Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the name of a lawyer representing Samantha Liedtke.
Samantha “Samm” Liedtke was “meek” in college. The kind of person who couldn’t even do a push-up — and definitely not the type to become a police officer.
So she trained. She built up her strength and took up martial arts. While attending the University of Texas, she worked with the local homeless population and for restorative justice organizations, trying to offer healing to victims of crime.
Her passion: being a resource for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
By 2017, she became a dispatcher with the Austin Police Department. Two years later, she enrolled in the police academy. In January 2020, she graduated at the top of her class.
She then began field training. And immediately, she said, the harassment started.
“My first night on field training I was told, ‘There’s two types of female police officers: You’re either a bitch or a slut,’” Liedtke said in an interview, adding that multiple colleagues made similar remarks. “And that mentality and those types of comments were said explicitly or passively pretty much daily for the rest of my time as an Austin police officer.”