**DISCLAIMER – all stories in this series are true. The names of suspects, victims and officers involved have been changed to protect their identity. The opinions expressed are mine only, and do not reflect the policies or opinions of any of my former employers or co-workers.**

Several months ago, I was a guest on my friend Karl’s radio show. Somehow we got around to the topic of my former career in law enforcement, and I told a few stories on the air. This turned out to be pretty popular, and since then I’ve had several people suggest that I write about them. I thought that was a great idea, not only for my blog, but for me. This way when I’m old and drooly, I’ll be able to have some hot male nursing home assistant read them to me and I can remember the good ol’ days.

My path to law enforcement was more of an accident than anything else. Sure, it runs in my family, but only on the male side. My great-grandfather was Police Chief in Alexandria, Louisiana for years, my maternal grandfather was a cop in Alabama, and my uncle was in law enforcement as well. One of our dear family friends was also Sheriff of a neighboring county who went on to become a state representative before dying in a tragic plane crash. He was one of my heroes and I’m glad he got to see me start down the path that he himself had started on. I ended up enjoying it, and made the natural progression to a Reserve Officer while still in college getting my Criminal Justice degree. I worked as a dispatcher and a corrections officer as well, and in 1993 became a full-time criminal sheriff’s deputy with the Pearl River County Sheriff’s Department.

In 1993, I was dispatching for the Sheriff’s office when one of our deputies was killed in an on-duty traffic accident. A few days after the funeral, I was summoned to the Chief Deputy’s office. On the way, I kept thinking “Uh-oh, who did I piss off this time ? ” Walking in I saw the Chief, the Sheriff and the Captain over patrol. That’s where my illustrious career with PRSO began. *sarcasm* A few days later, I was handed the keys to an old patrol car and away I went. Curious about my training ? I rode around with the sheriff for about an hour and learned where the “north” and “south”ends were. Our county was split into two ends, because we had two deputies on duty on a 12 hour shift. Here’s the problem – the size of the county is 819 square miles …. and that’s kinda big. The population was not that huge, so that helped, but many times you could get a call on the other end of the county that would take you literally 30 minutes to get to. And depending on where the other deputy was, 80% of the time you were going on these calls alone. Needless to say, getting called to a possible prowler, shooting or domestic call at midnight and going all alone isn’t exactly the safest way to do it, but we all knew what we signed up for when we joined the department. And usually if you weren’t on a call of your own, you headed towards your partner’s call just as a precaution.

These days cops are spoiled. They have portable radios, cell phones, computers in their cars, GPS, and usually two or three other cops to go along with them on calls. Not us, not in 1993. We didn’t have portable radios, or “walkie-talkies” as some people call them. Once we left the car, that was it. We didn’t have cellular phones, and if we did , they were usually a bag-phone that stayed in the car. The protocol at that time was after you were at a call, the dispatcher would wait ten minutes and then call the house that the incident was at and ask if you were ok. If they didn’t get an answer they would eventually wake someone up or call the nearest city police department and have them send someone out when they weren’t busy. Not the safest method either, and when I think back now at all of the situations I went into that could have ended up with my name in the obituaries it makes my skin crawl. But, that’s what cops do. I also had a car that had a light bar that was kind of moody – it would run when it felt like it. If it went out while I was running code ( lights and sirens ) to a hot call, I just reached out the window and banged it a few times with my flashlight and it would start working again…..and GPS ? Our version of GPS was the caller telling us to “turn left at the Smith’s barn” or ” you know where old Bobby Joe So and So used to live.” Once I was driving around and had a lady flag me down who asked me what I was “doing way out here” and I told her I was just patrolling. She then informed me that I was about 15 miles into the next county. Whoops.

I was the first female full-time deputy in our county, which at that time, in rural Mississippi, was pretty rare. Even in my own department. When I went to the Academy( two years after I started on the road) I found out that some of the guys I worked with were placing bets on whether I would make it or not. I did, and along the way placed second academically and 8th out of 52 in physical training. And once I kicked a few asses and showed them I was able to handle myself on calls they pretty much shut up about me being a woman. Especially when those asses were theirs. Law enforcement is like a family. A big dysfunctional one. But it’s like no other – we can hate each other one second and take a beating or a bullet for each other the next. And then we get up, dust ourselves off and do it again. It’s like I had a bunch of big brothers that I worked with and despite their teasing would kill for me. The saying “we all bleed blue” is true. I’ve worked in other lines of work where they say “we’re a family”, but they’re not. Not like that. And until you strap on a gun and a badge and get a crappy little paycheck for putting your life on the line everyday, you just don’t understand. That’s why I get so fired up at the way the media and people in general often judge’s law enforcement’s actions from just a video tape or storied hysteria from a “witness”.

So that’s a start to my story of how I became the first “she-deputy” of Pearl River County, Mississippi. Next time I’ll tell you about how I got that nickname, and about my first call. It was a doozy.