A seat at the table
Beaumont Police Department’s current station, built in 1974, received a constructed upgrade needed within the department for the first time since its completion.
Tinkering with the building’s layout, the women’s organization for community impact, Junior League of Beaumont, added a renovated locker room called “Legacy Lounge,” where women of BPD can have a safe place to rest and recharge.
Project liaison Brintney Van Houten said the project was an idea she suggested for the provisional class, Junior League first-year members.
“My husband is a police officer, and I already know what kind of stresses and what kind of frustrations he has,” she said.
When Van Houten asked her husband what the women do when they’re breastfeeding or are on their menstrual cycles, he said he didn’t know.
“I started talking to Haley Morrow, who is a PR representative for the Beaumont Police Department,” Van Houten said. “I was like, ‘Hey, do you have anything like this … set up specifically around the needs of women that are on patrol and through the civilian positions, as well?’ She said, ‘No, not really. We do have our locker room and we have some substations, but they're not exactly women-centric, and they don’t really fit the needs of the modern-day woman in law enforcement.’
“So, I started brainstorming with another one of my provisional members and she has been my co-liaison throughout this process.”
Van Houten said the initial idea was to center the lounge around Sheena Yarbrough-Powell, a BPD officer killed in the line of duty in 2020, as the slain officer meant a lot to women currently serving at BPD.
“We got together a control group, and we got all different kinds of responses back, but it was unanimous that this was just really needed,” she said. “It had not been updated since the department was built in the ’70s. So, you can imagine that, between then and 2025, there’s been a lot of updates to what the police officers need.
“Their belts are a lot more cumbersome and bulkier, so they don’t even really fit in (lockers) anymore. The shower curtains were the only layer of privacy between them and the rest of the locker room, so they really couldn’t utilize that with as much privacy as they would like. They didn’t have a good sitting area; they had one bench that had been provided, probably in the ’70s. A lot of women would avoid using the locker room at all, because it didn’t fit their needs. So, we were like, ‘Okay, let’s go in. Let’s make this a space where they can really come and focus on themselves as women first because, before they put that uniform on, they are a woman.
“They are a mother, a wife, all these other roles that they have to carry, and we want to make sure that they are being taken care of because, whenever you look your best and feel your best, you’re going to be able to go and put your best foot forward, and you’re going to be able to serve the community even more effectively and efficiently.’”
Van Houten said the project will cater to people on patrol and the women who work in admin, maintenance and the other departments.
“We’re going to have a place where, if you have medically necessary injections you have to take and administer to yourself, you have a sanitary place to do that with privacy and confidentiality,” she said. “You’ve got a place to come and store your breast milk, and then a place to come and separate yourself from a male-dominated field and have this safe space where you can either sit by yourself or with another woman and hear each other out on and in ways that a male counterpart might not be able to relate to in the same way that a female might be able to relate to.”
Lisa Renee Ligda-Beaulieu and Yarbrough-Powell are the only two women in the police department who have died in the line of duty. So, even though the organization originally had centered the idea around Powell, they decided to include both women, Van Houten said.
“The ladies of Beaumont Police Department were actually the ones who came up with the name Legacy Lounge,” Houten said. “So, now, we are going to have a designated space in the lounge area (with information) about each of them and it’s going to honor them as women, (and) it’s going to honor them as officers.
“They were advocates for the betterment of women’s lives. Those who had the privilege to serve alongside them have a place to sit in remembrance of them, but then you also have these new officers that are coming in that get to learn about them and follow in their footsteps and carry on their missions, which I think is so important.”
Van Houten said the organization has been working on the project for a while and is happy with the number of persons involved in making the idea a reality.
“It was a huge collaborative effort that has taken several months to come together,” Van Houten said, which has given her heightened appreciation for the Junior League. “This isn’t just an individual story, every single person in my provisional class has had their voice heard and has been included and had a seat at the table.
“To be part of that, just in general, outside of this project, is something that you don’t really see a whole lot in the world. We live in a world that’s very competitive, and it’s not always the kindest place, especially when you are a woman, and especially whenever you maybe don’t fit a certain stereotype of what a woman should be and what a woman should look like, and to see that continual encouragement from a large organization of women has given me confidence that I never thought that I would have.”