by Jess McCuan / photography by Anthony Bellemare

Female law enforcement officers are a particularly no-nonsense bunch. They have to be. “You have to talk the talk that makes someone not want to mess with you,” says Ann Fowler, a senior police officer in the Asheville Police Department’s traffic safety unit who’s been with the force ten years. After four years in the Air Force and a few years on patrol in West Asheville—back when it was known as “Worst Asheville”—she’s learned how to run a good bluff. “You have to make yourself bigger than what you are,” she says.

Surprisingly, all the officers we interviewed say they save their toughest talk for women. “My worst fights are with women,” Fowler says. Men may not know quite what to expect from a female officer, but women are rarely intimidated. Breena Williams, a Henderson County Sheriff’s Department detective who investigates violent crimes, says she’s rarely able to get a female suspect to spill the beans. Male suspects, though, will sit in her office and fill her in on every detail. Longtime state trooper Christine Dotson, who lives in Black Mountain and started out as a sheriff’s deputy in Polk County, says the closest she’s come to being killed in the line of duty was during an altercation with two gun-toting Polk County grandmothers. They didn’t want Dotson and the Department of Social Services to remove their grandchild from a house. “I’ve chased armed bank robbers and had high-speed car chases, but I know that’s the closest I’ve ever come to being shot,” Dotson says. Here, VERVE takes a closer look at the lives of three seasoned badge wearers.

Breena Williams, 35

detective corporal, violent crimes
Henderson County Sheriff’s Department

At last count, Breena Williams had 58 suits and jackets. Most are gray, navy and black—definitely no pink, she says. The suits give the petite mother of two a sleek look, a sophisticated, don’t-mess-with-me look, which seems to match her quick self-assessment. “I’m not a touchy-feely person—at all. Ask anyone,” she says, and then adds later, “I guess you could call me cold-hearted.” After talking with her, she seems far from cold-hearted (in fact, she keeps a bowl of M&M’s on her desks for fellow detectives). But one thing is certain. She is absolutely fascinated by subjects few women would choose to spend their time thinking about: armed robberies, burglaries, assaults with deadly weapons and what might have happened to a body in the minutes or hours before she and her colleagues find it lying in a pool of blood.

Truth be told, she doesn’t really like burglaries. She prefers to investigate homicides, and there have been three so far this year in Henderson County. With some hint of excitement, Williams describes the training she received last fall at the National Forensic Academy in Knoxville—home of the “body farm,” a gory wooded area containing 180 dead bodies that have been buried, hung, dumped into trash cans and otherwise stashed in varying stages of decomposition. “It was pretty cool,” she says. Investigating homicides, the stakes are simply higher than they are with, say, a burglary. “You’re the voice of the deceased,” says Williams, who grew up in Hendersonville after moving there at age eight. “It’s very important to get the truth for the family.”

Christine Dotson, 41

master trooper
North Carolina State Highway Patrol

If you’re ever speeding through the Swannanoa-Fairview area, don’t be surprised when Christine Dotson writes you a ticket. She rarely lets people off. And don’t give her a sob story, either. “Just because you’re speeding doesn’t mean you’re a bad person,” she says. “But do I listen to a long drawn-out story? No.” The best (or worst) excuse she’s ever heard for speeding is that the driver had to go to the bathroom. She followed one speeder all the way to his house, where he jumped out of the car, threw his license and registration in her direction and ran inside to relieve himself. “I believed him,” she says. “It was an older man—not a young kid trying to get rid of dope or something. I followed him into the house, issued him a citation and went on my way.”

The mother of five has been working in law enforcement for 20 years, first in Polk County, where the sheriff’s department hired her as a jailer and dispatcher in 1989. It took the sheriff there five years to warm up to the idea of making her a patrol deputy (at that time, there had never been a female on patrol in Polk County), even though she was yearning for a way to get out on the road.

If Dotson didn’t go into law enforcement, she might have trimmed trees or joined the Marines. Whatever it was, she couldn’t sit inside. She likes driving and prefers her Crown Victoria to the newer, faster Dodge Chargers that some troopers drive. “I catch what I go after,” she says. She generally loves her job but knows it’s not for everyone, no matter their gender. “A lot of it is, you have to prove yourself to who you work with,” she says. “I have worked with several men throughout my career that haven’t been able to handle this job. I could back them up better than they could me.”

Ann Fowler, 36

senior police officer, traffic safety unit
Asheville Police Department

Investigating car crashes every day gives Ann Fowler a slightly different take on life. The collisions are sudden, and random. But the number of lives affected by a few fatal seconds are often too numerous to count. “It can happen on your way to the grocery store,” she says. “You could die and that could be it.” Fowler, who moved to Asheville in high school from Fort Meyers, Florida, has specialized training in reconstructing collisions—using evidence like skid marks and car dents to calculate how fast both vehicles were going and how they ended up there.

You may not realize it, but your car is a weapon, says Fowler, whose job is often similar to a state trooper’s. People speed, talk on their phones, text message each other, run red lights, take wild combinations of prescription (or non-prescription) drugs and somehow convince themselves that they will still be able to handle their vehicles, she says. For her part, Officer Fowler wants you to know: the world does not revolve around you. “People say to me, ‘There are more important crimes going on. Why are you stopping me? I’m running late, need to get to work, etc.,’” she says. “I say, ‘We completely understand.’ But speed is the leading cause of collisions.”

She never sees routine stops as routine stops. “If you’re not scared, you’ve gotten too relaxed in your job,” she says. She wants to make sure she comes home every day to her husband and son. Someday she wants to be a sergeant, though she says she’s not necessarily cut out for a desk job. “I enjoy patrol. I like being out there on the road in the dirt and the muck and grime.”