D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey said he was ending his nearly nine years with the department proud about restoring pride to the force but still haunted by the unsolved shooting of a 9-year-old.
Wearing a blue business shirt and yellow tie instead of his customary medal-laden uniform, Ramsey, 56, said he could not describe his feelings about leaving without getting emotional during a news conference Thursday. He admitted it will be difficult to wake up knowing that he is no longer heading the police department created by President Lincoln.
“If I?d known it was going to be this hard to leave, I?d never have come to this damn place,” Ramsey told his command staff.
Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty replaced Ramsey with one of the chief?s homegrown commanders, Cmdr. Cathy Lanier. She will be the city?s first female police chief.
When Ramsey first came to Washington from Chicago in 1998, he was struck by the lack of pride, he said. Officers were ashamed to tell people they were D.C. police, and some wore coats over their uniforms, he said.
Today crime in Washington is at its lowest in decades, and officers are better equipped and better paid. The department, he said, is “on the brink of greatness.”
A defining moment for Ramsey, he said, was in April 2000 during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank protests that came on the heels of the Seattle riots. Ramsey was still adjusting to the new job, and the protesters had vowed to stop the meeting with violence if needed. But the D.C. force arrested 1,200 protesters without the violence that marred similar demonstrations.
“That?s when I knew that I?d always be a part of MPD, and MPD would always be a part of me,” he said.
At the IMF/World Bank meeting two years later, Ramsey was criticized after police herded nearly 400 protesters and a handful of bystanders into Pershing Park in Northwest. The District still faces a lawsuit filed by those arrested.
One case still disturbs Ramsey: That of Donte Manning, the 9-year-old who was playing outside last year when he was struck in the head by a bullet. Manning died and his killer remains free.
“It?s just symbolic of crime and violence of our neighborhoods,” he said. “When I think about him, I think about all the others. … That?s why you do what you do as a policeman, to make sure there are no more Donte Mannings.”
