WASHINGTON -- Former Washington Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who presided over a sharp drop in homicides and crime in the nation's capital before he stepped down late last year, says he would like to be Baltimore's next police commissioner.
"I've been interviewed. I want the job," Ramsey, 57, said in a phone interview yesterday.
"We had a very good deal of success in terms of bringing the murder rate down," he said of his nearly nine-year tenure in Washington. "D.C. is a much safer city."
Ramsey, with a reputation for having professionalized the city's police force and appearing frequently on the evening news, served as Washington's chief from April 1998 to late last year, after the newly elected mayor, Adrian Fenty, said he would replace him.
As a city council member, Fenty had often criticized Ramsey for not focusing enough on Washington's most troubled and crime-ridden neighborhoods, a sentiment echoed by some community leaders yesterday. Critics in the city's police union accused Ramsey of playing to the news media while undercutting rank-and-file officers, who they said are demoralized and leaving in droves.
Ramsey said he has been interviewing for the Baltimore job for "about a month," but declined to say whether he approached Mayor Sheila Dixon or she approached him. "I didn't know I'd miss being a police chief so much," he said.
Ramsey and Baltimore's acting commissioner, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, a 26-year veteran, have emerged as the two main contenders for Baltimore's top police post, according to sources familiar with the selection process. Yesterday, Dixon said she would not comment on Ramsey or the search for a police commissioner.
Ever since ousting Leonard D. Hamm as Baltimore police commissioner in mid-July, Dixon, running for a full four-year term, has said that she would embark on a nationwide search for a permanent replacement. A decision is not expected until after the Sept. 11 Democratic primary.
The search comes as Baltimore has fallen back into numbers of shootings and homicides that haven't been seen in the city since the 1990s, when more than 300 people a year were killed.
"Baltimore seems like a good city with some pockets of crime - it reminds me a lot of D.C.," Ramsey said yesterday.
As for Baltimore's stubborn murder rate, he said: "When you compare it to last year, and it is higher, you are going in the wrong direction and you don't want to continue that trend." There have been 206 homicides in Baltimore this year, compared with 178 this time last year.
Ramsey said yesterday that an effective crime strategy hinges on positive relations between the police and the community, a theme that Dixon has stressed and one that Bealefeld also embraces.
"The most effective [crime-fighting] strategy is one that gets the community involved," Ramsey said.
Community leaders in Washington offered mixed reviews of his performance. Raymond Bell, who said he has been a community activist in the city since a close friend was shot and killed in 1986, said: "I looked at the chief more as a politician.
"I want somebody who can bring people together, not just when the television cameras are around," Bell said.
Scott Pomeroy, an activist with the downtown business improvement association said: "He came in with some good programs, then it dropped off. ... It was not just him [Ramsey], it was the whole administration."
Ramsey brushed off the criticism and pointed to the crime reduction on his watch. There were 301 murders in 1997, the year before he took the helm of Washington's Police Department. That figure dropped to 169 in 2006, his last year in office.
Total crime in Washington dropped in every year during his tenure except 2001. The steepest drop was in 2004, when there was an 18 percent decline, according to the D.C. police Web site.
Kenneth E. Barnes Sr., who leads an advocacy organization for the families of homicide victims called ROOT Inc., found Ramsey to be accessible and supportive of community initiatives.
"Ramsey truly understands that the issues of crime are not just police issues," Barnes said. "Our fight is with the epidemic of gun violence. Ramsey understands that."
Ramsey frequently clashed with the police union. One union leader, Kristopher Baumann, called him more of a "public relations machine" than an effective chief. Last summer, Ramsey declared a "crime emergency," forcing officers to work long weeks and driving down morale, Baumann said.
He said Ramsey took credit for crime reductions that were a consequence of shifting demographics and economic development in Washington over the past decade. And he criticized Ramsey for implementing harsh disciplinary practices that bruised morale and drove officers away, hindering the department's recruiting and retention efforts.
"Wow," Baumann said, when told that Ramsey was under consideration in Baltimore. "If Baltimore already has a recruitment and retention problem, and has communities underserved, I couldn't imagine what would happen under Ramsey."
The veteran police chief, a native of Chicago, built his reputation in that city department's ranks as an innovator in community policing tactics. Ramsey started as a patrol cadet, at the age of 18, and rose to become a deputy superintendent who was a key player in developing community policing programs that became a national model.
When he came to Washington in 1998, Ramsey took over a beleaguered department and invited federal oversight to rebuild trust with the public.
Ramsey guided the department's major internal changes, from upgrading district police stations to bolstering communications and information technology programs.
One law enforcement expert noted that Ramsey served twice as long as the average for big-city police chiefs.
"Chuck Ramsey is probably one of the most effective police chiefs in the country, and I say that because, after almost 10 years of being in Washington, that department is a fundamentally different department today than it was 10 years ago," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank.
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Ramsey was credited with pushing the department to expand its mission to include homeland security.
But his department also came under fire five years ago when his officers were accused of improperly arresting hundreds of people who had gathered in the city to protest the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the war in Iraq.
So far, Washington's city government has agreed to pay out more than $1.6 million in damages to more than 100 people who filed lawsuits, and another class-action lawsuit involving 400 people is pending.
Law enforcement experts said Ramsey helped improve relations and cooperation among law enforcement agencies in Washington, to help make the region more secure.
"He put the Metropolitan Police Department back on the national map as a premier agency," said Sheldon Greenberg, director of the Johns Hopkins University's Division of Public Safety Leadership.
His successor in Washington, Cathy L. Lanier, was one of his proteges.
"I think Chief Ramsey did an awful lot for our Police Department," Lanier said yesterday. "I think he was a great police chief. He's got integrity, he's got drive, he's got great passion for what he does."
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Sun reporter John Fritze contributed to this article.