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D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Monday named Pamela A. Smith as the District’s next police chief, nominating a former U.S. Park Police chief who recently joined the D.C. department at a time when the nation’s capital is struggling with rising homicides and violent crime.
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In choosing Smith, the mayor went with a relative newcomer to the city police department. In just 14 months on the job, Smith has served as chief equity officer, overseeing the department’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion, and most recently as an assistant chief in charge of homeland security, one of the most sensitive positions in the nation’s capital. If confirmed by the D.C. Council, she would be the second woman and the first Black woman to permanently run the agency since it was founded in 1861.
The 55-year-old Smith, an ordained Baptist minister who lives in Ward 8, takes over at a precarious time. She must ease residents’ fears over gunfire, carjackings and homicides — including recent killings of apparently random robbery victims — manage a force struggling with historically low staffing, and navigate a mayor and council sparring over the best way to keep people safe.
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At a news conference, Bowser said Smith’s background with the two police agencies means she knows the city and the department she would lead. “She is resilient and ready for this role,” the mayor said at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington. Smith takes over as acting chief immediately.
D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), who chairs the public safety committee, said she will hold a confirmation hearing as soon as possible. She said driving down crime “is our number one focus right now.”
Homicides in the District are up 18 percent and poised to exceed 200 for the third consecutive year, threatening to put the city at a two-decade high.
Bowser has said she conducted a national search to replace Robert J. Contee III, who announced his retirement in April to join the FBI. She bypassed other internal prospects, including Morgan C. Kane, a 25-year veteran who is also an assistant chief and is well known in political circles.
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Pamela A. Smith, 55, was nominated Monday as D.C.'s next police chief. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) selected the former U.S. Park Police chief who recently joined the D.C. department after a nationwide search.
Smith has a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and a graduate certificate in criminal justice education from the University of Virginia, according to her D.C. police biography.
Earlier in her career, Smith worked as a seasonal park ranger in the Gateway National Recreation Area that spans New York City and New Jersey. She also worked as a social worker on Staten Island, with the New York City probation agency helping juveniles, and as a corrections officer at New York City prison.
1998: Joined U.S. Park Police as a patrol officer. Her career included working in field offices in New York, San Francisco, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. 2009: Promoted to sergeant. February 2021: Appointed as chief of U.S. Park Police, becoming the first Black woman to lead the agency founded in 1791. Spring 2022: Retired from U.S. Park Police and joined D.C. police as the department’s first equity officer.
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City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) had urged Bowser to pick an internal candidate to maintain continuity, which technically she has done. Smith retired from the Park Police in April 2022, after serving 24 years, the final 14 months as chief. She joined the D.C. police force in May 2022.
Mendelson said Monday he is “optimistic” about the mayor’s selection but has questions about how Smith would lead the department.
“I do think it’s good that she’s got a lot of high-level and senior management experience,” he said. “But I think what is critical — and these are things I don’t know — is her management style; her willingness and understanding of innovations and policing, as in trying new strategies; and her relationship skills.”
Mendelson said he was pleased to see the mayor make an internal hire, even though Smith has been with the D.C. police department only briefly.
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“She clearly has some knowledge of the department since she’s been there at a high level for 14 months, and she has knowledge of the District since she’s been here with policing for a couple of decades,” Mendelson said. “She brings the experience of being a senior-level cop.”
Greggory Pemberton, the chairman of the D.C. police union, said in a statement that Smith has a “resume that is worthy of this position” and that she “has the credentials and the experience to stand up to the detrimental policies that have been enacted by the City Council.” The labor group contends that city lawmakers have enacted policing reforms, such as not allowing officers to review body-camera footage before they write reports, that stymie law enforcement. The council has denied those accusations.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Sunday, before the mayor’s announcement, Smith said her sometimes difficult upbringing in Pine Bluff, Ark., pushed her to “not becoming what society had already depicted me to be.” She said her mother was 16 when she married, and had three children by the age of 21. Her father was addicted to drugs, Smith said, and her mother to alcohol. She said her parents divorced when she was young, and she spent a brief stint in foster care.
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Smith said she poured herself into extracurricular activities in high school, becoming a three-time all-American in track. She went on to college, then moved to New York, where she worked as a seasonal park ranger at the Gateway National Recreation Area, which spans New York City and New Jersey. It was there she met a Park Police officer in the horse-mounted unit, her first introduction to law enforcement, which she said later inspired the shift to a department where she spent most of her career.
Smith worked as a social worker on Staten Island to help families avoid the foster-care system, then with the New York City probation agency helping juveniles and later as a corrections officer in Manhattan. She joined the Park Police as a patrol officer in 1998. Smith served in a variety of positions — including in training, leading patrol and handling disciplinary matters — in the three cities where the Park Police has bureaus: San Francisco, New York and D.C.
Her hiring as the D.C. police chief equity officer in 2022 followed a council hearing and a lawsuit filed by 10 current and former Black female officers who asserted that they had faced discrimination and sexual harassment on the force.
