YouSaid · the spoken record

Cathy Lanier

lines on the record
98
first
2026-04-23
most recent
2026-04-23
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “But remember, my driver in life, Dim, if you think about this, and Harasser's work this way, my goal in life is to take care of my son. I'm a single mom. And after he knew I made a complaint, he was threatening my job. He was really making it very difficult for me to come to work. Like it was terrifying to come to work. And I was fighting for my job. I can't lose my job. I have a son to take care of, and I'm not going to lose my job because somebody wants to be a bully. And that's the motivation. It was terrible. I was sick to my stomach every day. I was going in the bathroom and throwing up. I mean, it was when I got to work and just every time I heard his voice on the radio, it was terrible for me. But I also couldn't afford to lose my job. I was not going to let somebody forced me out of my goal. And that, you know, I had a son to take care of. So I couldn't afford that. I was going to fight until I knew that I was safe.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Because that lieutenant was very well connected at the time to the chief of police. So very friendly with the chief of police, that whole administration. So I said, that's fine. I wasn't thinking long-term longevity and promot”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I will tell you this now everything above the rank of captain in the police department is appointed, right? Civil service exam for sergeant lieutenant and captain. After captain, it's appointed by the chief of police. You're an appointed rank. And you're also at will. So if you can get appointed to inspector or commander, but you also can get demoted with no cause either. So I remember one of my mentors, another mentor, a lieutenant. There was a captain and a lieutenant that were both good mentors to me there. The captain of the two mentors I had there pulled me aside after this complaint and said, you did the right thing. He's been harassing women here for years.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Where do you want to be transferred to? And it's like, I don't want to be transferred. I didn't do anything wrong. Don't transfer me. Transfer him. I didn't do anything. He later had several other complaints come forward and eventually was terminated for a severe case with another multiple other subordinates later on.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Always say to women, you don't realize when you're in these scenarios decent men that observe these things going on, they don't like it either. And those other men that I was working with, they didn't like it either. And some of them, this guy had harassed their girlfriends or their wives. You know what I mean? So that really made an impression on me that so many of the men that I work with stood up and did the right thing there. So when it was time for him to be disciplined for this, when we got to trial board, I walk into trial board for the discipline to come down and they told me they had to drop the whole case and throw it out. I'm like, why? What happened? And they said, well, we missed the 90 days. And the district of Columbia, you have to bring discipline within 90 days of the day that you knew or should have known about the misconduct. They said on this investigation till day 91 and then turned it in. So literally after all of that, they threw the case out and they said, well, we'll just transfer.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “The person who was doing my investigation called him and told him that I had made a complaint. So I had to go back to work in that environment. One of the most violent areas of Washington, DC, from that day forward, he prohibited me from partnering with anybody. He refused to allow me to ride with anybody else. He continued the harassment. He came into my office the next day, shut the door and said, look, I know what you're doing. You need to back down. You need to withdraw this complaint. You're not going to win. Anyway, long story short, they sustained the complaint. So the investigation, all the witnesses I listed, they were all men. I didn't think any of them would tell the truth. Nobody wanted us to go against this higher ranking person. And every single one of them told the truth. They all wrote down what they saw. They all not only talked about what they saw him doing to me, but what they saw him doing to other women. And I was just shocked.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Nobody else is going to stand up for you. And so when he said that, it clicked, and you're like, he's trying to say either you're going to allow this to keep happening or you don't want it to happen. You do something about it. So after that conversation, I filed this complaint. I list all the people who had witnessed because my harasser made no effort to hide it. He made horrible comments and grabbed women in front of others all the time. So I listed 17 different witnesses and they did the investigation and literally I left the EEO office. I went to court. I had court that day and I was in court 20 minutes after I left the EEO office for following my complaint. My harasser, the lieutenant, texted me on my beeper. We had beepers back then and said, I know what you're doing and you're not going to get away with this. So it was supposed to be confidential, but within 20 minutes of leaving the office.