A team of local officials ended a months-long search Thursday by selecting Chicago Deputy Police Supt. Charles Ramsey to head the deeply troubled police department in the nation’s capital.
The 48-year-old Ramsey, the architect of Chicago’s popular community policing program, won out over Interim Chief Sonya Proctor to lead the 3,600-member District of Columbia force.
The City Council is expected to confirm the appointment by the end of the month after a public hearing. He will be paid an annual salary of $150,000 as police chief, plus $12,000 to cover the cost of moving and temporary housing.
Ramsey asserted he was not fazed by the prospect of working for the multitude of elected and appointed city officials–even members of Congress–in his new job.
“I’m sure things will be worked out in terms of chain of command and lines of authority,” he said. “The folks I’m accountable to are the citizens of this city.”
His blunt but friendly answers drew applause from members of the citizens advisory panel that had participated in the search.
Ramsey is to take charge of a department riddled with mismanagement, corruption, poor morale and a dismal record in areas such as homicide investigations. At least half the city’s police officers aren’t even certified to use their weapons as required by department regulations.
Describing his management style, Ramsey said he was not “a trickle-down kind of guy” but “a person who listens.”
He also took in stride questions about allegations of police corruption and mismanagement.
“Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems,” said Ramsey, a 29-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department. “Usually it is somewhere in the middle.”
Yet he was emphatic in saying that he would not tolerate misconduct, maltreatment of citizens or corruption in the department: “The Man Upstairs gives you a second chance, but not me.”
Ramsey, who said he was in the final stages of obtaining a divorce, mentioned that he had promised his 11-year-old son he would not change his allegiance to the Bulls.
“I have a very dear friend who has offered to teach me `Hail to the Redskins,’ ” he said. But, “The Bulls are not negotiable.”
In Chicago, Ramsey did stints as head of the Narcotics Section and a district commander, giving him credibility as a hard-nosed street cop as well as the chief architect of the community policing program.
“He’s the one police officer who has an overview of community policing in Chicago. I don’t know if anyone has the view of it that he has,” said Warren Friedman, executive director of the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety, which has worked with the department.
The task of selecting the city’s new police chief was handled by a manager team called the Memorandum of Understanding Partners.
Its members include Mayor Marion Barry, who has been stripped of most of his authority over city government; the chief judge of the local court; the U.S. attorney; the corporation counsel; members of the elected city council, and representatives of the control board created by Congress in 1995 to oversee the city’s shaky finances.
District of Columbia officials recruited Ramsey, who did not apply for the job, after he lost out in February to Chief of Detectives Perry Hilliard for Chicago police superintendent.
The D.C. post has been vacant since November, when Police Chief Larry Soulsby resigned after it was disclosed that he shared the $650 rent on what should have been a $2,000-a-month luxury apartment with a longtime aide and friend.
Since Barry first became mayor in 1979, the Police Department has been in a steady decline. Convicted in 1990 for cocaine possession, the mayor controlled the appointment of all officers over the rank of captain until he voluntarily signed away all his authority to hire and fire in December 1996.
Despite congressional efforts in recent years to overhaul the city’s government, there has been no evidence of overall improvement in the Police Department. Some in Congress have even mentioned the possibility of returning the Police Department to federal control.
