Hail To The (New) Chief

Correspondent Bob Orr profiles the Washington's new police chief on tonight's CBS Evening News -- and he's promising some surprises. -- Ed.

(CBS)

I'll warn you right up front the new Washington, D.C. police chief may not be exactly what you might expect. The new chief is tall, good with a gun in tight spots, and she suffers no fools.

But, the incoming chief is also a 39-year-old single mother who now lives with and takes care of her own mom.

It seems little about Cathy Lanier fits the "top cop" stereotype, and her career track has not been textbook. For starters she dropped out of high school and had a baby at 15.

But, somewhere on the road to despair Lanier did a U-turn. She earned her GED and then for a double encore received two masters' degrees. Now, she's preparing to take the reins of a 38-hundred member police force charged with protecting the Nation's Capital and one of America's prime terror targets.

We'll save rest of her story for tonight's CBS Evening News. But, as I say in the story "prepare to be disarmed". Cathy Lanier is not your father's police chief.

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