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Just not letting me do my job constant harassment, calling me on the radio, bringing me to the office, make me drive him somewhere, things like that. So I finally, after several times of asking him to leave me alone, I finally filed a sexual harassment complaint. He had put his hand on me several times. So I filed a complaint. And I remember going down to the EEO office and filing a complaint. And they asked me to write a list of anybody who would ever, first of all, before I went down, my partner, one of my fellow sergeants who was a blackmail officer, said to me one day, We were out riding together, the lieutenant had called me in and my partner said to me, the other sergeant said, how long are you going to let this keep going on before you do something about it? And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, I hope you're writing this stuff down. I hope you're going to say something to somebody because this can't go on like this. So the first, again, a man, not a woman, another male police officer basically said to me, if you're not going to stand up for yourself.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “So I had a lieutenant when I made surge and I was sent over to Southeast Washington. I was patrolling in southeast. I had really a good squad. I worked nights, permanent nights. So I had a lieutenant that was harassing me and some other women, but me pretty intensely calling me on the radio, forcing me to drive him around, putting me in his cruiser with him, making me drive him around.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “And I established myself as an officer early on as a worker. Like, I came to work, I did my job. I don't need anybody to do me any favors. You know, I need to look out for me. I don't need a partner. I can ride by myself. I'm good. Once I made sergeant, though, the harassment got worse. I had a lieutenant that was really, really sexually harassing. I mean, not just me, but several women, physical harassment. I mean, like getting you in a midnight shift in a sergeant's office and closing the door and putting her hands on you and things like that. You know, I remember saying to my boyfriend at the time, I was like, you know what? I got real thick skin. I can take all kinds of comments. I don't mind any of that stuff. But I'm not going to let people put their hands on me. That's just not going to happen. So harassment was pretty intense. It was a really tough environment.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Is a really tough environment when I first got there. There were a few days in the very beginning when I was an officer that the good thing about the officer, like when I got there, the department was 85, probably percent African American. The city was largely 89% African American, so largely African American, very few, certainly very few white females. It was very few females. So I would think we were about 11% women on the Department of 5,000, 5,200, I think, when I came on size of our department. So very few women, very few white women. It's hard to think back to 1990. Sexual harassment was commonplace. Nobody talked about it. Nobody cared about it. It wasn't an issue. It just happened every day and you just, you know, you work through it. I grew up with two older brothers, so I kind of knew how to navigate it a little bit. You know, I listened, my brothers gave me advice how to deal with some of this. The good thing is as an officer, you very quickly establish yourself.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Over to radio call for me, I go down and help him work through that situation, and I help teach them how to manage these situations. So your first line supervision, you're right there every day on the street with the 911 responders, and you're helping them manage those calls and you're helping them manage how to solve those problems. You're signing a rest paperwork. You don't have to be making a rest. Wait a minute. Let me look at all of the probable cause you have here before we put this person in handcuffs or if you got the person in handcuffs when I get on the scene. Let's review what you got here before we take somebody to jail. Let's make sure we've met the DC code. We know that you've got a legitimate arrest here. So you start kind of managing a small group and then the next level is manager. Then you become a lieutenant and then they give you like 40 people to manage and you start making little bigger decisions. Now you're scheduling your assigning, you're working through warrants and things like that. So with a very gradual progression.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Is one of the things that police departments do right now that I'm in the private sector, I wish the private sector had similar structures. So once you make sergeant, you start as a first line supervisor. So they'll give you eight to ten people that you're responsible for. So you're the squad sergeant. Like you have a squad that's assigned to you, those eight to ten people, they report to you. So I'm responsible for making sure when we pop at a roll call, when we hit the street, my squad of eight is doing what they're supposed to do. They're clear in their”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I was like, all right, I was a little intimidated. I'm like, okay. So I took that sergeant's test. I was eligible for sergeant at three years. I took the first sergeants to test. There was 890 people that were eligible that we took the test altogether. After the written exam, you go to an assessment phase where you do a bunch of oral interviews and exercises and paper exercises. And I end up coming out number 13 out of 890 for that. So I got promoted right away. a very young sergeant, 26 years old, three years on the job. I had a master patrol officer working for me that had more years on the job than I was of old. He had 26 years on the job. I was 26 years old.