Since she got here from Detroit 18 months ago, Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall has proven herself to be a personable — but too often guarded and inaccessible — top cop.

But last week — as some Dallas community leaders questioned her decision-making — she opened up about the March 21 Deep Ellum beating case and the bigger themes of her administration.

What she faces is serious. The only lighthearted moment in my interview with Hall came when I suggested that she has faced quite the trial by fire.

“Oh, my,” she said, before breaking into a long warm laugh, “It has been challenging.”

But then her voice took on a prayerful tone: “I am a child of God and I believe that I have been called for such a time as this.”

She told me rebuilding the relationship between law enforcement and citizens is both the job she was hired to do and deeply personal. Her father, a police officer, died when she was 6 months old, “and that cannot be in vain,” she said.

Some of what Hall said about her sometimes-rocky tenure was the Management 101 stuff you would expect: Change is always met with resistance, especially in a police department’s deeply ingrained culture and much work remains to be done.

But other answers were frank — and frankly surprising. With public safety the top issue on many Dallas residents’ minds as we prepare to elect local leaders, here is a glimpse into the woman in crime-fighting’s hot seat:

Eighteen months into the job, do you have people who have your back within the Dallas Police Department?

We’re law enforcement officers. You don’t have to like the person you work for. What we have is people who are committed to the city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department. And my prayer is that they are committed to the success of the city, the department, because it’s not about the chief, it’s not about me. We don’t brand this city or this police department off of Renee Hall.

I believe these people are committed to the department’s success because if this is a police department that has a good reputation then anybody in this organization has the opportunity to go anywhere else and get a job because people will say “you come from one of the best.”

People need to be committed to that, not to me. They need to be loyal to the city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department — not to me — because it’s not about me.

Police Chief Renee Hall spoke Friday to Dallas Police Department academy graduates at Mountain View Community College. (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

When you lose the kind of institutional wisdom that occurs when you take people such as former Assistant Chief Gary Tittle and former Deputy Chief Malik Aziz out of your command staff, what is the result?

When it comes to institutional knowledge, there are so many individuals in this police department that have 30, 25, 20 years investigative experience. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge in this police department, and it doesn’t just lie with one or two people.

I’m not negating anybody’s knowledge or wisdom as it relates to this department. But success, if you will, or the knowledge or the experience doesn’t rest on two people.

From the outside, it sometimes looks like DPD’s right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Is that a fair statement?

I wouldn’t go that far. I would say often times we have practices in place that we have to make sure are practical for today and for sensitive situations. That’s a constant assessment.

You can’t come into any organization and know all the ins and outs in 18 months. So sometimes things have to happen for you to see that there is, for example, a gap in communication. Under normal circumstances, the practices work. But when there’s an extraordinary situation, things that are normal parts of practice cause ripples. That’s when you know you need to make the necessary adjustments.

After police filed a felony criminal justice warrant against L’Daijohnique Lee, the victim of the beating in Deep Ellum, the Rev. Michael Waters said the decision only deepened the severe lack of trust between the black community and DPD and that black lives don’t matter in Dallas. What is your reaction to that?

I don’t know that I have one. That’s Rev. Waters’ opinion. Again, I go back to the work -- we should be judged by our body of work. You have a department headed by a police chief who is adamant about a citizens police review board and a city manager, T.C. Broadnax, who supports that board.

Sometimes we can act off emotions and not necessarily off of facts. So my prayer is that Rev. Waters would continue to watch the body of work and then make a decision.

Do you feel that you have lost any support or trust from the citizens of Dallas?

I don’t know. Only those constituents know how they feel, so I dare not speak for any one of them. I believe that in the areas where the relationships were rocky at best, there’s been some shaken of any faith they already had.

That’s why the citizen police review board is so important. That’s why our constant interaction and engagement with the community — from informal chats to town halls — are so important.

I’m looking to do some more interesting things — maybe “cops in barber shops and beauty salons” conversations. That’s where you get all the conversations, when people are getting their hair and nails done.

We just have to continue looking at ways to continue to build these relationships and to hear how people feel. Then make the adjustments we need to make.

What would you most want citizens to know about you and your department?

I would just like to ask the community the question of, “How can a police chief who is in full support of a citizen police review board that is overseeing the interactions of the police department be antithetical to justice and-or doing the right thing as it relates to the community as a whole.”

That is an oxymoron. We are inviting you in to see what we do and how we do it because we believe that 98% of the time we do the right thing. And those times where we don’t get it right, we tell on ourselves.

I’d like the community to understand that there is nothing that we are doing other than trying to build bridges. In cases like the Deep Ellum one, how we enforce the law needs a little bit of work. Maybe our bedside manner needs some work. And we’re even willing to make those adjustments as well.

Is there anything you would have done anything differently since you took the job 18 months ago, any do-over of any kind?

I have to say no. I believe that everything we do — our steps are ordered by God. You know I am a praying woman. God knew the mistakes I was going to make, He knew the successes I was going to have.

Everything that we do is a setup for the next level. So everything that I’ve done, if it wasn’t the best, it was setting me up so that the next time will be the best. So I would not change a single, solitary thing.