Police, Love, & Understanding

In her first book, The Accidental Deputy: Navigating the '60s with a Badge: Protests, Guns, Drugs, Men and Chaos, Nancy Gene Giles began her story of serving as one of the first women in law enforcement and facing challenges in a male-dominated profession as Deputy Sheriff in Franklin County, Ohio.

Now Giles continues her account in this next volume of her memoirs, Police, Love & Understanding: Healing in the '70s with a Badge: Police Image, Education, Community, and Predator Survival, beginning with her move in 1972 to the Westerville, Ohio, police department to serve as a sworn officer handling a federal community relations grant. Beginning with her first day on the job, Giles faced intense sexual harassment from her boss, the Chief of Police, as well as increased scrutiny as the only woman officer in a small-town environment.

Giles recounts her service to the community as Westerville's first woman police officer, speaking in schools and local businesses, coordinating with neighboring towns, and teaching law enforcement principles at a Columbus college. She shares the FBI training she received, and the lessons she herself taught, in order to reflect on the training-related issues and problems we see far too often in today's police departments.  

She also shares stories of dating in the wild, crazy '70s, when it seemed that all those around her-especially her colleagues on the force-adopted an "anything goes" attitude when it came to relationships. . .and what it was like as a single mother seeking stability for herself and her daughter.

Giles describes in fascinating (and, sometimes, appalling) detail her harassment at the hands of the Chief, an unrelenting series of propositions and punishments Giles withstood for the years of her service. In a dramatic epilogue, Giles reveals the shocking-but unsurprising-end of the Chief's career in law enforcement.