D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier isn’t afraid to try unconventional tactics to try to curb crime. (One of her secrets: reaching out to urban grandmothers.).
On one of the coldest nights of the year, in one of the poorest sections of Washington, D.C.—the kind of area tourists never see— Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier walks quickly up a path over a scruffy patch of ground and knocks on the door of a low-rise building. Nearly six feet tall and in a full-length navy blue coat, she makes an imposing figure. Her assistant chief, Al Durham, and her staff assistant, Captain Ralph Ennis, both several inches shorter, stand back slightly. The door opens to reveal a compact, wiry, rather tired-looking black woman; behind her, children of various ages sit on two couches, watching, wide-eyed, as one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the nation’s capital proceeds to work the room.“How are you, sweetheart?” Lanier says, hugging the woman. She turns toward the children, grinning—“Look at them . . . so nice and neat and quiet. How do you not love these babies!”
She says a few words to each child. “You behaving yourself?” she teases a five-year-old girl, who stares at her wonderingly. “I don’t want to get any calls, now, ‘Come get Lakeesha; she’s making trouble.’ ” The matriarch, Sheila (who asked that her last name not be used), shakes her head; she has, in fact, made a few calls like that in the year or so she’s known Lanier. The two met when Sheila’s niece was shot. The girl has since recovered, but Lanier has stayed in touch. At Christmas, she brought the kids gifts.
Sheila proudly shows off two framed pictures of herself and Lanier that she keeps on her side tables. “I tell people, ‘Chief Lanier’s my best friend,’ ” she says. She tosses her head, mock tough, one hip jutting out. “I say, ‘You got a problem with that?’ ”
