Standing out on the landscape of the female cop’s career is her relationship with her partners. The association can take on a hilly range of love-hate, with a whole lot of crap in-between.

     The reason for this odd poignant connection, she spends more time in close contact with the partner, either in a patrol car, in an office sharing a desk and sometimes a locker room, than any other relationship in her life. If she’s married she sees more of them, then her husband and kids.    

    In the twenty years of my career, my partners ran the gamut of the good, the bad, and the ugly. These are the most common partners that any cop will encounter through their career.

The Good:  The best partner a female cop can have is one with no or little baggage in his/her life. My happiest working relationships were with cops who were stable in both their work ethics and personal life. They were reliable, even tempered, and they had my six, (a fighter pilot term for having your back), because they were focused. I didn’t have to worry about temper flares, and bad judgment because of the stress of personal problems. And they didn’t have a problem with sharing in the purchase of the morning coffee.  

The Bad: The bad partner can be the cop who is going through a divorce, his/her marriage or relationship is falling apart or is the middle of an affair, and you know the spouse. They are unfocused and dump a lot of their baggage right into lap of their partner. And the chatter all day is about their personal problems. It’s exhausting trying to talk down an irate criminal, while playing Dr. Phil to the partner. If they don’t talk about it, usually their grumpy, snap at you, and will get into ridiculous arguments with criminals, who are often drunk or high. They look for some outlet for their personal frustration and the partner gets sucked right into it, when they go to battle with an uncooperative arrestee. They can jeopardize your job, if not your life. The sad thing, often they were a good cop in the past, until their personal life influenced their decision making capabilities. 

The Ugly: This is the cop you dread inheriting as a partner, and they are usually male. They are over zealous; believe they are never wrong, and treat the female cop like a girl. This is the partner, who can cost the female cop her job, if not her life because of his actions. He’s often a sexiest, who only tolerates her, because he’s forced too. His attitude towards her teeters on sexual harassment.  It’s a constant uphill battle to prove herself worthy, while maintaining some officer safety and distance from him. He barely skates through I.A investigations. He cares little if he’s jeopardized his partner’s job or retirement through his actions, because after all he’s never wrong. No matter if the individual is likeable he’s the dreaded partner, because he drags whoever he works with into the long blue wall scenario, pushing the envelop as far as it will go. Too survive the partner is often put in a position to protect him at a sacrifice to her moral beliefs.

           One of the worse scenarios and often the most dangerous is when both partners are married and fall into an affair with each other. It’s sad to say its common, simply because of the intensity of their experiences, and time spent together. It breeds a bond that is created around the adrenal rush of the job. They rely on each other on a day-to-day bases to keep each other safe and alive. That common denominator is something only they experience, and it often leaves the spouse outside their world of danger. When this does occur, it is one of the worst situations for the unit as a whole. Its disruptive, you have individuals and friends who know the spouses. It creates an uncomfortable relationship of cover ups and lies. If one of the spouses is a cop, then a treacherous situation can explode, leaving in its wake ruined careers, embarrassment, cops who have to be kept away from each other, with supervisors scrambling to put out a fire. It takes the focus off the officer’s job at hand. No one wins. I’ve seen cops forced to leave a beloved department, to save the marriage, and protect the lover.  

     In one heartbreaking experience, a female cop showed up at the department off duty, and packing a gun, ready to kill her husband’s lover. My husband was working a desk because of an injury. He knew her well, and knew about the affair, warning the husband on several occasions, there would be no good end to it. He managed to talk the wife down. In order to save herself and retirement, she was advised to quit a job she loved. Shortly afterwards they divorced, but not before the affair ended, leaving all the players with damaged careers.

     Rarely do the affairs end with a relationship. Their quick, intensely sexual and extremely harmful to all concerned.

Next week the female cop’s relationship with the criminals.

 Question of the day: Who are your favorite male and female fictional partners.

Lover Eternal by JR Ward (Signet Eclipse, 2006)

STATS:           Black Dagger brother with “the strongest appetites.  He’s the best fighter, the quickest to act on his impulses, and the most voracious lover—for inside him burns a ferocious curse cast by the Scribe Virgin.  Owned by this dark side, Rhage fears the times when his inner dragon is unleashed, making him a danger to everyone around him.”  All I can say is – Wow. 

THE LOOK:   A face so dazzling you have to blink to make sure you aren’t dreaming.  “Perfectly square jaw.  Full lips.  High cheekbones.  Broad forehead.  Hair was thick and wavy, lighter in the front, darker in the back where it was cut short.  And his body was just as spectacular as his head.  Big-boned.  Thickly muscled.  No fat.  His skin was golden even under the florescent lights….His eyes were an electric teal blue, so bright, so vivid, they were almost neon.” 

LEADING LADY:     Mary is “survivor of many hardships.”  When she meets Rhage, she’s just learned that the cancer she’s defeated once has returned.  She thinks she has nothing to offer any man, but Rhage knows that’s not true the instant she speaks his name—the musical lilt to his voice calms and comforts the demon inside him, drawing him to her immediately. 

