Rock Hill police captain Kathy Harveston retires as the highest ranking female officer ever
The cop named Harveston in Rock Hill for 22 years stood about 5 feet 3 inches tall in duty boots.
She became a giant anyway.
Kathy Harveston retired from the Rock Hill Police Department Friday, Dec. 13, as the highest ranking woman ever in York County law enforcement. She advanced from entry level patrol officer to captain.
She juggled commanding dozens of officers with being a wife, mother of four, and grandmother of six before retiring at age 71.
“I am a woman first, but in the uniform I am a police officer like anyone else,” Harveston said. “You really do have to have the heart for police work. It is a calling, this job.”
At a ceremony the day of her retirement, Rock Hill Police Chief Chris Watts and others spoke to a packed room filled with peer officers about Harveston’s career, leadership and high standards in the job. Deputy Chief Michael Belk called Harveston “a true professional.”
Men and women officers alike gave Harveston a standing ovation.
Succeeding as a woman in policing
Harveston joined the department in 2002 as a patrol officer after she came to the area from Tennessee, where she had worked 12 years with the Knoxville airport’s law enforcement authority. She became a detective in the department’s sex crimes division in 2004, then a sergeant in 2010.
Harveston said that as a woman officer often smaller than the people she was dealing with on the street, talking to people was always the first and best way to handle situations. A calm yet serious demeanor coming from a mother was always her best weapon, she said.
Management tapped her as the department’s first female lieutenant in 2013 before another promotion to captain in 2015. For the past nine years Harveston commanded the department’s professional standards team, which includes school resource officers, training, and internal affairs.
Policing has always been mainly male. Across the country, less than 15 percent of the nation’s law enforcement officers are women.
“You always have to prove yourself and go above and beyond,” Harveston said of being a woman in leadership in a man-dominated vocation.
The department still has far more men than women. Yet there are women working in areas throughout the department, including as supervisors in patrol and detectives, for example. Harveston said she encouraged other women to stick with the job.
“My advice was always stay the course and do the job well,” Harveston said.
And now after retirement from the uniform, Harveston’s plans to travel cross-country with her family and spend more time with her grandkids. And return to one of her hobbies that she did not have time for as Rock Hill’s top female cop — quilting.
