Last updated: September 30, 2022
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Raquel Manso
Raquel Natal was born in New York. She grew up in the Bronx as the second of 12 children. Her mother and father were Puerto Rican and divorced when she was young. As a child she loved to read books about other countries, cultures, and geography. After graduating high school, she moved to Queens. She then had two daughters. Working as a single parent was a challenge, but as she noted, “I’ve always been a worker. My mom was a worker; she always found a way to make a dollar. I learned that from her.” She was married to Angel Manso until they divorced in 1976.
She took the Civil Service exam and was hired as an administrative aid for the New York City Police Department (NYCPD). Manso later transferred to the Homicide Department as a police administrative aide. She enrolled in college classes and eventually earned her associate degree from Alexandria Community College. The NYCPD faced budget cuts in the 1970s and began laying off police officers and firemen. After several colleagues left for jobs in other states, Manso started her own job search. She applied to the Civil Service and was contacted by the US Park Police (USPP), an agency she knew nothing about. They invited her to come to Washington, DC, for a physical exam and other tests. She was officially hired by the USPP in September of 1977.
Manso was the second Latina officer hired by USPP. She was called “Rachel,” as someone thought people might have difficulty pronouncing Raquel. Manso was the only woman in her Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) class in fall 1977 . She admitted that “it was tough being the only female.” In a 2022 interview, she recalled that during a group photo, one instructor placed her in the back. “If you see my class picture, I’m all the way in the back at the end, where you can hardly see me. And I was one of the smaller people, and usually you put the short people in the front. I was all the way in the back where you could hardly see me. You couldn’t tell I was a girl.” Another instructor, who was not USPP, made repeated sexual advances. She thanked her hometown for her ability to deal with the discrimination and harassment. “I grew up in New York and, you know, you can withstand anything. I didn’t dwell on it because I didn’t grow up in that kind of environment of prejudice."
After graduating from FLETC, Manso was assigned to USPP’s Central District One, where she still felt that she was treated differently. She recalls that despite knowing how to drive, she was only assigned to foot patrol, even when male officers in her unit with similar experience worked from patrol cars. Rookies usually worked the first year on a foot beat, but for Manso it was four years before she had a patrol car assignment.
After about six years on the job, Manso became interested in joining the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB). She was assigned to the CIB as a detective in 1984. A friend who belonged to the Hispanic American Police Officers Association told her that a joint task force with the Drug Enforcement Administration ( was forming to combat Phencyclidine (PCP), also known as angel dust. She was assigned to the task force on a temporary detail. For the next four years she worked with a cross section of law enforcement officers from the Washington, DC, area. She received an award for her work when the assignment ended
In 1989 Manso was promoted to sergeant. She was a CIB detective supervisor from 1990 to 1993. In 1994 she was detailed to a United Nations project to develop a civilian police academy in El Salvador, an opportunity she learned about through her membership in a Hispanic law enforcement organization. She worked alongside officers from the State Department and Department of Justice and with personnel from Spain, Sweden, Mexico, and other countries to develop and teach the courses. She completed personnel needs assessment and provided training to new recruits and middle and senior management. Training topics included victimology, psychology of perception, domestic and street violence, and stop and frisk, a policing practice of stopping a someone to search them for weapons or prohibited items. Manso also translated several USPP documents into Spanish to help develop her curriculum.
As one of the first Latinas on the force, she was asked to do a lot of translation work. When she learned that other agencies were paying their employees for their translations, she was told they wouldn’t pay her. “I never got credit for that, [even when] I worked with homicide cases and things like that. I never got acknowledged for that capability at all.”
When she started the assignment with the United Nations, Manso had been told that she would return to her old job when the detail ended. When she finished, however, her position was no longer available. Although she was not pleased, she accepted another position in internal affairs. She worked for that unit until around 1997, when she applied for a transfer to the administration section. To her surprise, she enjoyed personnel work and liked being involved in the hiring process. About that time, she also earned a bachelor’s degree. Two years later, in 1999, she received a master’s in education and human development from George Washington University. She continued her interagency work whenever possible, and she received an award from the Marine Corps for helping to resolve a civilian dispute.
In 2000 Manso saw an advertisement for a training position with an organization called The Police Foundation, in Washington, DC. This organization worked alongside the International Association of Chiefs of Police and Police Forum, agencies that studied police issues and provided guidance and recommendations to medium and large police agencies throughout the United States. She interviewed during her lunch break and was hired on the spot. “I got the job that same day. I’m thinking ‘Oh, how am I going to go back and tell these people that I have to retire?’” She retired from the USPP two weeks later. She started a PhD program that same year and continued through 2008, although she didn’t finish the degree.
Manso worked there until 2006 when she was hired by the Smithsonian Institution to develop a diversity program. Although she enjoyed the work and had a good supervisor, she became bored and returned to the Police Foundation in 2007.
In 2009 Manso returned to the Smithsonian for one year before starting a job with the State Department. She worked on recruiting and staffing in the Human Resources department. After three years, she transferred to the Human Resources Accountability department, which verified that all human resources work related to recruitment and staffing to meet Office of Personnel Management rules and regulations. In 2014 she moved to the Department of Health and Human Services, once again working in human resources.
Manso earned a master’s in education with an emphasis in English as a Second Language in 2010.
Manso retired from the federal government in 2018 with over 40 years of service. She worked as a contractor for the State Department for another two years before retiring for good in 2020. In retirement, she does missionary work and travels the world, living out a childhood dream. “I love to travel, and I love the cultures and I love to see how other people live.”
Sources:
Ancestry.com. U.S., Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 1 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Internal Revenue Service. (1992). Women in Federal law enforcement. University of Michigan Library.
Manso, Raquel. (2022, August 12). Pers. comm. with Samira Rosario Martinez. Interview notes on file with the NPS History Collection.
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This research was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.