51, Cleveland Police Chief
Chief Dorothy Todd didn’t grow up dreaming she would become a police officer. She figured she knew what police looked like, and it wasn’t her. “You thought it was a man,” she says. “You need size, and you need strength, and you need all these things.”
She’s slim, with a disarming smile. But in the late ’90s, the single mother was working several jobs; at a gas station, cleaning houses, things like that. Then, in 1998, she took a job as a traffic controller for the city of Cleveland, part of the traffic unit of Cleveland Police. Looking at the officers, she thought If they could do it, I could do it. She became an officer in 2000. Police work offered full-time employment with good benefits and a retirement that would pay more than she had made before. That allowed her to buy her first car and house and put her daughter through Catholic school.
“I could support my daughter, and I could live a better life, so that’s why I took the police test,” she says. “Even on the challenging days, it’s a very rewarding job and a very rewarding career.”
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She became a police officer out of necessity, but it turns out she loves the work. Over 25 years, she’s worked her way up the ranks: sergeant in 2012, lieutenant in 2017, commander of the Third District in 2019, and chief of police in February. She’s only the city’s second female police chief, and she’s currently the only woman on command staff.
She’s used to being the only woman in rooms filled with men. Many people struggle to accept women as police officers, let alone as the chief. “I find I have to justify myself more, explain myself more,” she says. She’s hoping to change that, though, because female police officers bring a different perspective to the job than men do.
“We can get out of things by talking rather than fighting,” she says. “We can get someone into compliance a lot easier just by listening, having that compassion.”
Clevelanders have heard plenty about how policing could be improved, but Chief Todd says she’s “not afraid to make changes.”
“We have really great men and women,” she says, “but sometimes those who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, it was not always addressed and not always talked about.”
She’s also hoping to change the public’s perception of the police. She says police often deal with people at their worst, and there is little understanding or empathy for the traumatic nature of their work.
“You’re taking somebody who went to academy for seven months, and you’re expecting them to function at this super high level all the time, never make a mistake,” she says. “They’re just normal people, and they’re just going to make mistakes, but they’re so needed in the community.”
Take what she calls “just a basic story” of a typical day. Nearing the end of their shift, Todd and her partner were on patrol when a man told them he saw a dead body. The man said he couldn’t remember where the body was but could show them. So, he got in the back of their cruiser and pointed the way. They arrived at a wooded spot and shined the spotlight until they were able to see a pair of feet sticking out. A young girl had been killed. Throughout the investigation, the man who alerted them to the body ended up being the one who committed the crime.
She called this, twist ending and all, “an average day in police work.” She’s full of stories. So many, in fact, that when I ask about her medals for Distinguished Service and Heroism she can’t quite recall which commendation came for which event. Fortunately all of it is documented. She was given Medals for Distinguished Service for wrestling a knife away from a suicidal woman and for capturing a man who had led police on a chase. She received her Medal of Heroism for disarming a drunk man who was threatening to shoot his girlfriend and her young son.
“If you sat and listened to some stories people have, you would probably wonder why do they continue to do that,” she says. “You continue to do it because (of) the impact that you have, how you can see that you’ve changed somebody’s life.”
It’s important to have hobbies in such a high stress job, though all she does is work and hang out with her family.
“That’s all I have time for,” she admits.
Her hobbies are her three grandchildren and her dogs, miniature dachshunds named Piper and Beast.
“They say pets are very therapeutic,” she says.
She doesn’t drink and insists that she is “just a regular person.” She laments the fact that she is now a recognizable public figure who can no longer leave the house in pajamas, not even to go the emergency room in the middle of the night. She can disarm a violent drunk man but being recognized at Target made her want to “curl up and die.”
“I just kind of mind my own business,” she says. “I love to work, and I love my family.”
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