Bling Bling in the ATL

I forget if I blogged this before - I signed up through work to be a rape crisis call line person a week or two ago. Its been fun. Trainings 30 hours so I'll be learning til mid-March.

Last night, we met Detective L.T. She's not a Lt. (yet - working on it), L.T. is actually her name. Curvy - despite the uniform, bing-badda-boom. Wavy red hair, loose curls to her waist. She took off her jacket when she got to the podium and let us know that shes armed, but not dangerous, the gun would not go off accidentally unless she took off the safety, which she probably wouldn't do unless we did something bad. In which case we could expect to end up on the floor with a couple of bullet holes in us.

With that, she had us introduce ourselves, not so she'd remember us, but so she could break the ice and not be nervous - though nervous seemed like the last thing she'd be. And then she started out her talk with her resume: 10 years on the Dekalb County Police Department. Started out as a uniformed officer, then worked undercover (nothing flashy, like Las Vegas, she said - more like, let your hair air dry, they showed us how to put toothpaste in the corners of your mouth so you looked like you were foaming at the mouth, if you looked too clean you wouldn't get anyone), community liason, and finally, detective for youth and sex crimes.

I immediately noticed her tone, stance, easy authority. Well, no, I immediately noticed the big gun, then the handcuffs, then the mace, then the harness that held the big gun, handcuffs and mace, then the red hair, then the nice pearls, and then the easy authority. No artificially low voice, nothing masculine or forced about it, no tenseness or slumping in her back or arms, just - confidence. Aware, confident, assured, not an ounce of defensiveness in her. Undoubtably some of that comes with the gun.

She was still a cop. She told us she liked serving suspects at work because they'd give her a lot of shit about 'what is this all about, I demand to know now,' and then when they refused to speak quietly outside, she shut them up with, 'well, actually sir, you are being charged with rape.' and then everyone in the room gasped and she served the warrant and walked out.

We threw out a couple of gray-area situations - what if a woman fights back, what if the woman is a prostitute, what if she's high, what if she's got crack in her pocket... and L.T. gave up perfect cop answers - optimistic, tough on crime, no gray lines. Either it was murder or self-defense. Why would I give a rats ass about a misdemeanor possession if I've got a felony (her eyes lit up when she talked about felony - she weighed the two offenses in the air with her hands, and held up felony and pushed it forward a little towards us like it was cops' gold) suspect on the loose.

She got real excited that Dekalb Police recently changed the initials of the forensics guys to Crime Scene Investigators, and they were working on another miniseries-like name change. She described the pep talks she gives 'her victims' before court - how 'now its time to get angry, now its time to put someone in jail.' The way she said it, I think she gives the same talk to each victim. I asked L.T. about her experience with the victims - to tell a story about a victim she had trouble questioning, and one who seemed to find the process real easy. L.T.'s answer got a little strange, and I felt that it wasn't part of her job to connect with any particular victim. She was there to get facts, track a purse to a pawns shop to a drivers license to a front door to a friend to a DNA sample... follow procedure, put perps in jail, get justice, keep the streets safe.

And, for being a cop, she was a good cop. She said she'd joined Youth and Sex Crimes because she thought it would be a stepping stone to Homicide, but she realized that she liked - she liked working with what she called 'real victims.' I guess in homicide, victims and perps are often all 'bad guys.'

Anyways, we'll see how it goes. Talking to the DA, doing some sessions on PTSD... should be interesting. I've got some ideas about ... systems of care, standardizing the 'rape' experience, and what that demands of various participants in the system, but more about that later. Oh yeah. Take a peek at the actual Dekalb County PD's website. Its outta control.