And Then Came the Blues: My Story of Survival on Both Sides of the Badge by Katrina Brownlee

ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, in the United States, an average of twenty-four people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner, and one in three women have experienced some form of domestic violence. One of those women was Katrina Brownlee, who as a twenty-two-year-old mother of two experienced hell at the hands of her then-fiancé. He was a law enforcement officer―a group two to four times more likely than the general population to be abusive, and who are known for protecting their own. During his dangerous outbursts, Brownlee would call the police for help, only to see the cops turn their backs on her when her abuser flashed his badge. On a cold January morning in 1993, her fiancé shot her ten times and left her for dead. Brownlee could have been just one more of the eleven females killed per minute worldwide by a loved one. Instead, miraculously, she survived. Through hard work, faith, and perseverance, she recovered from her injuries an