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “And he said, and once you start taking these promotional exams, it gives you more opportunities to influence the things I hear you're trying to change some things. Why don't you take that exam? So he pushed me pretty hard when the test announcement came out. He said, come on, I'm going to give you a ride. Let's go pick up your book. Did you have an eight-month window to study? He's like, let's go pick up your books.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “He's come to my district and he called me in his office one day. He's like, I hear you on the radio out there. He's like, you're really humping. I was like, yeah, I love this job. This is great. He's like, you know, you're coming up on three years. You're going to be eligible for started. You should take that sergeant's test. And I was like, I want to do that. I like my job. Like what I'm doing if I take sergeant tests and I'm going to get moved somewhere. He's like, no, no, you need to take the sergeant's test. Why would I want to do that? And he's like, well, you want to make more money, right? That's a good point”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “So I was an officer and I loved my job. I got, once I moved my way, worked my way up. I was foot patrol the first several months. And then I went to motorcycle school and I got trained to ride a motorist. And then I was on a motorcycle. I want to be mobile if I could get around. And I love the adrenaline 911 calls getting out there, being first on the scene. And then I got moved up a little bit more and senior Arty and I was in a patrol car. And I used to get on the radio and I'm like, all right, dispatcher, I'm in service. Give me, stack me up. Give me all the calls you got pending. That's been sitting there waiting. I'll take them all. So I had a lieutenant who he was like a SWAT team commander guy who got promoted to lieutenant and they sent him out to patrol, which is like a flap in the face to a SWAT guy, right? Like they hate.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “It with brute force. Brute force doesn't always work. So it intrigued me. And I, every day after that, once the riots were over, I started walking a foot beat in the city. Every single day I went to work, I got the problem solved. For six, seven, eight times a day calls for service 911 calls. You respond to, you know, people who were in crisis, people who need help. And you get to try and help think through that, help solve the problem. That's what I enjoyed doing. frustrating when you're at the bottom of the totem pole and you're the line officer, right? You can't, you're in a chain of command. You can't make but certain decisions. But I did feel like every single day I went to work, I made a difference in someone's life, no matter how small.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “I think the thing for me that I thrive on is as we're dropped out down there and they're giving us the right stakes and the helmets and the gas mask and they're shooting canisters of gas in the crowd knowing what started this and how this all blew up i'm thinking to myself we're not going about this the right way like i was a rookie i know nothing about policing other than what i was taught in the academy so by no means did i think i was smarter than the guy making the command decisions right but i'm just looking at it from my perspective and going this is just not the right way to do this like we're not going to win here this is not a win situation this should be done differently and i just always felt like from the minute i hit the ground like watching i like anecdote analyze the way that we were doing things and thinking why are we doing this this way like there's a better way to do these things and so that's the way i felt mount pleasant my first day on the job you know really hard to explain i just felt like there's a problem to be solved here and we're not going about it in a problem solving manner we're going about”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “How to use the radio. So my partner had the radio. So my lifeline was on my partner. But we stood there online and literally got pelted with bricks and bottles and, I mean, over the course of five days, it was a trial by fire for sure. But it was a big, it was a big learning experience for me because I do, I understood the frustration. I understood the frustration. That whole community at Mount Pleasant, where all Latino, they didn't speak English. The cops didn't speak to them very well. I mean, nobody could really communicate with, but the cops were pushing people around and there was no way to try and get the story straight and really no effort to get the story straight, right? To understand the frustration. So it was a big learning experience for me as I worked my OA at the ranks to understand how important inclusion is in the community. If you're a police officer and you are not embedding yourself in that community and understanding who the people are in that community and what their needs are.