By Shelly Whitehead
NKyTribune Contributor
They pump iron. They flex muscles. They do one-armed push-ups and one-legged squats. In short, these women in the ranks of Northern Kentucky’s police agencies don’t mess around when it comes to strength and fitness.
They can’t.They wouldn’t even make it out of Kentucky’s rigorous criminal justice training if they couldn’t handle some pretty daunting physical challenges. And even if they did manage to get through the police officers physical standards testing, they would face some pretty deadly encounters on the job with some of their tougher customers if they didn’t have the strength and skill to hold their own.
For the more petite officers, like Erlanger Police Detective Jill Stulz, that is even more imperative.
At 5-foot-4 and about 125 pounds, Stulz works out regularly to stay fit and to regain overall strength and fitness after the births of her two toddlers. In fact, she says the sense of confidence and accomplishment she felt after stepping up to that challenge, as well as that of her initial testing for the Kentucky Police Officer Physical Standards, were feelings she wants other women to share.
That holds doubly true for women victimized by domestic violence, abuse and rape, like those helped by Northern Kentucky’s Women’s Crisis Center.
As a detective, Stulz often investigates the crimes these women fall prey to so she knows all too well how they can often be left with feelings of powerlessness and low self esteem. That’s why she has spent many hours over the last year pulling her fellow female officers together to give battered women a very real assist through a new calendar that just rolled off the presses Wednesday morning.
Sales of this very first Northern Kentucky Women in Blue calendar will benefit the Women’s Crisis Center, which serves thousands of local crime victims and their children annually with emergency shelter, counseling and other assistance and is actually celebrating 40 years in the community in 2016 — the year of this unique calendar.
For Stulz, the project is the result of sheer determination and a year of work to not only sell the idea to other willing female police officers, but to get the buy-in of supportive organizations community-wide. And the really good news is this community has shown a lot of support, from the title sponsor that helped get the effort off the ground — the Erlanger-Elsmere Fraternal Order of Police — to three other local police organizations and a very generous group of photography, graphic design and make-up professionals who donated their services to make these 10 very fit local officers look as strong and empowered as they clearly are.
And you had better believe that every one of these ladies of the law has gotten more than her fair share of flack about the calendars from the brother- and sisterhood that exists in local police departments. But, they were more than ready for it.
“Yeah, I got a lot of flack,” admits Det. Stulz. “But then, when I started my pursuit to be a police officer, a lot of poeple gave me flack about that and said, ‘Really? Come on! Really?’ So that just got me thinking, ‘Well, why not?'”
That’s about the time she came across the quote from three-time Olympic Gold Medalist, Heather Mitts (Feeley) that is now emblazoned across her photo above the month of July on the calendar. It says simply, “Tell me I can’t, then watch me work twice as hard to prove you wrong.”
Stulz says, “That’s a quote that always stuck with me so when I started the calendar, a lot of guys here were saying, ‘Aww, that won’t be very big.’ So that just made me say, ‘Really? Watch this!'”
She has set a pretty lofty fundraising goal for the calendar in its initial year — to raise at least $10,000 for the Women’s Crisis Center. Already, she has early orders for 400. Given the fact that the photographer (JMM Photography), make-up artists, graphic designer and gym were all donated, these 10 strong women are on their way to achieving their goal.
And that is very good news for the Women’s Crisis Center.
“It’s phenomenal what they’ve done,” said Women’s Crisis Center Executive Director Marsha Croxton. “Jill said that they were doing this calendar to show strong, confident and fearless women, which epitomizes what our survivors of domestic violence are. They have to be strong to leave … and we want our victims to go from that to be strong survivors. … They have to become empowered.”
Ms. Croxton said they help about 300 mothers and children annually at the emergency shelters in Newport and Maysville, as well as another 900 who receive walk-in services and 3,000 who get help over the phone.
The money donated from the calendar proceeds will go to help provide those services, while celebrating the center’s 40 years of service to Northern Kentucky in 2016.
Stulz says she and her fellow officers also hope these images of strong women will also send a message out to women suffering from abuse and violence of all kinds. Stulz says the act of gaining fitness and strength can be very empowering in itself.
That is why Det. Stulz hopes those served by the Women’s Crisis Center will be among the very first to receive the calendar’s message of empowerment as a gift from the women in blue.
“I really want those women to see that we all aren’t supermodels. We’re all different shapes and sizes and we all are different people, yet we all want to take care of ourselves. Exercise, health and fitness are very therapeutic and they can be a release and a huge stress reliever because it lets us be in our own zone doing something only for ourselves,” she said.
“So when many of these women are pretty much are at their bottom, I want them to see that through things like exercise, we can build ourselves up and be independent and healthy and strong. We just need to find the inner confidence to do that, and I hope we can at least help with that through this calendar.”
To order your calendar, go to Etsy or to the NKY Women in Blue Facebook page.