By TIM FANNING
USFSP Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – For Nicole Stutler, being an officer with the St. Petersburg Police Department is like improv theater – it’s adapting to every situation. It’s staying on her toes and rolling with the punches.
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep a straight face. Other times, it’s hard not to cry. Dark sunglasses help.
“Every day challenges me. It gives me stories I can try to laugh about when I go home,” said Stutler. “I’ve never had a bad day because I’ve always gone home. That’s the key at the end of the day. To be able to go home.”
The 29-year-old officer is two years out of the academy and patrolling her first real beat in the sprawling neighborhoods and strip malls of north St. Petersburg in a squad made up almost entirely of women.
“A lot of bad— chicks to look up to,” she said.
For Stutler, home is in Manatee County with Ellliot Stabler, a 6-year-old chihuahua named after the hunky detective on TV, and Nes, 3, a mix between a “chihuahua, a terrier and a hyena.”
Stutler grew up in Woodbridge, Virginia, the daughter of a metropolitan transit officer and a Colombian-born coin room supervisor.
Stutler never saw her father in uniform. He always got dressed at the station and never brought his work home. He gave her a positive view of law enforcement officers, she said, but she never thought she’d wear a badge herself.
She thought she’d be Barbara Walters. Growing up, she asked a lot of questions. It was a running joke in the family that Nicole never asked just one question.
Her inquisitiveness was fostered by watching 20/20, the network news magazine. Her hero, Walters, was classy, respected and smart – just like Stutler wanted to be.
She said she realized that Walters, much like herself, could be “intelligent and personable without cheapening it with dirtiness and sexiness.”
She enrolled at Arizona State University intending to pursue journalism. An undeclared major, the only thing she knew was that she liked to write and ask questions. At least, that was until she took her first criminology class.
That’s when she knew criminology was right for her.
By graduation, Stutler found herself in social services. For several years she worked with the homeless, victims of domestic violence, and rape and sexual assault survivors in northern Virginia. That’s where she learned that public service is like improv theater.
“There I saw the dark side of life,” she said.
There she saw child abuse victims with bruises and dried tears. There she saw drug users in all stages of addiction. There she saw people looking for a second chance. No one case was the same.
“You learn to adapt quickly and to read people,” she said. “You’ve got to be able to go from a stern look to a smile in seconds.”
In her work in social services, she learned to cope through her daily reports.
“Writing them was therapeutic,” Stutler said. “The more detail I added, the better I felt. It was like a giant weight being lifted from me. The more complete my report was, the better I felt.”
Eventually Stutler moved from Woodbridge, Virginia, to Tampa. That’s when she learned about a program that turns social workers into police officers.
In her two years on the force, she said, she’s learned a lot. Covering crime in real life isn’t like it is in the movies with high-speed chases and daily gun fights. She finds police officers aren’t as stoic as she thought they were.
For Stutler, police work is more like social services.
“In both, you’re helping people in a crisis,” Stutler said. “I swear that I do more crisis management than I do arresting. I give out more community resources than I do tickets.”
On a recent shift, Stutler parked off the road, watching for stop sign runners.
In her cruiser, TLC’s “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” played softly over the speakers as dispatch chirped over the radio.
On the driver’s side, next to the turn signal, was a purple unicorn hand sanitizer dispenser and a rosary. And on the dashboard was a Triforce from the Legend of Zelda video games and a prayer card of Saint Michael, the guardian saint of law enforcement.
“As an officer, everything you do is unscripted,” Stutler said. “You have to stay in character, no matter what.”