One thing Officer First Class Latonya Loredo hears frequently from the truck drivers she pulls over: “You’re the first female officer I’ve ever seen.”
A two-year veteran of the SC State Transport Police, Loredo is hardly the first female officer in the division. But she is the first woman to win STP’s Officer of the Year Award, barely a year after also winning the Rookie of the Year for her class.
“I didn’t realize the magnitude of such an honor when I won,” she said of being the first woman in STP’s 31-year history to take its top honor. “It hit me later. But it feels good. I was up against some great officers.”
Loredo’s path to becoming Officer of the Year began in the nursing field, where she was a certified nursing assistant for 10 years.
“After 10 years, I realized I didn’t want to be a nurse,” she said. “I’m going to try something different.”
She then applied for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, becoming a corrections officer and working her way up to the rank of Sergeant over three years. Despite the stress of overseeing dozens of inmates at any given time on her own, Loredo enjoyed working in corrections. But, she didn’t like feeling “enclosed.” While browsing state law enforcement positions, she found herself gravitating toward SCDPS and specifically, the State Transport Police.
“I didn’t really know what it was, but commercial vehicles sounded like something I wanted to do, something different,” she said. “Especially as a female, doing inspections, going under trucks, lifting those heavy scales — I enjoy it.”
Loredo is assigned to Region 1, and works primarily in Calhoun and Orangeburg counties. She admits that before she became an STP officer, conducting inspections on commercial motor vehicles, rolling under a trailer on a cart, or crawling into the engine bay of a truck seemed intimidating. Now, she sees the importance of inspecting everything from tires, to hoses, to lights, to the driver’s documents, and taking trucks with dangerous violations off the road.
“If somebody’s brakes go out, that can be dangerous,” she said. “If the truck size or weight aren’t correct, they are causing damage to the roadways.”
Her biggest pet peeve: “When they know something is wrong with their truck, but they continue to keep driving,” she said. “I stop a driver and they say, ‘Oh, I know it’s like that, but I’m just trying to get to the next truck stop,’ after they have already passed multiple exits with truck stops. That bothers me.”
Now conducting roadside inspections with ease, Loredo chuckles thinking back to her first days on patrol.
“To be honest, I was just trying to make sure I didn’t mess anything up on the radio,” she said. “But, I just got out there and worked hard and tried to be better than I was the day before.”
To continue being better than she was the day before, she needs only to remember her purpose.
“With STP, I have a purpose to put this uniform on: Saving lives and making the roadways safe,” she said. “I truly enjoy coming to work. To me, it isn’t work. If you enjoy doing it, it isn’t work.”
Another thing she enjoys is doing the exact same thing her male colleagues do: Lugging those heavy scales around and throwing them under the wheels of a truck to weigh it; sticking her arms into the engine bay of a vehicle to inspect it; and coming home after a shift, knowing that her hard work has made a difference.
“I want girls and women to realize that we can go out and do the same things men do,” she said. “That’s my hope, to get treated fairly. I don’t want anything given to me. I don’t want people to think that because we’re females we can’t do it, because we can do it.”
Loredo has found that being an officer provides her with opportunities to interact with the community and educate people about the law enforcement profession. Occasionally she is asked by a woman what it’s like to be a female in law enforcement, a field of which women only make up about 12 percent, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I tell them I love it, but I always tell them you’ve got to be safe when you’re out there working,” she said. “That’s one of my main concerns, just being safe.”
While that advice can be applicable to any area of law enforcement and just about any profession, Loredo encourages any young woman considering a law enforcement career to research the different kinds of agencies and specialties, along with the training, the benefits, and the culture within the agency. She chuckled and said she’s biased, but she has found all of those things at STP.
“If you don’t like it, at least you tried,” she said. “Don’t allow others to tell you not to do something just because they’re afraid for you. Make that decision your own. And don’t let fear be the reason you don’t do something. Just got out and do it.”
Thank you, Officer First Class Loredo for sharing your story with us for National Police Woman Day!