BOTTOM LINE:       Rhage is like an Extreme Fighter with a soft heart and an endearing and genuine desire to protect those he cares for most, even from himself.  He can get his feelings hurt by careless words and inadvertent rejection.  However, he’ll kill anything that threatens those he loves.  And when he’s inspired, he’s one of the most passionate heroes I’ve read about.  Even when he has to drink blood from another woman because he can’t drink from Mary, he isn’t able to until Mary herself comes to terms with it.  Ward is able to craft Rhage so skillfully that the reader can even forgive the fact he sleeps with another woman after he’s fallen in love with Mary (and she knows it) because it really isn’t something he wanted to do.  Again, all I can say is – Wow!    

QUESTION OF THE DAY:  Have you ever surprised yourself by your ability to forgive and what gave you the motivation to do so? 

 /  Just an aside before you read today’s profile (Virna’s skipping her column this week)… I’m soon to live in the south [Texas, though, not Georgia] and I’m here now house-hunting, totally stressed as we work out contract details, missing my kids, and reading Gone With the Wind for book club.  Please forgive yet another reference to my favorite book, but how could I not write about a Southern hero?  And one that I love so much! And now, with no further adieu… 

Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell, Scribner, 1936)  Rhett Butler: Bad Boy/Charmer/Swashbuckler Rhett Butler might well be one of the original bad boys/charmers/swashbucklers of the south.  He’s the quintessential scoundrel–a blockader during the Civil War and a man who is not received in Atlanta or in Charleston.  Despite his bad reputation [in a time when reputation is everything], he’s full of charisma and heavy on charm.   In Rhett’s own words, however, he describes himself thusly: “…I’m a damned rascal and no gentleman…”    No wonder he’s so loved by women everywhere!  

STATS:   35 years old to Scarlett’s 18 [remember, these were the days of the Civil War] and over 6 feet tall.  Black hair, black eyes, a slightly black soul, and connected with “something pleasantly scandalous” but lovable nonetheless.  

THE LOOK: “He was a tall man and powerfully built.  Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility.  When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache.  He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished.  There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.   She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted.  She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face.  It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead  and the wide-set eyes.” “There was mockery in everything he said.  [Scarlett] disliked him heartily, lounging there against the booth.  But there was something stimulating about him, something warm and vital and electric.”   

LEADING LADY: “All that was Irish in her rose to the challenge of his black eyes.  She decided she was going to take this man down a notch or two.  His knowledge of her secret gave him an advantage over her that was exasperating, so she would have to change that by putting him at a disadvantage somehow.  She stifled her impulse to tell him exactly what she thought of him.  Sugar always caught more flies than vinegar, as Mammy often said, and she was going to catch and subdue this fly, so he could never again have her at his mercy.” Rhett’s thoughts on Scarlett:  “On the occasion of our first eventful meeting I thought to myself that I had at last met a girl who was not only beautiful but who had courage…When I first met you, I thought: There is a girl in a million.  She isn’t like these other silly fools who believe everything their mammas tell them and act on it, no matter how they feel.  And conceal all their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet words.  I thought: Miss O’Hara is a girl of rare spirit.  She knows what she wants and she doesn’t mind speaking her mind–or throwing vases.” At one point in Gone With the Wind, Rhett, who says more than once that he’s not the marrying kind, proposes that Scarlett become his mistress.  Ever the pragmatic, Scarlett’s response is that she’ll get nothing out of that arrangement other than a passel of brats.  So much for propriety and a ladylike upbringing.   But then Rhett likes Scarlett’s lack of propriety and unladylike behavior. He says that he never does anything with a specific purpose and he never gives anything without expecting something in return.  He “always gets paid”.  He tells her that her beaux have treated her with far too much respect and that she needs kissing by someone who knows how to kiss.  Ahhh… The question is, has he met his match in Scarlett O’Hara? 

BOTTOM LINE: Rhett Bulter is like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.  He’s an original and he’s larger than life.  He comes from a different time and just as Ashley Wilkes, Rhett’s gentlemanly counterpart, represents all that is refined and idealistic in the Civil War south, so Rhett Butler represents all that is scandalous and daring and pushes us to think about the southerners who knew that “our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages.”  He refuses to “fight to uphold the system that cast [him] out.”   Just like Scarlett, Rhett isn’t afraid to say exactly what he thinks and feels, even if it goes against the conventional wisdom or the beliefs of the time.  He’s one of my all-time favorite heroes and he always will be.  

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Create your own analogy along the lines of “Rhett Butler being just like Mr. Darcy”.  Who are two larger than life heroes to you, either from past literature or from contemporary fiction? AND/OR Who is your all-time favorite hero from the past?   

The parentage of a hero can be pretty important, at least in my books.  I find that I write stories and characters that deal with families, and of course the center of most of those families is the mother.   Families give history to a character.  They show what a person has embraces or overcome in their development.  They give a frame of reference to the character’s actions.  And they take the character out of the vacuum of the fictional world they live in by creating a more complex fabric for them.

That’s not to say that sometimes characters don’t have strong families.  Often they have obstacles to overcome and sometimes those obstacles revolve around lack of family.   The hero or heroine can fill that void. 

To me, whether it’s in the core family that already exists or in the formation of a new family for the hero and heroine, the existence of family is essential.  Family is the core of my world and so it’s what I relate to in books. 

In tribute to Mother’s Day, here’s a toast to books, movies, and TV shows that have families.

Question of the Day:

What is your favorite fictional family, and who is your favorite fictional mom?