Professor is ex-police sergeant
Mildred Johnson had a gun and a badge during her 14-year career as a Pittsburgh police officer, which ended in 2003 when she was a sergeant.
Now “armed” with three college degrees, she is Geneva College’s criminal justice professor, and her academic title is “doctor.”
Her uniform took her to the sometimes-mean streets of the city, where on one unforgettable occasion she was set on fire by a torch wielding hockey fan. Her education took her to the peaceful Beaver Falls campus of a Christian college.
The two career paths aren’t that far apart, in the view of Ms. Johnson, 49. Both involve helping people, and both are about “justice.”
The criminal justice major is new this semester at Geneva, and it’s a bit different from criminal justice programs offered at other schools.
In keeping with the school’s mission to “integrate faith in Christ in all aspects of learning and living,” Geneva’s criminal justice major has an emphasis on “restorative justice.”
Like most police officers, Ms. Johnson saw many repeat offenders, and they generally were not rehabilitated during stints in jails and prisons.
“In part, restorative justice is rehabilitation,” she said in an interview in the spring edition of Geneva Magazine. “It is getting people through the steps they need to be a law-abiding citizen. For me, restorative justice means forgiveness. God forgives and we need to as well.”
Most of the students she teaches want to work with state police, municipal police officers, FBI or military police.
“We need people who are Christians in the criminal justice system so that the system can be redemptive,” Ms. Johnson said. “It’s not just a job, it’s a ministry.”
Ms. Johnson grew up in the Hill District, the daughter of a preacher. After high school and business school, she was a records clerk in a business office for five years.
The job was safe and steady but “I wanted to go out and do things for people.”
In 1989 she was hired by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. Working her way through the ranks, she was promoted to sergeant right before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.
The attacks rocked her family. Her husband, a member of the Reserves, was called up to active duty and served 18 months in Afghanistan.
Ms. Johnson had just given birth to her first child and was taking Geneva classes for four hours every Tuesday night at a satellite campus in East Liberty.
Perhaps because she had so much on her plate, police supervisors took Ms. Johnson off the street and put her into community policing programs, working with schools, which she loved.
“I always wanted to be a teacher,” she said. She left the police department in 2003, due to knee injuries.
In 2004, she completed her bachelor of science degree in community ministry. She earned her master’s degree from Geneva in organizational leadership in 2006. She earned a doctorate in 2014 in strategic leadership at Regent University, a Christian school based in Virginia Beach.
After leaving the police department, she held several jobs, including adjunct professor in Geneva’s Adult Degree Programs from 2011 to 2013.
She also worked with several social service agencies.
Ms. Johnson lives in Stanton Heights with her husband, Charles, a former Pittsburgh police officer and now a military police officer in the Air Force Reserves, 911th Airlift Wing, in Moon. Their children are Charles, 14, Josiah, 7 , and Moriah, 2.
“Geneva is truly an island of tranquility and I understand that especially after driving an hour to get to work every day,” Ms. Johnson said. “No matter what the highway may have been like, once I arrive on the campus, God gives me great peace and things immediately calm down in my spirit and my soul.”