Odafin Tutuola

Sergeant Odafin Tutuola is one of the deuteragonists (alongside Elliot Stabler and John Munch) of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
He is portrayed by Ice-T, who also played Scotty Appleton in the 1991 film New Jack City and Jack Mason in the 1994 film Surviving the Game.
== Early History ==
Not much is known about his past, though Fin stated he lived with his parents and brother. His father was a con artist who tried to con criminals. They promptly retaliated, leading to Fin witnessing his mother get murdered as a child. Fin later placed his maternal grandfather in a retirement home, where the latter died because of inadequate care given by the facility. Fin never forgave himself because of it. 
Fin went onto serve in the US Army in 75th Ranger Regiment and once was deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia, during the conflict there. 
He met and married Teresa Randall and they had a son named Ken Randall. Fin became a cop and served in Narcotics, though the stress of the job often butting heads with his wife and being distant from his son. Their marriage later fell through and they divorced sometime later. He later had a relationship with Phoebe Baker, a fellow detective in Narcotics. Eventually, however, they broke up due to trust issues on Fin's behalf. 
== Personality ==
Initially, he was not a socially open individual like the other SVU detectives. He doesn't tell Munch or any of his colleagues about his previous partner taking a bullet for him until after a year of working with him. He also withheld the fact that he had a son from his squad, something that was later discovered. Like Stabler, Fin would be prone to anger moments when inappropriate moments had affected him. However, he is shown to be more calmer and restraint in the interrogation room, such as when a racist serial killer Joseph Thagard calls him a slur; he only says back "That the best you got?" while only telling him he will spend a long time in prison.   
Tutuola gets emotional during cases with children, particularly those involving African American children which is a result of his own traumatic childhood. Despite not being open of his emotions, Tutuola tends to show kindness and affection towards child and teenage victims like Stabler and Benson. 
Like Stabler, he also has a strong hatred towards pedophiles and men who abuse their wife and children, often referring to them as scum and bastards. He once assaulted a trafficker who smuggled Nigerian children out of anger before Stabler pulled him away. However, Tutuola differs completely from Stabler in anger issues towards suspects and criminals, as he rarely got into trouble with his colleagues or supervisors whenever it is about following protocols. While Tutuola physically assaults a few suspects, he does not make as much damage to them as Stabler would have made to them unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. 
Over the years, Tutuola became more restful, wiser, and compassionate as he got rid of most of his rude qualities. He even changed his attitude towards his colleagues, while at first he was cynical and skeptical about them, he ended up fully trusting and respecting them at the end. 
== Notable storylines ==
In his time with Narcotics, Tutuola worked undercover regularly where he would often spend weeks or even months at a time in various alternate identities. His partner Luis Montero, lost his job after taking a bullet meant for Fin during an undercover operation to oust a drug lord named Benito Escobar. Since then, he struggled to forgive himself and wound up transferring to SVU to distance himself from the trauma unaware of the troubles that Montero later faced. 
During one undercover assignment back at Narcotics, Tutuola threatened a woman who came to retrieve her troubled daughter. This would later come back to haunt him in the future as the woman reappeared based on a newspaper that mentioned him following a heroic act he made, prompting him to return to save the daughter who turned out to be dead, but had some time delivered a child who got recovered by the same woman whom Tutuola was forced to threaten against.   
In the wake of his partner Chester Lake's vigilantism in killing a dirty cop along with hostilities against Stabler, Tutuola had filed transfer papers which were not responded to for a few months. It is later revealed that a former friend from Narcotics, whom an ex-wife had contacted Tutuola following a divorce, is in charge of department transfers, so the detective's request backfired. 
While SVU ruled out the murder of a young anchor child with no sexual premeditation as a case for the Homicide unit, Tutuola refused to hand it over, deeply affected that children with dark skin color or lower economic backgrounds would get less media attention compared to rich, white children during drastic situations. He went on a crusade to stop Thagard with the help of a reporter, Nicole Gleason, who later developed a romantic interest in him. Tutuola had a hostile relationship with a civil rights attorney, Randall Carver, during the case, and they briefly had a tussle that the media captured, and the detective had to apologize. Carver decided not to press charges against Thagard for trashing his office, as Tutuola begrudgingly agreed to cut him loose. Later on, much to Tutuola's shock and confusion, Carver chose to represent Thagard pro bono even though he had murdered three anchor children. As the trial acquitted Thagard with the help of Carver's representation, the disgusted detective did not want to have to do with anything with Carver anymore. However, the latter called Tutuola in an urgent emergency, and it was revealed that the attorney had shot the murderer dead as the client he helped get out of prison planned on killing more anchor children. 
After Stabler's departure, Tutuola became Amanda Rollin's new partner and mentor, and he often helps her in certain situations, even though he would get angry or disappointed with her wrong decisions.    
In 2021, Tutuola got engaged to Sergeant Phoebe Baker. They first met during a case of sex trafficking investigation, with Tutuola first believing that Baker was involved with the ring when an attempted sting operation was exposed while she was absent, in which she got offended and defended her innocence. When the case was finished, Tutuola apologized for accusing her, and she accepted. Tutuola then asked Baker out on a date, but she declined, saying she was seeing someone else now, but she assured him that she did not know if it was serious. However, Baker broke up with her boyfriend and started dating Tutuola after being reunited, with Tutuola stating that the best thing to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic was Baker. They decided to get married around Memorial Day weekend of that year. However, at the ceremony, they decide to call of the wedding, but remain together as a couple. 
== Trivia ==
* Tutuola is the third cop in the Law and Order series to move up the ranks after Munch and Benson. 
* Odafin is a Yoruba (Nigerian) name, the literal meaning is "establisher of laws" can loosely translate to lawmaker. Tutuola is a Yoruba (Nigerian) name meaning "a gentle man". 
** The name provides a symbolic meaning that Tutuola may be a follower of the law enforcement on the outside, but on the inside he is a good man who would do the right thing. 
* He is currently the second longest running character still on SVU after the retirement of Captain Cragen in 2014. The longest running is Olivia Benson. 
** Coincidently, Tutuola was originally meant to appear in only 4 episodes.
== Gallery ==
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File:CDuX3aEVAAAP6HH.jpg
== External links ==
* Odafin Tutuola on the Law and Order Wiki.
* Odafin Tutuola on the Law and Order: Organized Crime Wiki.
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