Richard Pennington
FameRank: 3

"Richard Pennington" served as Atlanta Chief of Police/Chief of the Atlanta Police Department in Atlanta, Georgia from 2002 to 2009. From 1994 to 2002 he served as Superintentendent of the New Orleans Police Department in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Pennington grew up in Gary, Indiana. He began his career in law enforcement in 1968 as an officer in the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, where he was eventually promoted to Assistant Chief. In 1994, he was hired as Superintendent in New Orleans, and was credited with major improvements in what had been a poorly regarded and corruption-ridden police department. In fact, conditions in the department were so bad before Pennington arrived, the U.S. Justice Department was threatening to move in and take over the city's law enforcement.

Pennington was a candidate in the New Orleans mayoral election, 2002. Although he led in most pre-election polls, he finished second to Ray Nagin in the first round of voting, and lost the runoff election to Nagin by a margin of 59% - 41%. Shortly thereafter, he resigned as New Orleans police chief. In July 2002, he was hired as the chief in Atlanta, until his resignation in December 2009.

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He just said he was the person.

He eluded us for a long period of time.

It appears as though they stopped in Atlanta, coming from the north. The shooting occurred about 12:15 a.m. on the 21st, and then eight hours later another shooting occurred in Montgomery, Alabama.

We wouldn't be able to share information.

I've had some pretty devastating things happen to me throughout my police career, but I think this is probably one of the most devastating events.

I know now that we have taken a very dangerous person that's a serial murder suspect off the streets of Atlanta, and I'm sure the citizens of Louisiana are proud as well that we've taken this very dangerous person off our streets.

Critique this entire incident and see what we did right; what we did wrong; admit the things that we did wrong; and then try to make sure we rectify those things in the future.

We missed him on two different opportunities, ... One, he was at a homeless shelter, we were told. We missed him shortly there. And then another hotel that we arrived [at] about two hours later, and we were told that we just missed him.