Richard Pennington

In 2009, Pennington was a defendant in a lawsuit which alleges that he, along with other senior officers, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to retaliate against a police officer who testified on behalf of a defendant in a bond hearing in federal court. The case, Reid v. City of Atlanta, et al., United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, is pending on cross motions for summary judgment.

Pennington was also a defendant in the federal civil rights lawsuit of Calhoun v. Pennington, filed in November 2009 on behalf of patrons of the Atlanta Eagle, a gay bar that was subject to the Atlanta Eagle police raid in 2009.

Pennington was a candidate in the 2002 New Orleans mayoral election. 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% to 41%. Shortly thereafter, he resigned as New Orleans police chief. In July 2002, Shirley Franklin hired Pennington as the police chief of Atlanta, Georgia. He served in that position until 2010, overseeing a 39% reduction in violent crime in the city.

Pennington served in MPD for 26 years and was eventually promoted to assistant chief. In October 1994, he became police chief in New Orleans, where he 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 United States Department of Justice was threatening to move in and take over the city's law enforcement. On the day of his inauguration, he was notified of an investigation that one of his officers had murdered a witness. Under Pennington, more than 350 officers were disciplined, fired (more than 100) or indicted for misconduct, while one officer would become the second sentenced to death for violent crimes.

Pennington was married from 1974 to 1984 and had one son from this marriage. He remarried in 1992 and had a second son.

At 18, Pennington enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served as a member of the U.S. Air Force Security Police unit during the Vietnam War. He began his career in law enforcement in 1968 as an officer in the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD); his first partner was Donald Graham who became publisher of The Washington Post.

Richard Pennington (November 26, 1946 – May 4, 2017) served as Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1994 to 2002 and Chief of the Atlanta Police Department in Atlanta, Georgia from 2002 to 2010.