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Van, and I didn't have a radio because rookies weren't allowed to have radios at the time, right? I had not been trained.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “So by the time I got into the station for 530 roll call, I show up at 5 30 in the morning. The riot had broken out around 1 a.m. They had burned several police cars. There was stores that were looted and on fire. There was a big, big deal down in Mount Pleasant. So when I got to work my first day, I walked into the station, said, hi, I'm Kathy Lanier. I'm a new rookie from the academy. They threw me a gas mask and they told me to go out and get in the van. And he said, hop over the counter. go out the back door and get in that van. And I was like, okay. So I hopped over the counter and went and got that van. I was sitting with 15 other cops with gas mask on and big riot sticks and they took us down and they dumped us off on the corner of Mount Pleasant Park Road. And it was fully engulfed in fires and looting and, you know, people were throwing bottles and bricks and stones at us. We had little helmets. They had given us as we were hopping out of the”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “They try to place a gentleman under arrest for drinking in public. He was a Latino male, didn't speak English. We had a big problem in our city back in those days. Law enforcement, we had very few people on the department that spokes Vanish. We had a huge Latino population. There was a big gap in our community. So it's really difficult to do any kind of effective policing if you're not communicating with the people in the community. And we were not. So when this officer was trying to place this person under arrest during the handcuffing the subject after one handcuff is on, he turned around, pulled a knife on the officer and the officer shot. So he was shot with one handcuff on. So the partner of the officer shot rolled him over, put the other handcuff on, took the knife away, called paramedics. All that people saw was a handcuff person who'd been shot. So the Latino community in that neighborhood immediately began gathering on the street large crowd. This all happened around 1130 at night.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “When I said it was great in terms of being a rookie right out of the academy and understanding what you've got yourself into. Here's what you've got yourself into, right? Like you went to work today and you're not going home for five days. So there was the night before my first day out of the academy, there was a parapolice officers walking a foot patrol in our patrol district.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Your grandmother and My grandma was saying there's two types of people in the world, use people and people who are accountable. I'm going to be the accountable.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “You always act. Let your circumstances dictate for you. You act and you take action and you do. You don't wait for somebody else to do for you. And those things were really part of that problem solving exercise when you're coming on the police department. And it's certainly your problem solving exercise every day you're on the police department. It certainly was for the next 27 years for me. You can't avoid consequences. There's consequences for everything that happens. Every decision you make has consequences. You can't avoid consequences. But you can choose what you do after those things happen.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Yeah, actually, great question. Actually, it's a very good question. I don't get a lot of interviews to ask the types of question you're asking. I think it's an excellent question. I would say the two things that have helped me in that exam, that have helped me most of my law enforcement career, my grandmother instilled in me. She spent a lot of time with us growing up as well. Two things, problem solving being a big part of that is like you never make excuses. When bad things happen, don't make excuses. You put yourself in that position. You found yourself here. It is nobody else's fault but yours. You know, I'm not an excused person. I don't make excuses. If I find myself in a bad situation, I did something to get myself here. And I'm going to get myself out. And that was the way she taught. You get yourself in, you get yourself out. And the other thing she taught me was she's like, you know, you're going to be damned if you do and damned if you don't. You better be damned for doing. Like, so you act.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “So there was reading comprehension, math, problem solving, and then a good bit of are you paying attention, do you have the detail to pay attention to do the things that you need to do as a police officer, which much of which you learn as a cop?”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “And then, okay, you've just walked into this department store and there's been a robbery. What is it you noticed in that quick three seconds you had to look at that photo? What do you remember? What time was it on the clock? What color was the lady's shoes that was standing at the register, right?”