Unlike his immediate predecessors, Ramsey, left, often patrols with officers. Here he confers with Officer Abdul Green about a drug arrest. (By Brian Smale – The Washington Post)

Over barbecue and ribs, the cops told Ramsey stories of nepotism, criminal and sexual misconduct, deadwood and a dangerous code of silence in which officers, like prisoners, were afraid to be seen as snitches lest they suffer professional retribution. They described a department in which young recruits became demoralized by poor working conditions and short-staffing, while veterans were either indifferent or were tempted to leave for suburban departments.

They talked for several hours and Ramsey outlined his hopes for change. "When it was over, and Ramsey left, people felt good," Rowan recalls. "We sat around and talked, and talked the next day, and people were really encouraged by what they'd seen and heard ... Ramsey was a smash."

Ramsey has been praised, so far, for his leadership, accessibility and openness by civic and political leaders, and by many within the department. The new chief may fall victim to high expectations, however, from those who are impatient for change. Rowan, a lawyer who knows and represents many cops, says they generally have been "underwhelmed" by some of Ramsey's early personnel actions.

Since the dinner at Rowan's house, for example, three of the five officers who met with Ramsey have been transferred and essentially demoted because of decisions made during the tenure of his immediate predecessor, interim Chief Sonya Proctor. Rowan has called and written Ramsey, urging him to reverse these actions to show that honest whistle-blowers can thrive in the new MPD.

Ramsey says he has been so consumed with reorganizing the department that he has not been dealing with individual cases. But Rowan says it's crucial that Ramsey begin to make them a priority: "It's important that people who do the right thing get recognition for that. That won't come from flow charts, but from the way individuals get treated."

In his first major personnel shake-up, Ramsey in September announced that Proctor would be retiring. It was a popular move, since the 24-year veteran was widely disliked for taking disciplinary actions that many considered excessive and arbitrary.

Ramsey had demanded background checks, personal résumés and 500-word essays about the future of the department from all his command staff before deciding on his personnel moves. Ten of the 11 white-shirts that he later promoted were ranking officers with bachelor's or master's degrees. Tracy, the police union chief, praises Ramsey for being able to "tap honestly into the department, without knowing anybody," to choose good people.

But Rowan says many cops believe Ramsey should have brought in more high-ranking outsiders. "I was expecting him to clean house and bring in some new people who could set a new standard," Rowan says. Ramsey, at the same time, should have reached farther down into the ranks to promote excellent sergeants and lieutenants rather than some captains and commanders who, Rowan says, have been part of the department's problems.

"The chief seems enamored of academic degrees. The problem is not a department suffering from too few with college degrees; it suffers from too few people who want to fight crime," says Rowan. "He could have put together a real team for the future," Rowan says. "Instead, it looks like just another department shake-up."

Yet, Rowan says, he still has great faith in Ramsey. "I sincerely hope that he is right and I am wrong."

Old-fashioned policing: Late on a hot summer night, Ramsey and his sidekick Gainer – dubbed "Batman and Robin" by some cops – join in anti-prostitution patrols on 14th Street NW. District police chiefs rarely do this sort of thing. Shortly after midnight, they pull over a 19-year-old Maryland youth driving with a known prostitute in the passenger seat of a late-model sport utility vehicle.

Ramsey runs a registration check and learns that the SUV belongs to the young man's father. It is nearly 12:30 a.m. and Ramsey does not have sufficient evidence to arrest the teenager or the hooker.

So, Ramsey grabs his cell phone and calls the kid's father at home, waking him. After identifying himself, Ramsey, who is the divorced father of a 12-year-old son, asks: "Do you know what your son is doing with your car?" He then asks whether the father knows that his son's action could result in police seizure of the car and a $600 fine. (Later, a smiling Ramsey acknowledges he made up that figure for effect.) At this point, the father asks Ramsey to let him speak to his son, whose end of the conversation consists of: "Yessir ... Yessir ... Nosir ... Nosir."

The incident will not be reflected in any crime statistics, but Ramsey is convinced that D.C. prostitutes now have one fewer potential customer.

Nearly 60 District police officers, government officials and community activists scramble for window seats and crane their necks to get better views as their chartered buses rumble through some of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods. This is an up-close look at community policing – Chicago style. On the city's West Side, one bus carries visitors past burnt-out storefronts, boarded tenements, vacant lots littered with broken bottles of beer and cheap wine.

Ramsey, who previously commanded this police district, arranged this August outing as part of a four-day nationwide conference on community policing that he had organized before leaving Chicago. The idea is to show the D.C. contingent how crime-ridden neighborhoods such as these can be rescued, and to inspire them with the hope that maybe such a strategy can be transplanted successfully to Washington.

Ramsey was asked to design Chicago's community policing plans in 1993 at the urging of the city's civilian police board. He knew so little about the concept he bought a book. Citizens appeared excited at the idea, but when Ramsey asked for volunteers among 11,000 Chicago cops, he got only three dozen. But then Mayor Richard M. Daley backed the project, and community policing took off.

"Amazing. Absolutely amazing," says Brenda Johnson, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, as she and the others get their first glimpse of the 800 block of Harding Avenue, a piece of the Humboldt Park neighborhood that has been so transformed it is now locally known as the "Super Block." Pleasant brick houses with neatly clipped lawns now stand where abandoned and boarded-up buildings once blared the presence of crime. Five known drug houses have been demolished or rehabilitated and sold to new owners who have spruced up their properties. A vacant corner lot that was a haven for junkies and a dumping ground for trash and drug paraphernalia has been converted into a fenced-in community play lot, with landscaping, children's recreation equipment and picnic tables.

Complementing these changes: Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department repaved alleys and streets and supplied residents with more garbage cans. The city's Bureau of Forestry cut down and trimmed trees to improve lighting. The city's towing unit got rid of abandoned cars. Its Housing Department gave $7,000 grants to each family on the block. City Hall donated sod. Citizens got regular progress reports on the changes from the police and other agencies.

On a nearby block, residents fed up with drug traffic enlisted the help of both police and the court system, obtaining a court order requiring a landlord to screen out drug criminals, monitor his buildings and make cosmetic improvements.

"Identifying the problem. Designing strategies. And finding solutions – one block at a time," Chicago police officer Nanida Cleveland, who oversees neighborhood relations, explains to the Washington visitors. But how transferable is this to Washington? As he peers through the bus window, Commander Ronald Monroe of the 4th District in Northwest is far from sure. "The PSAs are understaffed and no concept can work without adequate staffing." As important, he adds, "we don't understand the community policing partnership."

District agencies such as the Department of Public Works and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs have, by most accounts, failed to honor pledges made earlier this year to work aggressively with the police to board up abandoned houses, improve street lighting and clean up vacant lots.

"It's not a police problem. It's our problem as a city," says Monroe, who has since been promoted to be an assistant chief. "We have to hold other agencies accountable."

Sally Byington, a member of the D.C. police Citizens Advisory Council who attended the Chicago conference, says community policing doesn't work in Washington because most officers don't really get to know the residents and because city agencies refuse to work together.

"We're out here as little islands wanting to be connected," Byington says. "But we still need leadership, and it can't be just Chief Ramsey."