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After Decades of Silence, Retired NYPD Detective Opens Up About Domestic Abuse

Newly retired from the NYPD, Katrina Brownlee can now walk the streets of Crown Heights with confidence. She’s been waiting to exhale for decades. “I was like, ‘I got to let this out,’” Brownlee says. “It was like holding gas for 20 years.

Newly retired from the NYPD, Katrina Brownlee can now walk the streets of Crown Heights with confidence. She’s been waiting to exhale for decades.

“I was like, ‘I got to let this out,’” Brownlee says. “It was like holding gas for 20 years.”

She feared sharing her painful past with colleagues on the force. And she was especially terrified of telling Mayor Bill de Blasio, the man she protected for eight long years.

“So many times I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him, but I wasn't sure how he would react to it,” Brownlee says.

Before she clocked out one final time last June, she sat the mayor down for a heart-to-heart conversation.

Newly retired from the NYPD, Katrina Brownlee can now walk the streets of Crown Heights with confidence. She’s been waiting to exhale for decades.

“I was like, ‘I got to let this out,’” Brownlee says. “It was like holding gas for 20 years.”

She feared sharing her painful past with colleagues [...]




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