Behind Her Badge: A Woman’s Journey into and out of Law Enforcement
$52.00
Behind Her Badge: A Woman’s Journey into and out of Law Enforcement
ANN MARIE DENNIS
I’ve been called a “badass cop throughout my career but the truth is that isn’t the real me – at least, not how I’ve ever viewed myself. Behind that veneer there has always been an insecure little girl who struggled to find her way in life. I was in search of strength and self-confidence when I entered my law enforcement career, but I ended up suffering new traumas that I was ill prepared to cope with.
I struggled to find success in the tough, gritty, male dominated world of policing. I faced biases, repeated layoffs, and became a seasoned undercover officer working as a prostitute, drug addict, and thief.
I left law enforcement and returned to college, where education and research offered me enlightenment to the realities of policing that I was too submerged into the subculture to see. I was forced to come to grips with the many mistakes and misconceptions I made while working as a police officer and only now do I understand how institutional biases are perpetuating many of the same mistakes I made in policing today.
Ann Marie Dennis has written a frank, but disturbing personal memoir of her time spent as a police officer in and around Pontiac, Michigan. This is a narrative that holds little back, recounting both a grim and abusive childhood and a growing sense of self, realized largely through her varied work encounters in the enigmatic world of policing. This is a treatment of some of the good, the bad, and the ugly of police work as told by a compassionate and observant woman who has been there and has much to say. — John Van Maanen, author of Tales of the Field
Ann Marie Dennis spent 20 years working in various areas of law enforcements, including dispatch, corrections, courts, and road patrol. After leaving law enforcement she returned to college where she is completing on her second master’s degree and researching police involved shootings.