The professor stills her kinetic pacing and folds her arms across her chest, newspaper clipping in one hand while the other rests a single finger on her chin.

“So,” she starts slowly, eyes wide as she looks to her students, “what do you think about an adult man in his forties wanting his diaper changed?”

Laughter is no stranger to the classroom when Professor Anne Redding is in charge. Though she teaches intense subjects in the School of Justice Studies-criminology, criminal investigation, and California law-it is Redding’s irreverent humor and enthusiastic personality that excites and engages her students.

Redding tested out of high school at 17, attended L.A. Valley College, and then first enrolled as a business major at the California State University of Los Angeles.

It was there she switched her major to Criminal Justice, not because of some great personal tragedy, but because of the television show, “Cagney and Lacey.” For the first time, women were portrayed as serious detectives rather than gun-waving floozies.

Yet serious does not mean without humor. Because Redding recognizes that students work at different speeds, she intermittently pauses her lecture to tell jokes and read bizarre crime stories to her class. These pauses not only allow slower writers to catch up on their notes, but also keep the rest of the class engaged.

“Her humor and her stories made the learning process enjoyable and made the darker material easier to handle,” said Kelly Hopwood, a former student of Redding.

Hopwood was one of Redding’s regulars, or what she calls “repeat offenders.”

“In the end, I took two more of her classes, just for the experience,” Hopwood said.

Yet all is not as it seems. Redding admits that she will use humor to maintain an appropriate distance between herself and her students. She once introduced herself to her 101 class as a child prodigy who graduated from college at the age of 12.

“I’m not really a pathological liar,” Redding laughed.

Creating these elaborate stories about her past lets Redding keep her personal life private without seeming standoff-ish. She believes it is important that the line between friend and teacher isn’t blurred. Her students may not know much about her, but they never doubt her dedication to their education.

“She knows her stuff,” said one of many rave reviews for Redding on RateMyProfessors.com. “She cares for her students as well as for her profession.”

Redding truly does love her profession. When asked what she would do if she was not teaching, she said she would still teach somehow. If she was unable to teach, she says that she would still be working as a park ranger.

Redding was hired right out of college by the City of Los Angeles Park Rangers. She was among the first group of rangers to be official Peace Officers and attend the Police Academy. In fact, it was at the police academy that she first got a taste for teaching and later returned to teach there for four years.

“It was difficult to transition out of being a law enforcement officer,” Redding said. “Giving up all of the things that make being a law enforcement officer great-the excitement, the sense of being one of the good guys, feeling a part of a big extended family with badges, and yes, the power-took some time to shake. It’s an addictive career.”

Redding said law enforcement officers deal with the darker side of humanity, and often develop an irreverent sense of humor to cope with it all. Perhaps that is why she can show her class a crime scene photo of a dead man covered in bruises and maggots, and still find a way to joke about it.

Yet in some situations, there is no humor to be found. For Redding, the Black Dahlia is one of those cases. An unsolved case from the 1940s, the Black Dahlia is the nickname for Elizabeth Short, a woman who was murdered and mutilated in Los Angeles.

Though Redding teaches this case every semester, she still finds it strikes her hard.

“The glamour of a beautiful young woman trying to catch a break in post-WWII Hollywood contrasted with the horrific butchery that was done to her,” Redding said. “I find Elizabeth Short to be a sad, pathetic and haunting creature, and I find her killer to be a monumentally depraved psychopathic sexual sadist. Add to all of this the fact that the case remains unsolved, and you have an intoxicating brew of a compelling case that can never be closed.”

Whether teaching about the desecration of innocence or the magic of maggots, Redding plans to remain at City College until she retires.

– Risa Erskine is a
Journalism 271 student