New DPD Deputy Chief Driven By Personal Tragedy To Fight Crime

DALLAS (CBSDFW) - Motivated by a personal tragedy, Dallas' new leader, Chief Renee Hall, says she is driven to fight crime.

Her father, Detroit Police Officer Ulysses Brown was murdered, when she was only six months old.

"My father not being there meant the same thing as every other child throughout the city of Detroit or the world. Growing up without a father, it has an impact," she said in an interview last November with WXYZ-TV. 

Officer Brown was shot and killed on duty, while investigating a prostitute believed to be setting up her customers, according to Hall.

"Individuals were either coming robbed or dead," she told a reporter.

Hall's mother raised her and her two siblings, emphasizing the value of education.

In a video posted to the Detroit Police Department's Facebook in 2015, she confessed her childhood dream was to be a lawyer.

"I never even thought about being in the police, but a mentor in graduate school kind of forced my hand," she said.

Hall joined the Detroit Police force almost twenty years ago with the goal of being a deputy police chief one day.

"…Just high enough to command making a lot of decisions, but low enough not to have all the headaches that the chief has," she said in the 2015 interview with a city intern.

Today, she is aiming higher, preparing to become the city of Dallas' first female police chief. Being a woman in male dominated field, Hall has admitted, is a challenge.

While men are physically stronger, though, she says women bring needed balance and their own strengths to a police force.

"We are smarter," she told the intern, laughing. "We bring a sense of calmness. We bring a sense of nurturing to the profession."

Hall still hopes for answers in her father's murder, but she says she now channels her anger into passion for police work.

"I believe I'm finishing what my dad started," she said.

Hall is scheduled to begin work September 5.