By Reuven Blau

New York Daily News

NEW YORK — The Department of Correction appointed veteran officer Hazel Jennings as its chief of department on Monday.

Jennings, 52, started as an entry-level correction officer assigned to the Robert N. Davoren Center in 1989. She most recently served as bureau chief of security.

In 2011, she was lauded with the Meritorious Service Medal for safely evacuating 241 inmates when a three-alarm fire broke out on the roof of the George Motchan Detention Center.

“I am both humbled and challenged by this honor,” Jennings said in a statement after her promotion was announced.

Mayor de Blasio hailed her promotion.

“Hazel Jennings has been instrumental in leading reforms that have made our jails safer and fairer, and she is a perfect fit to be the Department of Correction’s highest ranking uniformed member,” he said in a statement. “I’m confident her leadership will continue to move our jail system forward.”

Jennings is not the first African-American woman to hold the positon.

That distinction goes to Jacqueline McMickens, who later went on to become commissioner in 1984.

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