Naperville's fourth woman cop reflects on career

When Betsy Brantner Smith decided to become a police officer, she envisioned wearing the badge of the Los Angeles Police Department.

"That's where all the cop shows were based on back in the '70s," she said.

But while visiting her college boyfriend she saw a job advertisement in a newspaper asking for new police officers.

"I tested and came in fourth and they needed four officers, so I had to decide right then to take the job," Brantner Smith recalled.

In 1980, she became Naperville's fourth female police officer, and after 29 years on the job she retired Thursday.

"Yesterday, I did not want to get out of that black and white squad car because I knew I'd never get back in," she told a crowded conference room at the Naperville Police Department Thursday.

During her career, Brantner Smith tackled a variety of duties, including working undercover as a narcotics officer during the 1980s. She said that was one of her favorite assignments.

"That was the best just from the fun standpoint," she said. "It was the '80s, it was the time of 'Miami Vice,' I mean cocaine was just falling out of the sky back then."

Brantner Smith received an award for her undercover work from the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association for her four years of service.

She also singled out her time in the crime prevention unit as a favorite.

"It's the only time people want you coming," she said. "We spend our whole careers with people running from us and with this people were happy to see us. I loved it."

Naperville City Manager Doug Krieger said Brantner Smith's ability to adapt to new roles within the department was her greatest talent.

"Her service has run the gamut of the spectrum," he said. "The work in community education and crime prevention help personalize the police department."

In recent years, Brantner Smith has starred in the Biography Channel's reality program "Female Forces" that follows the women of the Naperville Police Department on and off the job. Now that she's retired she said she'll continue teaching and training as well as writing police-related columns for trade magazines.

Retired Police Capt. Dave Hilderbrand served as Brantner Smith's training officer when she was a rookie. He used to make fun of her because she was notorious for banging her nightstick into things when she walked through places. However, Hilderbrand said he knew she was tough and would be able to handle herself on the job early on.

"One night we stopped at a White Hen for cookies, candy and coffee and I head to the back of the store and suddenly I hear glass breaking and things falling off shelves and I think she's taken out an entire aisle with her nightstick," he remembered. "But it was a car that had crashed through the front window and hit her. I knew she was something special because she got up and she was the one who took the report."

Later in her career Brantner Smith would be offered a lieutenant's post with the department - the first female Naperville police officer to earn the rank. However, she turned it down because of commitments she had made to a burgeoning side gig teaching and training. Also, her youngest of four children was only 8 at the time.

"As the senior sergeant I could pick my shifts, but as the new lieutenant I was going to be back at the bottom rung and I was a single mother at the time, so what was I going to do with an 8-year-old?" She recalled. "Female officers have to make some choices that men often don't."