Former Detroit cop details courage and harassment in book

DETROIT – "By the time I was 16, I had formulated four goals for myself. Those goals were to become a police officer, to have a baby by natural childbirth like my Cherokee ancestors, to kiss a woman and to sky dive. Accomplishing three out of four isn't too bad."
So begins "Badge 3483" by Charlene Genther, a former Detroit cop who insists she's not a writer; she's a storyteller.
And tell she does. "Badge 3483" details her years as a Detroit police officer, a 15-year career that began in 1975. Not only was Genther one of the first female officers, she was also a lesbian.
Did Genther face harassment on the job? You bet. She was mistreated, given the runaround and called every name in the book. But "Badge 3483" is more than a laundry list of complaints about being a lesbian in a male dominated field. It is a story about a woman who set her sights on a dream of becoming a police officer despite great personal obstacles (both her brother and her mother committed suicide). Once her dream came true it quickly felt more like a nightmare.
While Genther worked for Detroit, she and her partner Gloria and their daughter Jessie lived on Courville Street in the city. The family watched their neighborhood deteriorate. As years went by, gunshots, rapes and robberies became more and more common. Families moved away in droves. Despite the security bars on the windows and doors, a fence around the property and an alarm system, Genther worried about being able to keep her family safe.
"I was safer in that police car with my gun on than my family was at home behind bars and alarms," she said.
The stress of being a closeted police officer and living in the city ate away at Genther. Like many police officers with no outlet for their anger, Genther took it out on her family. In a chapter Genther wrote without looking at the computer screen and swears she will never read, the former cop details her verbal abuse of her daughter Jessie. "You can't deal with the scum of the earth and do what you have to do to protect yourself from that and then come home and turn it off," she writes.
"I think many would agree that being a cop's kid is not easy nor desirable," Jessie Genther said via e-mail. "Have you ever lived with someone for two decades who, for the first decade, is stressed and terrified with the reality of her life being threatened and abused frequently, and then consequently spends the next decade suffering from post traumatic stress from the first decade? Then imagine this person has been trained by law enforcement to exploit their power over others and daily disarm (literally and figuratively) people with verbal violence and physical threat every time she feels challenged."
Despite her regrets about her parenting, Genther describes having a child as "one of the best decisions" she ever made. "It's so great to have a kid," she said. "I wish I would have had a job where I could have been normal."
Genther remembers a time when a 2-year-old Jessie asked to go for a stroller ride down their street. Genther's response was, "Okay, Honey. Let me get my gun."
"I look at mothers now and I'm so envious," Genther said. "They go on these long stroller rides. Jessie and I never went but up and down our street. Jessie never even rode her bike without me sitting on the front porch with my gun."
That's not to say Jessie's childhood was solely defined by violence. Jessie describes being raised by two moms as "the best, most positive and loving life experience I've ever had. It certainly made my coming out as a queer woman easy. The queer community was so kind and loving to me when I was little."
Jessie, who is currently works as the Prevention Coordinator for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault in Denver, graduated in 2001 from Marion High School where Genther worked as a public safety officer until she was fired last year for going public about her sexuality in "Badge 3483."
When asked why she wrote the book, Genther said, "People ought to know what a hell it is to live in Detroit and how I was treated as a perceived gay person," she said.
Gloria and Genther, who have now been together for 28 years, have lived in Royal Oak since 1989. And while Genther doesn't want to move back to Detroit, she does miss what her neighborhood used to be. "I miss my house," she said. "I dream about it."