Charles Ramsey has been in the running almost every time Chicago mayors have looked for someone to replace a police superintendent in recent years.
He was in 1998 when former Mayor Richard M. Daley selected Terry Hillard as the top cop.
He was in 2003, when Daley picked Phil Cline as Hillard’s successor.
And he was in 2011, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave the nod to Garry McCarthy.
Ramsey, a 65-year-old former Chicago Police deputy superintendent, wound up having a stellar law-enforcement career as chief of the Washington, D.C., police department and, for the past eight years, as commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department.
Now that he’s retiring in early January — and enjoying accolades from citizens in Philly — many in Chicago wonder if Ramsey will return to run the Chicago Police Department. They say he would be a perfect fit as an African-American Englewood native with deep police experience.
His answer: a flat “no.”
“My plans are to retire,” Ramsey told the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday. “They need someone to run the day-to-day operations of the department. That’s not something I am interested in at this point.”
John Escalante, who was McCarthy’s No. 2, is now the acting police superintendent. Escalante, a 29-year veteran, previously served as chief of detectives and commander of the Shakespeare District on the Northwest Side among other key positions.
Escalante, who is Hispanic, is considered a possible candidate to become McCarthy’s permanent replacement. He’s considered a low-key, steady hand in the department and would appeal to Chicago’s Latino community.
Some black community leaders have called for Al Wysinger, an African-American who recently retired as McCarthy’s No. 2, to become the next superintendent.
The Chicago Police Board will conduct a national search for candidates for Chicago’s top police job, a spokesman said.
Ramsey, who is married, has a son who is a Philly cop. He said he doesn’t intend to move back to Chicago, his hometown, and where his parents and grandparents are buried.
The diehard Bears fan said he hasn’t heard anything from anyone in City Hall since McCarthy was fired on Tuesday. But he said would consider returning to Chicago as a consultant on policing.
Ramsey recommended that Emanuel’s new blue-ribbon task force study the report released in May by President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Ramsey was co-chairman of the president’s task force.
“Instead of reinventing the wheel, it would be a good starting point for [Emanuel’s] oversight committee to look at,” he said.
An introduction to the president’s report says it provides recommendations “to usher the nation into the next phase of community-based policing.”
One of the criticisms of McCarthy’s regime is that his administration didn’t listen enough to black aldermen as well as residents in the city’s toughest police districts.
Ramsey notes he was the first project manager for the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy in 1998 — a program that lost steam in following years after Terry Hillard retired as superintendent in 2003.
In Philadelphia, he’s been lauded for reinvigorating community policing, creating “police service areas” slightly larger than Chicago’s police beats, where residents and police officials hold monthly meetings to develop strategies on fighting chronic crime problems.
He was also known as a tough disciplinarian, firing more than 260 officers for misconduct over his tenure in Philly, according to a newspaper story there.
“I have never hesitated to get rid of them,” he told the Sun-Times, although he said firing an officer represents a failure for a department and something he was never proud of doing.
Now Ramsey would like to advise Chicago and other police departments on the best practices for policing. He also wants to clarify one thing: he says he never demanded $400,000 to become the next police superintendent before Emanuel replaced police Supt. Jody Weis with McCarthy.
Emanuel reportedly balked at Ramsey’s hefty salary request, but Ramsey said he never made that demand. Instead, his said the main sticking point was concern about his pension, and not his salary. He said he would have taken the job for $260,000 a year, which McCarthy was paid.
Now, though, he doesn’t want the responsibility of running a department full-time.
“But if this oversight group or the mayor’s office wanted my services as a consultant, that I would consider,” he said.
