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.