The D.C. Council confirmed Pamela Smith as the city’s new police chief in a unanimous vote on Tuesday. Smith, who has served as acting police chief since D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed her in July, is the first Black woman chief of the Metropolitan Police Department and only the second woman to ever lead MPD. She assumes the role at a time when homicides in the District are at levels not seen in two decades – and when retirements, resignations, and recruiting challenges have left the department with its lowest staffing levels in 50 years.

In a D.C. Council meeting ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Judiciary and Public Safety Committee chair and Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto noted D.C.’s challenges with the trauma of violent crime, and the department’s struggles with retention and recruitment. But she said she felt Smith was up to the challenge.

“None of these issues will be easy,” Pinto said. “But after working with acting chief Smith for the last several months … I believe that she has the ability, the experience, and the commitment to do this job well.”

“I know this isn’t an easy job, and I anticipate that the chief and I won’t always see eye to eye,” said At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson ahead of the council’s vote. “With that, I expect that we can agree on this: she’ll be transparent and accessible, forthcoming in her interactions with the council, and that she’ll hold the force to high standards.”

Compared to predecessors like Robert Contee, Peter Newsham, and Cathy Lanier who rose up through the ranks of MPD before becoming chief, Smith is a relative newcomer to the department. She joined MPD in 2022 as its first Chief Equity Officer; in April of this year, she was promoted to Assistant Chief of MPD’s Homeland Security Bureau.

But Smith has extensive law enforcement experience with a different agency: the U.S. Park Police, which polices federal park lands across the country and is headquartered in the District. Smith, a 25-year law enforcement veteran, joined the U.S. Park Police as a patrol officer in San Francisco in 1998. She rose through the ranks of that department and eventually became its police chief in 2021.

Since becoming acting MPD chief this summer, Smith has emphasized her intention to implement more “hot spot policing” — or, in other words, place more officers in the specific areas experiencing the most crime. She has also repeatedly expressed a desire to curb dangerous driving by implementing traffic safety checkpoints. And under her leadership, the department has resumed enforcement of a juvenile curfew. Much of this vision is laid out in an updated strategic plan the department published in September.

Smith joined forces with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to advocate for stricter penalties for gun-related crimes and other measures focused on increasing pre-trial detention and punishment for crimes. Most recently, Bowser unveiled a proposal that would roll back some recent police reforms, create a new crime and set of penalties for organized retail theft, and revive a more tailored version of a “drug free zones” law D.C. had on the books in the 1990s.

Bowser, who selected Smith, threw her full support behind the new chief in a statement following Tuesday’s vote.

“Our community understands the urgency to both drive down crime and build up MPD. Chief Smith hit the ground running in July, sharing her story and vision, making sure she was accessible to residents and businesses, and prioritizing common-sense solutions to long-standing challenges,” Bowser said. “We have work to do, and I am proud to have Chief Smith at the helm of MPD as we continue engaging and working with community stakeholders and our partners on the Council and in the criminal justice system.”

Smith has emphasized that she wants the department to be more visible and accessible to residents. She has said she wants officers and police officials out of their cars and offices more. She also committed to holding a public safety walk in a D.C. neighborhood every week (the policy is perhaps a response to chronic complaints from some residents who feel officers don’t do enough proactive outreach in the neighborhoods they patrol).

Several residents who testified at her confirmation hearing in September said they believed this was actually happening, because they were personally seeing more officers out of their cars in their neighborhoods. And Pinto, when voicing her support for Smith’s confirmation, said she was “particularly impressed with [Smith’s] recognition of the important roles that families and faith leaders have in improving public safety, and her continued effort to reach out to these communities, speak with them, and listen to them on what they need.”

Smith has also said she wants to change MPD’s internal culture, including improving the department’s processes for handling discrimination complaints — an issue that has been the subject of lawsuits from a dozen Black women who say they faced discrimination and retaliation at the department based on their race and gender. She wants to focus on officer wellness programs to combat extreme burnout among the police workforce.

Efforts to improve workplace culture, officers say, are especially important as the department has experienced a net loss of 500 officers since 2020. During her confirmation hearing in September, Smith said she was focused on retention and optimistic about recruiting, telling councilmembers that attrition rates were down 16% this fiscal year compared to last.

She’s so far received a vote of confidence from the D.C. police union; chairman Greggory Pemberton said during her confirmation hearing that the union was “highly optimistic” about her ability to reduce crime.

No D.C. Councilmember has raised serious objections about Smith, either — though some have raised eyebrows about her recent approach to a staffing study the D.C. Auditor is working on.

For the study, which will help determine how many police officers the city needs – a subject of fierce debate — Patterson’s office wants to interview rank and file officers about how they spend their time on the job. But the D.C. police union has blocked their access — and Smith, who is facing criticism from Patterson and others for not doing more to make the officers available, has argued her hands are tied and she can’t overstep the union’s authority.

“It makes a lot of sense for the auditor to talk to police officers, and for the [police union] to assert that that is an unfair labor practice is absurd,” said council chair Phil Mendelson ahead of Tuesday’s vote. “I would hope that the chief – and we are going to confirm – will push back on that.”

In a letter to Smith late last month, Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker also questioned whether Smith should have done more to investigate the officers who fatally shot Bijan Ghaisar, the unarmed 25-year-old killed by U.S. Park Police in 2017; Smith replied that she was not involved in the investigation of Ghaisar’s death or the disciplinary process for the officers who fatally shot him.

On Tuesday, ahead of the vote, Parker threw his support behind Smith – noting that she had taken action to improve robberies in Ward 5.

Other councilmembers also noted that they appreciated Smith’s approach to getting officers out of their cars, her commitment to put police resources in the neighborhoods experiencing the most crime, and the actions she’s taken to collaborate with other D.C. government agencies. But they also said MPD was just one part of reducing crime in the District.

“We all are rooting for her success, but we also recognize that combating the crime that we’re seeing in our communities right now does not rest on her shoulders alone,” said Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen. “Everybody has to step up.”

“I need [Smith] to succeed,” said At-Large Councilmember Robert White. “Because we are in the midst of a crime crisis.”