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “So remember now, when I started going taking classes at Prince George's Community College, my goal was to be a lawyer. I wanted to be an attorney. I started out wanting to be a secretary like my mom. Then once I got into the workplace, I realized I wanted bigger, better things. So I wanted to be an attorney. So I was taking political science, philosophy, a lot of those kind of courses, getting all my generals out of the way community college. So by the time I got to the Metro Final Police Department at 23, I had three years of college courses. But the exam for entry into policing. Now, back in those days, they only required a high school diploma or an equivalent. you didn't need college so the the entry exam was a lot of things you would expect for law enforcement you do a lot of multiple”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “A year, DC was known as the murder capital of the world at the time. So I just went and stood in line with a thousand other people, went and took the test, and I came out, I want to say I came out like 60 out of a thousand people on that test. So they called me right away. I was the only white female in the room. This is back in the early 90s, Washington, DC was about 89% African American, right? So I felt the same drive my mother felt taking care of us is that I have son that needs me. He needs me to provide for him. And the only way I'm going to do this is get a good job. Government job, not a bad option. And go back to school and get my degree. So I got hired by the Metaphon Police in 1990 and started walking a footbeat. My first day out of the academy was the Mount Pleasant Riots. So my first day out of the academy, I went to work and didn't come home for five days. It was great.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “So, to be fair, my family is a public service family. My father was a firefighter. My oldest brother had become a firefighter right out of high school. My other brother was a police officer. I was working as a secretary. I was taking that one class this semester, working as a secretary, trying to get my son in private school. I wanted him in private school. I did not want him going to those schools. I was still living in the same crappy neighborhood. But I wanted my son in a good school. And I saw an ad. I was 23 years old. I saw an ad in the Washington Post for the Metrofound Police Department. They were hiring. And what caught my attention is the full page ad in the posts. The half of the page was the tuition reimbursement. I'm like, oh my God, tuition reimbursement. I'm paying for one class a semester. I'm going to take me 30 years to get a degree. So I went with a friend and we went and stood in line. They were hiring a thousand cops. This was during the crack cocaine wars in Washington early 1990. So 500.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “My mother had always stressed the importance of education and work, so I knew I had to go back to school and I wanted to go to college. I didn't want my son to be subject to the same crappy neighborhoods and the same crappy schools that I went to. I wanted him to have a real chance. And I knew if I was going to do that, I had to go back to school and get a college education. If I didn't do that, I was standing in the same food stamp line my mother stood in with me. I remember the first day I went to get food stamps going to the big white building, buy Prince George's Plaza right near my home and standing in the same line with my son that I stood in with my mom when I was a kid. And I was like, this is not my path. This can't be my path. So I just, when I got my job as a secretary, they offered tuition reimbursement to go to college. So I started a community college and just started taking one class a semester. And that's where it started, one class a semester, and they reimbursed me for it.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “I knew that with a ninth grade education and a single mom, that I had zero chance of being able to do what I thought was most important in the world, and that's take care of my son. And when I first moved back home, I got my GED, but I still was not able to easily find a job at my age. It was, you know, 16, almost 17. I had to wait until I was 16 and nine months to take the test to get the GED. Interestingly, you needed 255 to pass the test. I got 256. I passed it by one point.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “About three weeks into this experiment, I'm looking at him one morning, and it just dawns on me for the first time that I'm a parent. And that helpless little baby was completely relying on me. And my mother was always stressed the importance of education and work to us. And here I was, you know, my husband didn't allow me to go to school. I would never be able to get a job. And I'm looking at this poor little innocent baby and I'm thinking his whole life depends on me. What am I going to be able to provide with a ninth grade education and not much? That was an aha moment.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “For the next several years, I work two jobs as a secretarian, a waitress. And my motivation really was my son. It was kind of a significant moment for me. And I've had a few in my life. When my son was born, I had never babysat before. I'd never held a baby. I didn't know anything about babies or children. And when he was born, he was such a good baby. His crib was at the end of my bed and my bedroom. I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be awake and he'd just be looking at me, waiting for me to wake up, right? Not crying, nothing. He would just be looking at me. So about three weeks into this.