Ebony: Hail to the chief: Ella M. Bully-Cummings takes charge as Detroit's top cop

IT was a heady sight for the teenage girl in the ticket booth .at Detroit's Mercury Theater in the 1970s--a woman in full police uniform on patrol. "I was amazed," says new Detroit Police Chief Ella M. Bully-Cummings, who remembers that day vividly.

At 19, she joined the force herself and 30 years later (in November 2003), Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick appointed her the Detroit Police Department's first female chief of police in the department's 138-year history. Bully-Cummings leads the 10th-largest police department in the country--with more than 4,700 sworn and civilian employees--and her appointment makes Detroit the largest U.S. city with a female police chief.

Bully-Cummings, 46, says her first task is to "regain the public's trust in the police department." Without that trust, she says, she can't be successful. "No matter what we do in this department, if the public has no confidence in you, you can never be successful, because we can never do it by ourselves," she explains, citing the importance of a professional department. "We must ensure that professional accountability occurs at every layer of this police department and that people are held accountable for their actions."

The new police chief inherits a police department under a cloud. A 2001 U.S. Justice Department investigation resulted in court orders placing the department under the supervision of U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr. until 2008. The agreement also called for a 16-member team of officials to monitor progress on reforms mandated by the U.S. Justice Department. But even with that level of supervision and the resignation of the former chief, this veteran police executive refuses to be intimidated. "We are facing some major challenges," she says. "We are under two consent decrees and we have to revise substantial policies to conform to the mandates of our decrees." However, she adds that in the end, the department will be the model police agency in this country.

Bully-Cummings is a department veteran who rose through the ranks. She began walking a beat before being promoted to sergeant in 1987, lieutenant in 1993 and to commander in 1995. While working as a police officer, she earned a bachelor of arts degree and a juris doctor cum laude from Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University in 1998. In 1999 she took an early retirement from the department and was working as a labor lawyer when, in 2002, the mayor and former chief persuaded her to return to the department as assistant chief of police, overseeing risk management, budget and payroll, crime analysis, the forensic lab, fleet management and several other areas.

Being a leader, she says, means making unpopular decisions. "You have to be willing to be a leader and to go against the grain," she explains. "When you come up through the ranks, you develop friendships or relationships with people, and as the chief of police you have to set those aside. You'll roll out mandates that some people may not want to embrace, but it's in the best interest of the police department and the best interest of the community."

In this job, Bully-Cummings says she's willing to take the heat, noting that she has a reputation of being tough, but fair.

And she's no stranger to tough times, first facing poverty while growing up and later discrimination when she joined the force in the early days of women on the beat.

One of eight children, the chief was born in Japan, the daughter of an African-American serviceman and his Japanese bride. She moved to the United States when she was a year old, and during an interview, told a Detroit newspaper that she grew up poor, at one time her entire family "lived in a one-bedroom apartment." She says her parents encouraged her, her six sisters and a brother to excel. "My Dad came from Mississippi to Detroit with his parents," she says of her father, who died in 1998. "He encouraged all of us to get our education and to pursue whatever it was in life that we wanted. [When it came to his daughters], he made us believe there were no limitations on what we could be. He was that way [with us] all of his life."

The chief says her father prepared her for the difficulties that came during the early days after she joined the police force. "There was discrimination," she says, pointing out that male officers routinely would refuse to work with female officers. "They would call in sick, or come to work, report in and go home sick."

Even though being a police officer originally was thought of as "a man's job," Bully-Cummings says it never occurred to her that she couldn't perform as well as a man. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the challenge," she says. "I have never pursued any job that didn't challenge me."

Since the chief's selection as top cop, her family has been very supportive. She is married to Atty. William Cummings, a retired Detroit police commander who is a director of security for a Detroit casino. "I'm thrilled for her," he says. "She is the right person for the job at the right time." Although the couple have no children, she is active with her four nephews and niece and says she wants to make the concerns of senior citizens and children a top priority on her professional agenda.

"I'm glad that young girls can see me, because this is achievable," she says of her job. "If I am able to accomplish this, there is absolutely nothing that they cannot accomplish if they set their path. We have to make an investment in our children."

Chief Bully-Cummings' investment to succeed has taken her from the police beat to the police chief's office. For her, it was a narrow, winding road to the top.