If Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley had forgotten about bypassing Charles Ramsey when he picked a new police chief in 1998, he’s surely been reminded in recent weeks–assuming he reads a paper or has a television or radio.
There has been no more ubiquitous media presence in America than Washington Police Chief Ramsey, a former deputy superintendent in Chicago, unless it’s his top aide, Terrance Gainer, former chief of the Illinois State Police.
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Whether it’s blabbing on a network morning show or in prime time with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, or doing numerous newspaper and local TV interviews, Ramsey and Gainer have been articulate spokesmen, exuding competence and confidence.
But do not assume that the air of competence is reflected much in the department they lead. It remains a woeful underachiever and an embarrassment for the capital of the last superpower.
Whatever you think of the Chandra Levy case, which has vaulted Ramsey and Gainer (who did not respond to my interview request) onto the national radar screen, don’t hold out too much hope that dazzling, Columbo-like police work will prevail and bring a resolution. In fact, the department may be better off if this remains a missing persons case rather than a homicide, given a woeful record in solving murders.
“I am glad they are putting a very good face on the department, but there are many areas I am not happy about,” said Jack Evans, a D.C. council member who was part of a trio that hired Ramsey in his then-role of Judiciary Committee chief.
“It’s a department with much better resources than when Ramsey came,” said Kathy Patterson, the current committee head. “But performance, management and accountability are still lacking, and we have a long, long way to go.”
Evans and Patterson, both sharp and dutiful, may even be understating things.
For sure, the department Ramsey inherited was a disaster. Crime had surpassed that of other big cities, with the rate of closing cases ignominious. A huge amount of hiring largely forced by Congress, which oversees the district, led to hundreds of clearly unqualified officers, many given badges and guns but not background checks, being on the force. Cronyism under former longtime Mayor Marion Barry was rampant.
Equipment, ranging from bulletproof vests to computers, suffered big shortages. Patrol officers and detectives had to occasionally use their own cars. Most of the officers made precious few arrests.
Little time was spent preventing crime. Half the officers weren’t certified to use their guns, which they tended to shoot at alarmingly high rates (prompting a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post series). There weren’t written performance reviews. Morale stunk.
Improvements are happening, with Ramsey clearly superior to the several lunkheads who preceded him, including the woeful Larry Soulsby, a department lifer who quit two hours before another top department official, who happened to be his roommate in a sweetheart lodging deal at a fancy high-rise, was indicted for extortion and embezzlement.
As one has seen during the Levy story, Ramsey speaks well, explaining the moniker “Silver Tongue,” which he’s earned, somewhat condescendingly, in some neighborhoods. The sense in the ‘hood, said Mark Plotkin, a Chicagoan and a popular local radio host and political analyst, is that he’s more talk than action, which is probably unfair.
Talks with department observers and a study of lengthy City Council reports suggest that he’s succeeded in improving some major infrastructure needs, put more officers on the street, raised the theoretical standards for performance and seen some reduction in certain crime categories.
But, when it comes to its very own goals for performance, a council analysis stated that, “Out of its 20 FY 2000 Agency Performance Goals and Targets, MPD [Metropolitan Police Department] achieved only five goals, did not achieve six goals, was unable to measure nine goals, and has subsequently dropped 17 of the 20 goals as targets for CY 2001 and FY 2002 performance goals.”
So it mostly failed and, in a bunch of cases, just dropped the whole matter of goals.
For example, it sought an 8 percent reduction in aggravated assaults, but came away with a 0.1 percent reduction. “This target has been dropped for CY 2001,” according to a council analysis.
Similarly, the goal of an 8 percent reduction in homicides came up woefully short. “The District experienced a 1.7 percent reduction in homicides. This target has been dropped for CY 2001.”
Then there was its goal of having about 65 percent of citizens report that the police “are doing a good or very good job preventing crime in their neighborhood.” Alas, “MPD reports that it was unable to measure this goal during Calendar Year 2000 due to resource limitations. This target has been dropped for CY 2001.”
In ditching 17 of 20 performance goals and targets, it raised doubts for the committee about a “commitment to fairly and steadily measuring its own performance.”
Here’s one of my favorite tidbits: In testimony before the City Council, Ramsey said the department “has no detective selection process.” This is to say that the department “does not impose minimum experience requirements for detectives, nor does it require a written exam or writing sample, an oral examination or interview, or a performance review as part of its efforts to select detectives. In addition, MPD lacks a probationary period for new detectives.”
And then there’s the matter of closing homicide investigations. The performance has gotten worse even while the homicide rate has dropped between 1991 and 2000.
There are two basic ways to measure closure rates. The department prefers the FBI’s so-called uniform case reporting definition. That takes the number of murders solved in a given year, divided by the number or murders that took place the same year.
During a period in which the homicide rate dropped 40 percent (between 1997 and 2000), the closure rate by this definition dropped to 57 percent from 70 percent. Other big cities have rates at 70 percent or above.
Then there is another prime measure, the so-called in-year or same-year rate. You get this by dividing the number of homicides solved in the same year they took place by the number of homicides during that year.
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By this index, the closure rate has sunk like a stone, to 36 percent from 57 percent in 1990. This rate is arguably more reflective of performance than the UCR measure, a council oversight report contended, because the UCR measure is more likely to reflect “administrative closures” that occur after a case is formally opened, namely closures that happen when a suspect dies or is jailed for some other reason, among other possibilities.
Such administrative closures can jack up the UCR closure rate and conceal a drop in how one is really doing with such investigations. Clearly, the city does a pretty awful job even though Ramsey has put in place reforms that, on paper, are directed at improving matters.
There is much, much more, including administrative disarray. “In fact,” according to a council report, “Chief Ramsey advised the committee that no disciplinary actions were taken after The Washington Post reported that 377 homicide case files could not be located and that 136 case files were missing important documentation.”
Then there are the hundreds of cops who spend much of their day in courtrooms, often collecting overtime (in part because there’s no night court). Because of a marked lack of coordination between prosecutors, judges and cops, who don’t have beepers, many sit for cases that don’t come up, Evans said, when they could be on the street.
And this is in a city that spends more money on police and has more full-time employees, both sworn and civilian, than do three cities of comparable size: Boston, Denver and Seattle.
Pat Lally, a Washington native and lobbyist for New York City, lives on Capitol Hill with his wife and notes that the “constant, grinding pulse of crime” is down.
“But they simply fail to operate at a level one would expect of a police force of a national capital. It will take a long time.”