In a recent profile, which covers the lives of New Haven, New Hampshire detectives, Detective Bertram “Bert” Etienne opens up about the various ups and downs of the life of a detective.
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Due to the nature of his job, Etienne says that he can have days which start out extremely promising, such as planning and attending a child’s birthday party, and then within minutes he can find himself putting on his suit and going out to the scene of a crime. He talks about the stresses of the job, and the hard toll it can take on a detective’s family and friends.
Etienne, a third generation police officer, says that he has had to “disappoint” his friends and family again and again when he has had to leave frequently from important family and social engagements in order to go work.
He says that he never stops to ponder how to handle the call; he simply suits up and goes to work. The ups of the job, such as getting an arrest warrant for a suspect he believes committed a grizzly crime or getting a hard fought conviction, are tempered by the job’s downs, such as walking onto the scene of a horrific murder for the first time or seeing an alleged murderer walk free.
Detective Nicole Natale, also of the New Haven Homicide Unit, cautions that all cases take time. Saying, “Nothing gets solved in an hour,” Detective Natale wants the public to know that that cases are not solved in real life in the same way as they are depicted on TV or in the movies.
Detective Chris Perrone, who says he doesn’t even watch such TV shows, was a founding member of the New Haven Homicide Unit. He says that while most people may believe that the detective’s involvement in a case ends after the arrest, the truth is that detectives continue to work to find additional evidence and strengthen the case for trial.