santa, who was heavy and plodding with bad knees, couldn’t keep up as Gayle tailed this man through an alleyway. And then from behind her, a shot rang out.

When a police shooting happens, officers come together to get their story straight. Although this was an era when it was still legal for officers in Cleveland to shoot fleeing felons, all the patrolmen made sure they agreed on what took place. After they were finished, they looked over at Gayle to see if she saw it the same way they did. Forget the police academy. The offensive rape call was a pop quiz, and this shooting was the final exam of real police shit. And Gayle passed with flying colors. “After that, I started having people to work with,” she told me. “It didn’t feel good, but I had a demon behind me.”

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Wilbert L. Cooper grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He studied journalism at Ohio University and earned a master’s degree in publishing at New York University. He has written for outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Marshall Project, and The Wall Street Journal. His Vice documentary The Cleveland Strangler was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In 2024, he was the recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award. The Black Shield is his first book.