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Paid $100 left the month in child support. So he signed over my legal guardianship to my husband. We get married the day after my 15th birthday. I was eight months pregnant at the time. So I guess fast forward a little bit, a year and a half later. I was back at home. My mother was taking me to GED classes at night. I was sneaking to go to GED classes when I was still married. My husband didn't approve of me going to school. Once we separated, my mom made sure I stayed in school, got my GED, and she would bring her typewriter home from work and she taught me how to type on the kitchen table. So she taught me how to type and take a little shorthand. And I went and got a job as a secretary. I lied about my age, got a job as a secretary when I was 16, so started working as a secretary and then worked as a waitress in the evening in a bar, also lied about my age to get into work in a bar. That was the only option up in the area where I was working.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Pregnant. My boyfriend at the time had given me a diamond ring. We were engaged. We're going to get married. So we run away. He was 26 at the time. I was 14. Mother, when she finds out, was going to have him arrested, she was going to put him in jail. So I run away from home and think, well, we got this, we're going to get married and we're going to have the baby and everything's going to be great. The mind of a 14-year-old, obviously things didn't work out that way. So interestingly, I went to my father who had been out of the picture most of my life and asked for him to sign for me to get married because of my age. One of my parents had to legally sign over my legal guardianship to my husband. So they literally signed over my legal guardianship to my husband. So my dad, thinking he would have one less child to pay child support for because once he signed over my guardianship, he”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “So I went from a talented and gifted student with straight A's to failing literally every subject the first quarter of seventh grade so I was chronically truant. I think I was averaging 19 days a quarter that I was actually showing up for school. My mother didn't know because the school never notified her. And by the time she got home from work at 6 p.m., we were all sitting around like pretending to do our homework. So my poor mother had no idea until about midway through the eighth grade I was so chronically truant that I was failing all of my major subjects. So meanwhile while I'm skipping school, I'm hanging out with the wrong people, much older crowd, friends of my older brother and older, you know, just an older crowd and just getting in trouble. And I fall in love with a much older boyfriend at the time, you know, think I'm in love and we want to get married and run away and get married. And so by the time I was in the ninth grade, I'm 14 years old, found myself.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “Into school where the kids that we were going to school with hated us was very racially charged. It was agonizing to go to school because you had to fight just to get from the bus to the classroom. So my mom would go, her bus would, it's funny now. It wasn't funny then, but her bus would pick her up on the corner at seven o'clock in the morning and my bus would pick me up on the other corner at 7.15. So we'd both go out to the bus stop together in the morning and she would wait for her bus. I'd wait for my bus. She'd get on her bus and she'd ride by me and I'd wave. And then one of my older friends who had a car would come and pick me up and we would go skip school for the day.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Again, we were being busted into a neighborhood. The idea at the time was to racially integrate neighborhoods. I lived in a very small industrial neighborhood, like an industrial park right on the border of Washington, D.C. Literally, there was a train that ran right behind my house in the backyard. On the other side, that train tracks was Washington, D.C. We were on the Maryland side. So they were busing us to a school on the border of northeast Washington to integrate, racially integrate the schools. Each day when our bus would pick us up and take us to school, when our bus would pull up in front of the school, everything in most big cities, I would say, but in Washington for sure, is very neighborhood-based. So when our bus would pull up in front of the school and we would get out as the Maryland kids coming to the school, as soon as we'd off the bus, we'd get jumped. Like every day there was a fight. You know, there was just, it was a terrible change all the way through pool. I was in the talented and gifted program, straight A student, loved school. And now I'm being bused.