On the morning before the biggest security event of her career, Cathy Lanier, Washington DC’s chief of police, will oversee a mass swearing in of 4,000 police officers who have come from all over the country to lend a hand to the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department during the Inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Coming from cities such as Miami, Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and Savannah, police departments from coast to coast have answered the call and have sent approximately 4,000 officers from 90 law-enforcement agencies. 

Police assistance has even streamed in from as far away as Seattle, where, according to Captain Mike Sanford, so many officers volunteered for the trip that they had to resort to pulling names out of a hat.  According to one deputy sheriff in Savannah, the excitement among the incoming patrolmen and women is running high: "The fact that you’re there for this particular event is just huge and everyone’s excited about it … To be a part of it and say I was on the security detail for the Inauguration is something I can live with forever and tell my kids and grandkids."

Chief Lanier is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Drug Unit Commanders Academy. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Management from Johns Hopkins University, and a Master’s Degree in National Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. She is certified at the technician level in Hazardous Materials Operations. She’s obviously a renaissance woman!

She’s a webizen, as well, and last week conducted an online chat at the Washington Post, where she answered questions from residents about Inauguration logistics. Read it here.