By SUSAN JONES
When Holly Lamb first came to Pittsburgh, she thought she’d be here a few years. Now nearly 28 years later, she’s chief of the Pitt Police force that she’s worked her way up in since 1996.
“She is so integral to the culture of collaboration and engagement that that we’ve been building (at Pitt Police),” said David DeJong, senior vice chancellor for business and operations. “It’s a great story too. Three percent of police departments are led by a woman, and now Pitt is one of those. She’s just done a great job and she’s just a respected leader there.”
“Holly is the right person because she is an experienced and respected law enforcement leader who cares about the well-being of Pitt’s students, staff and faculty,” said Ted Fritz, vice chancellor for public safety and emergency management. “This is evidenced by her many years at Pitt where she has helped make the campus safer, while always seeking valuable input from the community to assist in that mission.”
Lamb became the first woman to lead Pitt Police when James Loftus retired at the end of 2023 after 10 years in the position. Lamb has held several positions in the department and even met her husband when they both worked for Pitt Police. Randy Lamb left in 1997 for the Wilkins Township police department, where he is now chief.
After graduating from Ohio Dominican University in Columbus with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, Holly Lamb, a Cleveland native, opted to go to the Allegheny County Police Academy in Pittsburgh in 1995 instead of taking a job she’d been offered with the Cincinnati Police. She was hired by Pitt Police straight out of the academy.
She’d been here a couple years when she started thinking, “Campus police, is that really what you want to do?” She stuck with Pitt and moved up through the ranks from patrol officer to the bike unit to a plainclothes position and then sergeant in 2000.
“In that supervisory role, I learned a lot, because you learn from good supervisors,” Lamb said. “You learn what to do, what not to do, how to be like certain people, how not to be like certain people.”
In 2006, she was promoted to lieutenant. Lamb said she enjoyed that job and felt like she had the respect of those around her.
“ ‘Way back when,’ being a female in police work, you had to kind of prove yourself, not only prove yourself physically that you can do the job, but you had to make sure you knew the job,” she said. “Being a female, you were always tested on whether you knew that job or not. I really tried to go to a lot of training, and being a lieutenant on the shift, I had people coming to me constantly asking me questions.”
From that job, she moved to an administrative lieutenant position in 2011, which gave her experience in overseeing training and hiring.
When the deputy chief position opened up, people kept asking her if she was going to apply, but she knew they were looking for a candidate from outside Pitt.
When Loftus took the job in 2013, Lamb was immediately impressed. “We weren’t in a good place here. We didn’t really have good leadership, I didn’t feel, at the time and he came in and he really changed his place around. … Everybody respected him and everybody knew his background.”
Loftus came to Pitt after 20 years as director in the Miami-Dade Police Department. He was named chief when Tim Delaney retired in late 2013 after 12 years in that position. Among Loftus’ first actions as chief was to name Lamb as deputy chief. She skipped over the commander position — one of the few jobs, along with motorcycle officer, that she hasn’t held at Pitt Police.
Lamb said Loftus asked her early on why she didn’t apply for the deputy chief position. “I knew they were hiring from the outside, there’s just no way,” she told him, and Loftus replied, “ ‘You know you could be in this position and run this place.’ I was like, I don’t know about that. And it was just kind of funny. I learned a lot from him in 10 years.”
Before Loftus came here, Lamb said, “it was almost like nobody wanted to do their job. They did their job, but I think that they were held back a little bit. And when (Loftus) came here he emphasized, ‘Just go out and communicate to people; go do your job. You’re just like anybody else. Just because you wear a badge doesn’t mean you’re different than anybody else.’ He kept telling everybody that and I think that really made a big deal for this department to keep going and moving in the right direction.”
What’s ahead?
“Everybody keeps saying, ‘Oh, what are you going to change?’,” Lamb said. “I don’t want to change things just for the sake of changing. I think we’re in a good place.”
One of the biggest changes Lamb has seen in her time at Pitt is the police have learned how to communicate with the students, faculty and staff, and she wants to keep improving on that.
“We didn’t do that before,” she said. “I feel like people would go out there and just kind of do their thing. And it was almost like they had blinders on. They wouldn’t talk to anybody. (Now) I feel like we’re out there and we’re talking to people. … That’s a big thing to me is to communicate with people and to keep that line of communication going.”
Lamb would like to see the department’s community programs unit reach out more to student groups and Pitt’s resident assistants and directors, “to try to get the students more involved with us, so they know we’re just like everybody else.”
She wants to continue to see that open line of communication improve and extend to Pitt’s neighbors, Carlow and Carnegie Mellon universities. “I feel like we don’t talk them to them as much as we probably should,” Lamb said. “We only talk to them when there’s something going on. But for me, that’s something that I want to make sure that we continue to do, even with the city of Pittsburgh.”
That communication also plays a role when protests are planned in and around the Oakland campus. Lamb said they try to reach out to the protest organizers just to see what they have planned, and “I don’t think there’s ever been a time there wasn’t a good conversation.” The chief said the Pitt Police’s goal during protests is to make sure everyone is safe, while allowing groups to protest.
Pitt’s regional campus police departments also fall under Lamb’s control, which she says “is good for us.” Commander Andy Redman oversees the regional campus police, but each school has its own lieutenant. All Pitt Police now follow the same policies, wear the same uniforms and have the same cars.
One of Lamb’s biggest challenges is getting the department up to full staff. There are currently about 85 officers, and they are trying to hire 10 more. The department has implemented a program where they pay for candidates to go through the police academy. Previously, it was a prerequisite to have that training before applying. So far they’ve received some applications for the regional campuses and hope to get more, but are struggling in today’s competitive job market.
In addition, a national search is being launched to find a new deputy chief.
She’s also continues to work on communication issues brought to light after a hoax shooting incident last spring at Hillman Library, where alerts to the Pitt community were significantly delayed. One of her duties as deputy chief was “to make sure that we do something to fix this.” That involved constant training, which is ongoing, and hiring communication supervisors who oversee the dispatchers. They also worked with Pitt IT to make sure there were no issues with the emergency notification system.
Overall, Lamb said, “Pitt’s been good to me. I’ve learned a lot here. … I guess I was meant to be here, because everything happens for a reason. I was meant to turn down the city of Cincinnati. My daughter goes (Pitt) Greensburg, so that’s great. My son, he’s 14, but he’s all about coming to Pitt main. He wants to play baseball here, so we’ll see what happens.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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