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “So, my grandmother was very helpful, but my mother was a rock. I mean, she took care of us. When I tell people now, we lived on food stamps, welfare. The church brought us basket of food for the holidays. We didn't have a car for many years. We finally got a car. It didn't have heat. It used to break down every time we went out in it. You know, the hot water sticket in our bathroom used to squirt, scalding hot water over you if you didn't weren't careful because it needed a washer and there was nobody to come and fix our that washer you know But we had a wonderful childhood. My mother was just solid. She loved her kids and she was a beautiful, beautiful woman. And I always ask her why she didn't ever date. And she's like, my kids were my life. And I didn't want anybody around my children that didn't think of them as the same priority that I thought of them. So I think her resilience was really just steady for her family. I think her family was her motivation.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “I did, and you know, it's funny, my mother was very passive, sweet, just kind of a very quiet, internal person. And in my entire life, I never saw my mother cry. Never. Never. I mean, under any circumstances, I'm sure she did, but I never really saw my mother cry. And my grandmother was completely the opposite. My mom was an only child. Her mother was like a pistol, like hardcore.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Just a wonderful example of work ethic for us. She knew she needed to go back to work and wanted to go back to work as soon as possible and she wanted to be on her game. So great childhood. But when I went, was moving to junior high school, my mom went back to work. So I kind of lost that guardian, that best friend at a critical time, right? Like I'm becoming a teenager. We were going to a new school. They were busing back in those days, though I was being bused into a really Tough neighborhood in Washington, D.C.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “In fact, that whole 10 year period when my mother was off, also important is how it frames my context of things, is during that 10 years when my mom was home, I remember her sitting in front of the TV and taking shorthand to the television. And she would get our favorite records and she would write down in shorthand all the words. And then she would sit at the table and type them all up and give us the words so we could sing along with our songs. You know, I thought it was just mom doing fun things for us. But it was her keeping her skills. My mom, when she went back to work after a 10-year break in service, she still took shorthand at like 96 words a minute and still could type over 100 words a minute.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “Brothers and I. And then when I was getting ready to go from back then, this is back before middle school's. You went, you know, elementary school, junior high school, high school. So from sixth grade and sixth grade, you leave elementary school and you go to junior high school. So I was 12 years old, 13 years old, becoming a teenager. We were going to a new school. I was going to seventh grade. My mother went back to work. I was the youngest at the time at 13. She felt like we were old enough to be latchkey kids and come home and let us in. be home for a couple hours every day until she got home from work. So she went back to work in her same role working for her same boss that she left 10 years earlier, which is pretty amazing.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “To my grandparents for the weekend. And when we came home, my father was gone. He had taken the car, left my mom with three kids and no income, literally, she was not working at the time. So life changed pretty dramatically for us then. I was, again, I was two. I don't remember a lot of detail early on, but I do remember as a child growing up over that next 10 years why mom was home with us. Really just a wonderful childhood. My mother was always there. She helped with homework and she take me to soccer practice and basketball practice and majorette practice. And she was always with us and she was just a wonderful, loving, caring mom. And we didn't have a lot. You know, we lived on 350 a month. My father's eventually paid child support. So we had a lot of support from the church and from friends and family. But it was a fun childhood for me. I mean, my mom was with me and she was provided a lot of stability for my brother.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “It's important, I think, for context about the choices I made in my life, like everybody on this planet, the way you're raised, your family, your environment has so much influence on the way you do things as an adult. So my parents married right after high school, first boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, so right after high school, my father was a firefighter, went in the fire department. My mother was the secretary. She went to work for the federal government. Dream, you know, back in the 50s being married at 18s is perfectly normal. So they got married, bought a home, started having children. They had three kids. I'm the youngest of the three after I was born. I think they realized that a secretary and a firefighter's salary does not exactly cover child care for three kids, so they couldn't afford the child care for three kids for both of them to work. So my mother took a leave of absence from work. She didn't eventually go back, but she took a 10-year leave of absence after I was born. And then when I was two, my mother took us.”

    2026-04-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #862: Cathy Lanier, Chief Security Officer of the NFL — From 9th-Grade Dropout to DC's Longest-Serving Police Chief, Protecting the Super Bowl, and Resilience Under Extreme Pressure · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT