 In July 2002, Shirley Franklin hired Pennington as the police chief of Atlanta, Georgia.He served in that position until 2010, overseeing a 39% reduction in violent crime in the city.In 2009, Pennington was a defendant in a lawsuit which alleges that he, along with other senior officers, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to retaliate against a police officer who testified on behalf of a defendant in a bond hearing in federal court.