MANY DOORS OPEN TO LEAD BACK HOME
Patty Patterson
 

A punster would say that Chief Patty Patterson SLED from Maine to South Carolina. A South Carolina press agent would say it was fate that a charming woman with a voice that could have led to a professional singing career would make her mark in the home of the Iris Festival, a world-renown festival featuring fine arts, concerts, sporting events, and children’s entertainment. And criminal justice professionals would say that it was only right that a self-described “Air Force brat” who was born in Bangor, Maine, would return to her family’s southern roots to become the first African-American and the first woman chief of the Sumter, South Carolina, Police Department. 

When Sumter’s city manager announced at a city council meeting on April 3, 2001, that Patty Jaye Garrett Patterson had been selected chief of the Sumter, S.C., Police Department she was hearing her title for the first time. She had not been told that she was the city’s choice to take over from Chief Harold Johnson, who had hired Patterson in 1991, luring her away from a career of “firsts” at the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED), where she had been the first black woman to work as a field agent and the first female member of the SWAT team.

Patterson’s career path, like her many childhood moves, requires keeping one’s finger on the map. She was one of three finalists for a job for which only inside candidates were interviewed, but just as she had lived in seven states before she reached the eighth grade, had worked in three law enforcement agencies, and been an instructor at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Academy before joining the Sumter PD. It wasn’t supposed to be that complicated. Her father, an Air Force master sergeant, was able to get his family back to the south (he was originally from Virginia) while working in Communication Intelligence and Aircraft Maintenance. In 1973, he, Patty’s mother, Patty, and her two sisters and two brothers moved to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, where Patty attended middle school and high school. 

“I loved to sing,” she recalled, “and was blessed with a voice and the talent to do so,” but her parents didn’t see that as a stable lifestyle for their already-much-traveled daughter. Thinking it terms of a more-traditional career, her parents, particularly her father, wanted her to be a nurse, one of the few careers readily open to women when the now-45+-year-old was about to enter college. They compromised on her seeking a degree in psychology at the University of South Carolina in Sumter, but Patty’s heart wasn’t in her studies and her grades reflected her lack of enthusiasm. 

A Job Leads To a Career 

Her first job set her on the policing path. Admittedly sheltered living on military bases in a well-ordered and strict household, Patty was shocked at what she saw as a traffic and warrant clerk in the Magistrate’s Court office of Judge Kitty Herbert. Although Judge Herbert had been appointed only two weeks earlier than Patterson, she taught the self-described naïve young woman much about the world outside military bases. That people were routinely involved in crime was something she had never known. “Aside from malls and family outings, I was sheltered. It was one thing to grow up reading Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belton and watching “The Mod Squad” and other police shows, but I soon realized I knew very little about the world,” Patterson recalled, indicating that her work in the court led to her considering the law enforcement field more seriously. The chief, who is religious and often speaks in near-Biblical phrases, described the time working for Judge Herbert as the beginning “of an awesome journey for what has become my mission and passion.”

Despite family objections, she decided to apply to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Department. Hired as a juvenile investigator in 1981, she graduated near the top of her police academy class and quickly built an excellent reputation as the department’s first female deputy sheriff. It was the first of her many firsts. Despite the uniqueness of her position, much of her work as a juvenile investigator fulfilled a traditional role that women deputies and policewomen had filled for almost 100 years. She tracked runaways, investigated crimes by and against juvenile, and was on-call for cases that involved juveniles, particularly young girls. 

Not specifically looking to break barriers, but to have a career that she could enjoy, Patterson soon found another opening that moved her to a different level of law enforcement. After two years with the sheriff’s department she became an instructor at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. She moved to Columbia, and became the first African-American woman instructor at the academy. She quickly took on responsibilities that were less traditional than a juvenile investigator. In addition to instructing on juvenile and sexual assault case investigations, crisis intervention, ethics, and report writing, she became a defensive driving and firearms instructor, and although she says modestly only that she shoots “pretty well,” she would later use the experience to become one of few women SWAT officers. 

Another door opened, quite literally, when J.P. Strom, then chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, sent Patterson’s supervisor to knock on her classroom door to ask that she stop into his office at headquarters. The visit resulted in an offer to her of a position as a SLED special agent. Seeing an opportunity to expand her range, she accepted and spent the next six years investigating sex crimes, child abuse and neglect cases, and a variety of other criminal and administrative matters. In those years she also was assigned to executive protection of such diverse public figures as then-Sen. Strom Thurman and Oprah Winfrey. It was at SLED that she became the first woman assigned to SWAT, which gave her an opportunity to take advantage of specialized training in weaponry and a higher level of special protection techniques. Patterson is one of very few of the approximately 200 women chiefs who was an active member of a SWAT team. Although she had been a firearms officer, she was concerned whether she would be accepted by the men because “I did not live, drink, sleep, and play with firearms” as most of the guys did. Although a few of the older officers never got comfortable with her presence, she said that the others eventually came to see her as just another member of the team. 

“I guess,” she recalled,” that my personality of just being myself and eager to learn assisted. I wasn’t afraid to say that I wasn’t the best, nor did I pretend to be something I wasn’t. I was ‘a girl,’ so what? I was born a girl and would remain one until I died, so that wasn’t going to change.” She also recalled that when she repelled from buildings and went face first over the ledge, a number of men were scared and a few refused to go. The difference is that no one remembered the guys who refused, but they would have remembered if Patty had refused. She didn’t though, and for “about three or four years” was the only female member of the statewide team until another woman joined her.

Returning To Sumter

Her parents, who she still refers to as Moma and Poppa and tends to talk about in the present tense although they passed away in the 1990s, were proud that she continued to sing at civil, social, and church events and although Poppa was particularly proud of her firearms and SWAT accomplishments, both were adamant that she complete her education. She returned to USC and, not distracted by an early romance and knowing that not only her time but her own money was on the line, her grades improved and she completed associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. She would later add a master’s in criminal justice.

In 1990, Patty returned to live in Sumter, becoming the first minority field agent in the Pee Dee Region (as her home area is known), although she continued to travel statewide. Two pivotal events occurred in conjunction with her return. Within a year she was recruited by Chief Harold Johnson, the man she would eventually succeed, to join the Sumter PD as a major, taking over the operations bureau and becoming the number two person in the department. Although she was known in Sumter by police and civilians alike and was well-known statewide in law enforcement circles, she was an outsider to the department and the first African-American woman or man to hold that rank. Once again, a door had opened, although her first response was to be sure Chief Johnson was interested in her, because a prior conversation with City Manager Talmadge Tobias had led her to believe the position was not really open to a woman. Possibly she misunderstood, because it was Tobias, still the city manager, who ten years later appointed her the chief of police.

In a way, Patty’s move to the police department was also coming home; the police department and the sheriff’s department share the City-County Law Enforcement Center in a unique blending of communications, records, and administration under a single roof. Her selection as chief also solidified her continuing connection with the military. Sumter’s large military base is an integral part of the community, and Chief Patterson works closely with base personnel. She has been Honorary Commander of the 20th Security Forces Squadron since 2001. In May 2005 she joined them in celebrating that the base was not listed among those slated for decommissioning.

Life Is More than Work

Chief Patterson’s personal life also settled down once she returned to Sumter. Wendell Patterson, the man she would marry, saw her on a telecast from home in 1991 when he was in Saudi Arabia, a soldier far from Marion, S.C., who was watching a woman from home with a beautiful singing voice. After he returned, Wendell arranged a date with Patty through a mutual friend and the attraction up close was even stronger than via long-distance. The “fix-up” led to marriage and in 1996 their only child, Anastasia, was born. 

Wendell, employed by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, has provided strong support for Patty. He understands the importance of her career and accepts the time-constraints it has placed on her, including the three months in 1994 when she was in Quantico, Va., to attend the FBI National Academy and the time she devoted to obtaining a master’s in criminal justice from the University of South Carolina in 1999. Wendell attends many police conferences with Patty, and has become a regular amongst the spouses at NAWLEE conferences. Although he is often mistaken for the law enforcement officer in the family, he finds being the “trailing spouse” a relaxing and enjoyable way to support Patty’s business and networking activities. 

Chief Patterson describes her management style as team oriented and personal. Since becoming chief she has taken the department through a full-dress inspection in July 2002 that has become an annual events, and she has overseen the department’s re-accreditation by the Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).

The one-time reluctant student who learned to love learning has also learned to emulate what she has seen in departments around the world. A trip to Switzerland as part of a Rotary International exchange led her to police stations and jails throughout the country. She was impressed by the cleanliness and pleasant atmosphere of the facilities, and became convinced that better facilities at home would lead to better motivation. Risking being labeled what she called a “nutty female, a clean-freak, or a woman with a need to re-decorate,” when she returned home she assigned a lieutenant who was a former military drill sergeant to put together the first department inspection, which included full dress uniforms and ceremonies honoring officers and civilians. She also rolled up her sleeves to help with painting the halls and offices of police headquarters. 

Throughout her career, Chief Patterson has been willing to take chances and to ask why. She attributes these qualities in part to the many moves her family made while she was a child, leading to her willingness make a number of career moves on the way to her present position.