Pittsburgh police Detective Dorothea Leftwich didn’t plan out her newest assignment.
Leftwich, a mother of three known by many as “Dea,” patrolled neighborhoods and worked stints with narcotics and burglary units after joining Pittsburgh’s force in 2007. For the past 12 years, she’s been working full-time in the bureau’s Office of Municipal Investigations.
An email that landed in Leftwich’s inbox this spring, however, propelled the Erie County native into Pittsburgh history: she was recently appointed the first Black woman to serve on the bureau’s mounted unit…