Whipped Cream Difficulties

I have my own set of issues with the New York City Police Department, and I don’t even live in NYC.

But I think this story is worth calling out.

In January of 1993, Katrina Brownlee was shot 10 times by her abusive boyfriend.

When her boyfriend punched her in the face, she called the police. When he hit her in the head with a chair, she called again. Officers would arrive, and despite her obvious injuries — a cut lip, a swollen eye — they would turn and leave when her boyfriend, who was a prison guard at Rikers Island, would flash his own badge.

…

“This is the day you die, bitch,” he said, and he fired — straight at her belly. He fired again, and again, and again and again. He emptied the revolver’s five-round cylinder, then reloaded and emptied it again.

She survived, but lost the child she was carrying.

Mr. Irvin saw her too. Before opening statements began, he entered a guilty plea. He was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison. Over his time in prison, he was denied parole at least twice, with commissioners asking how he could have reloaded his pistol and kept shooting. “What the hell was going through your mind?” one asked.

…

In 2001 she entered the police academy. What followed was a 20-year career of promotions to busy, dangerous areas of policing, from the streets of Brooklyn to undercover work in narcotics and prostitution stings. She ended up on the elite executive protection detail, as a bodyguard to the mayor of New York.
The entire time, through all those postings, Ms. Brownlee did her best to keep her shooting a secret. She feared what her fellow officers or her bosses would make of her traumatic injuries and her motivations for joining their ranks.

…

After more than five years of being undercover, she was transferred to a quieter post in a community affairs office in police headquarters, and, now a police officer in plain sight, she saw an opportunity.
In 2012, she founded a program with the office called A Rose Is Still a Rose, which was eventually renamed and designated a nonprofit, Young Ladies of Our Future. The organization “aims to inspire, educate, mentor, and empower at-risk young ladies,” according to its website. At offices in Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn, young women would gather for weekly workshops — “from etiquette to bullying to gun violence to nutrition,” she said.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2021 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Cops, Law, NYPD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.