In January 2007, when former Mayor Adrian Fenty tapped Cathy Lanier as the District’s first female chief of police, she got off to a rocky start. Homicides increased 7.7 percent, from 169 in 2006 to 181 in 2007, and continued their upward trajectory with 186 in 2008. This was a far cry from 1991, the year after Lanier joined the Metropolitan Police Department at the peak of the blood-letting, when 479 people were murdered. But it did raise concerns that she was not up to the job.