Nascent lawyer brings street cop experience to the courtroom

OLD TOWN, Maine — After nearly 20 years working as a police officer, Lori Renzullo left behind her gun and badge for textbooks and long nights of studying to fulfill a dream she’s had since she was 18 years old. 

Renzullo, who graduated from high school in 1997, is a third-year law student at the University of Maine School of Law, spending her summer as an intern with the Penobscot County District Attorney’s Office. Just like any other assistant district attorney, she has her own caseloads and represents the state in court.

But her years as a police officer have set her apart; every time Renzullo enters a courtroom she brings her experience as a lawyer, but also as a beat cop. In the criminal justice system, both police officers and lawyers do legal analysis, but Renzullo said she quickly learned the two sides of the law don’t necessarily match up.

“One of the things that I realized during my first semester of law school was that I was doing legal analysis like a police officer because it was something so ingrained in my way of thinking,” she said. “Then I started realizing I needed to slow things down and pull them apart now.”

Renzullo was a police officer for more than 15 years, working the longest with the Old Town Police Department where she rose through the ranks from a patrol officer to a sergeant, including a temporary assignment with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. 

After all that time, and risk, one would think a person would be ready to shift to something else like environmental law or civil law, but for Renzullo the “human drama” of the criminal justice system keeps her coming back, she said. 

“I feel like it’s meaningful work. As a police officer, I risked my life for 15 years to protect people, and this way I continue to do that,” she said. “Even in bail hearings, I’m advocating for the safety of victims and to me, that’s very meaningful and important.”

Renzullo also isn’t deterred by her gender. Women are a minority in law-related fields in Maine, as is true in the rest of the United States. 

OLD TOWN, Maine — In this undated photo, Lori Renzullo stands with an award in Old Town.

By the end of 2019, women made up 9.16 percent of full-time police officers in Maine — well below the national average of 12.5 percent, according to data from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. 

When it comes to lawyers, the percentage is considerably higher. Women account for 37 percent of the registered lawyers in the state, according to the 2018 annual report from the Maine Overseers of the Bar — the most recently available data.  

Renzullo said she strove to make a positive impact on young women during her time in law enforcement. 

“As people see women in those roles, more women become interested in those roles,” she said. “I think that as little kids see women as police officers, that puts in their minds very early on that it is accepted and okay.” 

Renzullo started her career right out of high school, as an 18-year-old working as a 911 dispatcher in Washington County. It was there that she fell in love with law enforcement.

“Officers would come in and tell me their stories and I’m like ‘Oh my gosh that’s so cool, man I want my own cool cop stories’,” she said. 

With the help of some deputies she grew close to in Washington County, she joined the Sheriff’s Office on a part-time basis and Machias Police part time. Then, she was offered a full-time position in Old Town, an opportunity Renzullo said she jumped to accept. 

“Old Town is a really fun place, especially for a new officer. It’s a college town,” she said. “There’s a lot of stuff happening, so I got a lot of experience quickly.” 

During her time with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency — a statewide task force — Renzullo worked on several federal and statewide drug investigations including helping to bring down a “father” of Bangor’s bath salts epidemic, she said. 

She was also a patrol sergeant for Old Town who helped train recruits and supervised other patrol officers along side now Deputy Chief Lee Miller. 

The two started in Old Town around the same time, working patrols and moving through the ranks over the years. 

Miller said he was pretty competitive and found himself often comparing his own accomplishments to Renzullo’s — even if she didn’t know it — especially when they both were vying for a promotion to sergeant in 2013. 

Although Miller was promoted first, he said it didn’t affect their friendship or work relationship, and in the years since Renzullo left the department, their friendship has grown. 

“I think Lori [Renzullo] is one of the most genuinely nice people you’ll probably ever meet,” Miller said.

Renzullo had said she wanted to shift gears and focus on her dream of becoming a lawyer when the time was right, and left Old Town PD to do just that in 2019. 

Renzullo joined the Penobscot County District Attorney’s Office in January for college credit, and became a paid intern with the department for the summer. She returns to USM  in September for her final year of law school.

She was used to working odd hours, having worked night shifts for Old Town PD. But the 10-12 hours of studying a day was a wake-up call when she first entered law school, although it didn’t dampen her love for her new profession, Renzullo said. 

“I think it’s given me such a greater respect for the system we have in place, and how important those constitutional rights we all have are,” she said. “As a prosecutor or a defense attorney, it’s your job to uphold those rights and to make sure those rights are being respected. I think that’s meaningful work.”