WASHINGTON ( DC News Now ) — Pamela Smith has been a consummate history maker.
In 2021, Smith was chosen as the first-ever African American female of the United States Park Police. Then she resigned a year later to take a job with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) as its chief equity officer.
Last year, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser made Smith the first Black female police chief in the history of the department.
DC Council confirms Pamela Smith as police chief
For the law enforcement veteran who grew up in a troubled home in Pine Bluff, Ark., with a mother that struggled with alcohol and ended up in foster care, Smith has been making Black history for years.
“I certainly didn’t see the path of becoming the first African American chief in the agency’s 230-year history,” Smith told DC News Now.
Smith said she has had mentors – several big-city police chiefs – who have been encouraging her to chase her dreams. And they were instrumental in her applying to be police chief.
“They were like, ‘you can do it,’” she said. “You have what it takes.”