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Smith lives in a ward of the city facing acute challenges with poverty and violent crime; together with Ward 7, Ward 8 is one of two political enclaves east of the Anacostia River where nearly two-thirds of this year’s homicides have occurred. At the news conference, she promised to deploy police to crime hot spots and focus on the most violent individuals, saying she brings “a fresh perspective, a different kind of energy, a different level of passion to what I’m going to do.”
Smith noted her upbringing in a troubled home and her journey through foster care, saying her experience could be a model for young women who have faced adversity. Her voice rising at times as she paused after each sentence to drive home a point, Smith said that as a child, “I had no hopes. I had no dreams. They were far beyond my reach.” Now, she said, “I believe that all things are possible.”
“Preach, chief,” someone in the audience shouted.
Bowser announces national search to replace outgoing D.C. police chief
Smith’s confirmation would be a historical first for a Black woman, and it would mean that a police force created by Abraham Lincoln would now be led by a former leader of a law enforcement agency founded by George Washington. The only other permanent female chief for the D.C. force was Cathy L. Lanier, who led the department from January 2007 through September 2016, a long tenure for a modern-day, big-city chief. Sonya Proctor served as interim chief for five months starting in November 1997.
The mayor’s office had divulged little information during the search process, and officials repeatedly declined to comment on candidates, though Kane and Smith had been considered top contenders. The pressure had been mounting for Bowser to choose a permanent leader, as the city struggled with crime and gaps in the mayor’s public safety team.
Twelve people under the age of 18 have been fatally shot this year, a pace that exceeds 2022’s. And a spate of a dozen killings in first nine days of July further added to the city’s sense of insecurity. This month’s victims included a tourist visiting from Kentucky shot on a college campus, a construction worker originally from El Salvador shot at a job site and an Afghan refugee shot while driving a Lyft.
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In addition, the death in May of Linda Harllee Harper has left the city without a permanent director of two other offices focused on public safety in the District: the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Police department staffing has dropped to 3,343 sworn members, down from 3,900 members in 2014.
Bowser, citing a survey, has said residents want a police chief who advocates for public policy that gives greater deference to people affected by violent crime. She and Contee had been critical of some police reforms enacted by the D.C. Council. Bowser has also faced criticism for not clearly articulating a cohesive crime-fighting strategy.
Smith’s previous assignments with D.C. police have not often put her in direct contact with District residents or with council members, and she will need their support to be named permanently to the chief’s job.
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“One of my number one priorities will be to be a very visible, public-facing chief of police,” Smith said in her interview. “I want to hear from the people.”
Smith was appointed chief of the U.S. Park Police in February 2021, becoming the first Black woman to lead the agency founded in 1791. The agency, an arm of the National Park Service, is responsible for patrolling federal parks, such as the Statue of Liberty in New York. The Park Police D.C. protects Washington’s numerous national parks and monuments, including the National Mall. Its officers are frequently seen in the District, and they interact daily with the public and members of the D.C. police force.
Smith said her work with the Park Police required developing crime plans and reacting to violence, though on a smaller scale than a big-city, urban department. Smith said she is ready for that challenge and has a team of experts to examine strategies every day. She also said she backs Bowser’s whole-government approach to fighting crime. “We’re not far off from creating opportunities to ensure the whole government is engaged in initiatives we’d like to launch in the District of Columbia,” Smith said.
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Smith noted Bowser’s new crime bill and the passage this month of an emergency version of the legislation that, among other provisions, makes it easier for judges to detain people charged with violent offenses before trial. She said the legislation “ensures we have a criminal justice system that is going to be effective not just for law enforcement but for the community.” Smith said she will hold her own department just as accountable, “all the way up to my office.”
Smith took over as the Park Police dealt with fallout from the 2017 fatal police shooting of Bijan Ghaisar, an unarmed motorist, in Virginia, and questions over officers’ role in removing peaceful protesters from outside the White House in 2020. She notably had Park Police officers begin wearing body cameras before other federal agencies followed suit. Toward the end of her tenure, the Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report critiquing the state of the dispatch center and alarms that failed, allowing a flood at Arlington National Cemetery to go unaddressed.
The Park Police officers union filed a complaint with the inspector general saying the agency was “engaged in gross negligence and mismanagement at great risk to the safety of the public due to understaffing of sworn personnel.” The labor committee said staffing for the field offices in D.C., New York and San Francisco had dropped from about 639 officers to 494 officers, smaller than the force size in 1975.
D.C. police chief Robert Contee is retiring, will take job with FBI
But the union’s chairman, Kenneth Spencer, said Smith, a former union executive, seemed to be trying to fix the long-standing problems. He said it appears she felt stymied by the complex bureaucracy that runs the department. He blamed the Park Service, not Smith, for many of the department’s problems.
“Pamela Smith probably would have stuck around and had great success,” Spencer said in an interview. “But the National Park Service has no business overseeing an urban law enforcement agency.”
Spencer said that when Smith was named Park Police chief, her first stop was his office. “She definitely tried to lead by example and did whatever she could for the rank and file,” he said.
Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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