[3] The railroad closed while Pennington was in high school and the family moved to Gary, Indiana, where his father became a crane operator with U.S. Steel as well as a part-time deputy sheriff.
[3] After her children grew up and moved out, Pennington's mother opened a pool hall and a restaurant as well as built apartments as rental units.
He began his career in law enforcement in 1968 as an officer in the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD);[3] his first partner was Donald Graham who became publisher of The Washington Post.
In July 2002, Shirley Franklin hired Pennington as the police chief of Atlanta, Georgia.
[needs update] Pennington was also a defendant in the federal civil rights lawsuit of Calhoun v. Pennington, filed in November 2009 on behalf of patrons of the Atlanta Eagle, a gay bar that was subject to the Atlanta Eagle police raid in 2009.