Time for the first installment of a new series focusing on females in law enforcement.
We begin with a woman who's logged nearly 30 years in uniform, Investigative Sgt. Connie Schuster of the Door County Sheriff's Department.
Schuster says although there's still a large gender disparity in the profession, people are more used to seeing female officers today than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
Schuster says law enforcement in real life is a lot different than what you see on TV. She says for starters cases aren't solved in an hour and there's not a plethora of evidence at every crime scene. And she says interviews are not nearly as dramatic. "It's not the bright light and us yelling at people," she says.
Schuster, who's been an investigator since 2000, says one of the most satisfying cases she helped solve involved a woman getting pistol-whipped for her money. Schuster says authorities were able to make a quick arrest and put the community at ease.
But Schuster admits the job can be frustrating, especially in cases when the evidence is just not there.
"We just have to kind of put that aside and go on to the next case and each and every time work as hard as what we can," she says.
Schuster has logged all 29 years of her law enforcement career with the Door County Sheriff's Department. Her first 16 years were spent as a patrol officer. She became an investigator in 2000 and became a supervisor of other investigators in 2004.
