Martin Austermuhle / DCist/WAMU
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday nominated Pamela Smith to serve as chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, tapping the former chief of the U.S. Park Police and current ordained minister to replace former chief Robert Contee at a time when crime is up in the city and the department continues facing challenges retaining and recruiting officers. If confirmed by the D.C. Council, Smith, 55, would become only the second woman to lead MPD — and the first Black woman to do so.
“Chief Smith has a distinguished 25-year career in law enforcement. She knows Washington, D.C. She knows MPD. She knows policing. And she understands very well the network of law enforcement and public safety teams that work to keep Washington, D.C., stay safe,” said Bowser, speaking at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. “She knows what the landscape is in D.C. right now. She is familiar with what’s working at MPD and where we will all work together to do more and better. And she is ready to start on day one.”
Smith, an Arkansas native who now lives in Ward 8, started her career in public service as a social worker and corrections officer in New York City. She eventually joined the Park Police — the force of some 500 officers that polices federal park lands in cities like D.C. and New York — in 1998 as a patrol officer in San Francisco, eventually moving to New York and later outside Atlanta before rising to become the first Black chief in the department’s...
The legal team representing Joana Quaye, estranged wife of entrepreneur Richard Nii Armah Quaye, has described allegations made by the Bills Microcredit CEO in a recent television interview as sub...