What Philly needs in our next police commissioner
Boots on the ground and data in the cloud.
WHEN YOU'RE resigning your job and your boss the mayor is in tears and the president sends you an attaboy, you've done well.
Mayor Nutter's eyes welled up announcing Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey's decision to retire and President Obama thanked him for almost 50 years of leadership with large law enforcement agencies, including Philadelphia.
A soft-talking, low-key, straight shooter, the 65-year-old Ramsey is our most popular public official. An astounding 75 percent of Philadelphians approve of Ramsey's job performance, while 57 percent approve of Nutter's, according to a recent poll (commissioned by Nutter, by the way).
Ramsey floats above the debris of police misconduct in Philly and nationally, although Black Lives Matter rudely and pointlessly interrupted Ramsey during a discussion of "just policing" at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday night.
Do they think the African-American police chief feels black lives do not matter?
How insulting to Ramsey, under whom the murder rate has dropped about a third - saving the lives of black males who are the majority of Philadelphia murder victims. When he announced a policing plan in 2008, he said, "This isn't Batman and Robin suddenly coming out of a cave somewhere." It required increasing patrol in high-crime neighborhoods and a "back to basics" approach.
Police leaders today call for both patrol and computer-assisted policing, a blend of boots on the ground and data in the cloud.
Being a big-city police chief today is almost as thankless as being the House speaker, except there are willing candidates for the top-cop job. Ramsey will serve until Jan. 7, after the new mayor announces his successor.
The next commish will almost certainly be an insider even though "hiring an internal candidate is rare today" in big cities, says Tod Burke, a former cop who is now a professor of criminal justice at Radford University in Virginia.
There's a preference for "new ideas" from the outside, he says, although an insider "understands the process, understands the politics to get things done" and also understands the community, which is key.
Community relations and communication are the most important parts of the job, agrees John DeCarlo, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven, who worked his way up from patrolman to police chief before going into academia.
The modern police commissioner knows the department must be "a part of the community not apart from the community," he says.
Police commissioners have to be cops - but also PR experts, social workers and diplomats.
Ramsey was selected to co-chair President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, charged with telling local and state governments how to appropriately enforce the laws in a period of growing civil unrest. The broad objective, Ramsey said, is to improve trust between officers and those they police.
The leader must be "someone who can bridge some of the issues of trust versus mistrust," says Chad Dion Lassiter, president of Black Men at Penn, who gives Ramsey good grades. But no one is perfect.
The city is being sued by the family of Brandon Tate-Brown, killed by officers during a car stop last December.
Some in minority communities hate any version of stop-and-frisk, in use here.
Ramsey has a deep respect for his uniform and a deep anger for anyone who disgraces it. He has moved swiftly, if not always successfully, to take out the trash from his department.
If we have a bad cop, Ramsey fires him. The Fraternal Order of Police howls. In a distressing number of cases, the fired cop goes to arbitration and gets his job back.
If Ramsey doesn't fire the cop, community leaders and editorial boards scream.
Some neighbors call 9-1-1 because they want drug dealers moved off their corner. If the cops don't move them just the right way, you've got a lawsuit. There's a very delicate balance between enforcing too little and too much.
The commissioner sets the tone but can't be in every squad room and every patrol car. He passes the word through commanders who pass it to officers who pass it to the rank and file.
The challenge for the new commissioner: Expand the ethical behavior and professionalism demanded by Ramsey and get more buy-in both from his officers, and the community.
Batman and Robin can't do it alone.
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