Charles H. Ramsey
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Charles H. Ramsey (born 1950), is the Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department. Prior to assuming that post in January 2008, he had served as Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) from 1998 to 2006.
A native of Chicago, Illinois, he joined the Chicago Police Department as an 18-year-old cadet in 1968. After serving six years as a patrol officer, he was promoted to sergeant in 1977. He was appointed a lieutenant in 1984 and became captain in 1988. He served as Commander of the Narcotics Section from 1989 to 1992 before spending two years as a Deputy Chief of the police force's Patrol Division. In 1994, he was appointed Deputy Superintendent.
In 1998, he became the MPDC chief. He has been involved in several high-profile cases as chief of police in America's capital city, such as the Chandra Levy murder investigation. He has also been in the spotlight since the September 11, 2001 attacks focused attention on security issues around Washington, D.C.
Ramsey is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.
He has served as an adjunct professor at Lewis University and Northwestern University.
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[edit] Career as Washington, D.C. police chief
Ramsey's six-year tenure as commissioner saw crime rates decline about 40%, the expansion of community policing and traffic safety programs, and improved MPDC recruiting and hiring standards, training, equipment, facilities and fleet. He reorganized the department to cut bureaucracy, and created Regional Operations Commands to oversee the quality of D.C. police services.[citation needed] He helped to create a non-emergency 3-1-1 system and made crime information readily available to the public through [CrimeReports.com].
He and his department assisted the Department of Homeland Security during the state funeral of Ronald Reagan.
[edit] Civil rights record
[edit] Crime emergencies
While police chief, he declared numerous crime emergencies.
[edit] Traffic checkpoints
Under Ramsey, the D.C, police instituted traffic checkpoints at which information about motorists who were breaking no law at the time was entered into a database. The move was called an "invasion of privacy" by an official of the police union.[1]
[edit] Pershing Park arrests
On September 27, 2002, the MPD made a mass arrest of a large group of demonstrators who had assembled in DC's Pershing Park to protest the World Bank and IMF meetings. The police enclosed over 400 people in the park and arrested them without ordering them to disperse or allowing them to leave the park. Many of the arrested were not actually demonstrators, but were journalists, legal observers, and pedestrians.
On January 13, 2006, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the arrests violated the Fourth Amendment and that Chief Ramsey could be held personally liable for the violations. On August 2, 2007, City officials in Washington agreed to pay $1 million to more than 120 of the protesters, on top of other settlements by the D.C. government, including one for $640,000.[2]
[edit] Resignation in D.C.
On November 20, 2006, Ramsey announced that he would step down as police chief on January 2, 2007, the inauguration day of DC Mayor-Elect Adrian M. Fenty. Fenty selected Cathy Lanier, a 39-year-old commander of the MPDC's Homeland Security Division, as his replacement.
Even though Ramsey's official last day was December 28, 2006, he stayed on until January 2, to deal with security during the state funeral of former president Gerald Ford.
There also is a dispute about Ramsey's pension between the District of Columbia Government and the D.C. Council.
[edit] Move to Philadelphia
On November 15, 2007, Philadelphia Mayor Elect Michael Nutter nominated Ramsey as Police Commissioner. Ramsey was officially sworn in at the beginning of Nutter's term as Mayor on January 7, 2008.
