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Cop-turned-author reveals inside scoop on police work
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
With her husband, father and three uncles all current or former police officers in the Mansfield area, Stacy Dittrich has police work in her blood.
Her own law-enforcement career started as a dispatcher. She became a police officer in Ashland, Ohio, then returned to Mansfield as a Richland County deputy sheriff.
But that doesn’t mean the 17-year police veteran is able to see only the good side of police work.
In the book “Murder Behind the Badge. True Stories of Cops Who Kill,” which was published last year, she describes the murders committed by 18 police officers dating back to 1912, including Bobbie Cutts Jr., the former Canton police officer whose murder of his girlfriend in 2007 inspired the book.
Dittrich, who talked about the book during a presentation at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library on Thursday, said she wanted to write a book about Cutts, but her publisher wanted something broader.
Dittrich said there is a commonality among Cutts and the others in the book: None of them should have been a cop.
“In these cases, there were such blatant red flags. They should have never been sworn in,” she said from the second-floor meeting room just before her presentation.
“All of them exhibited very similar personality traits,” she said. “The way they conducted themselves in their personal relationships and professional relationships pretty much mirrored each other. Pretty much the biggest thing I found is they should never have been hired.”
In the case of Antoinette Frank, who was hired as a New Orleans police officer in 1993 and killed three people in a restaurant where she worked as a security guard, there were mental-health problems.
She lied about them, however, and submitted lots of false documents. The job paid only about $7 per hour, and the city of New Orleans didn’t check her background, Dittrich said.
“No one bothered to verify anything, and ultimately they paid the price for it.”
There are some common personality traits among the police officers who kill, such as having multiple sex partners, whether they are married or not; and usually some type of financial difficulty, frequently because of the their multiple sexual relationships, she said. “There’s a snowball effect.”
Another of Dittrich’s two nonfiction books and three novels was released last week: “Stumbling Along The Beat: A Policewoman’s Uncensored Story,” which gives highlights of her law-enforcement career.
She has appeared on several television programs to comment on high-profile crimes.