Lawn mowers and tires crowd a property room. (By Brian Smale – The Washington Post)

The applause is particularly loud when Sarate introduces his helmeted bicycle patrolman. Patrick Cumba, an energetic 27-year-old, is so popular for making many arrests in the neighborhood that local residents raised $1,500 to buy him a new mountain bike to replace his old personal one. Sarate jokes with the audience, for those who didn't already know, that Cumba is so committed to community policing that he has moved into a row house in PSA 112 and married a woman he met on the beat. People roar their approval.

All the applause, though, doesn't stop the residents from complaining, and several people immediately hit Sarate with protests that there is still open drug trafficking around Third and G streets SE. Police are not responding when people call, they say, even if they dial 911. Callers get put on hold, or they get hassled for too many details by 911 operators, or they just get no response.

"Your complaints are justified. We are aware of that and we are working on it," Sarate says. He urges people to tell the phone operators that they are working with their PSA sergeant, in the hope they'll get a better response. As to the drug trade, he says, "We are increasing patrols there, and we are trying to do what we can, when we can."

Spend time with Sarate and you can see how community policing is supposed to work. He keeps in touch with 20 organized block clubs. His cell phone is programmed with the numbers of a dozen community activists, and he talks with them so often they recognize his voice. (He also pays his own cell phone bills of more than $25 a month because the department has never made good on a promise by ex-chief Soulsby to pay.) He knows community activists so well that he remembers not only most of their names, but also their dogs' names. He knows virtually all the more than 100 business owners in his PSA.

In addition, he and Cumba have cultivated a relationship with Delgado from DCRA to help close drug houses, and they also get DPW to tow away about half a dozen abandoned cars a month, a miraculous number compared with some neighborhoods. Sarate and other cops in the 1st District have gone on field trips with senior citizens and kids from tough neighborhoods. A police project started in PSA 112 has put computer labs and other programs for schoolchildren into the Potomac Gardens and Arthur Capper housing projects.

Sarate's job as PSA sergeant is made easier because PSA 112 and the surrounding Capitol Hill area – from the fashionable town houses to the working-class enclaves and the old brick projects – are politically organized. More than 1,000 homes are connected by computer to PSA electronic-mail networks, and they access PSA Web sites that give them updated crime news to share with neighbors.

Sarate, a native of San Antonio, is 50 years old and has spent more than half his life in the MPD. He is a 6-foot, 215-pound veteran of three tours in Vietnam, and a man with a gentle manner. He wears a red "Kevlar Survivor" patch on his shoulder to mark the day a bulletproof vest saved him from a bullet in the stomach; he doesn't discuss the details. He is encouraged by Ramsey's plans for the department, but he nonetheless plans to retire within a year.

When the church hall meeting breaks up after 10 p.m., Sarate walks two women home along G Street. He tells them how soon a busted street light is likely to be fixed. He says he will try to crack down on suburban motorists cruising the streets to buy drugs. He asks how their dogs Lulu and Butterscotch are doing. And he reminds them the neighborhood needs to get better organized. "Can we get people together?" he asks. "A block party, maybe?" They both nod enthusiastically and say it's a really good idea.

"We're getting secondhand equipment, and we're getting treated like stepchildren ... "

"I've been complaining for a year about my cruiser. The steering wheel came off, and then the transmission went ... "

"There's just too much repetitive paperwork. It keeps you off the street."

These three weary voices rise from among 100 MPD cops of all ranks brought together for a focus group to explore what's wrong with Washington's efforts at community policing. A police focus group – aimed at eliciting complaints? In a department where officers have learned for decades that speaking out gets you in trouble, Charles Ramsey's attempts to change the basic culture are ventures into uncharted waters.

"Don't be afraid to raise issues," Ramsey tells the group he has convened in the gymnasium of the Police Boys and Girls Club in Northeast. "I'm here to tell you this: We are gonna build a model that works for the MPD, and I don't give a damn what's been done in the past."

"There is no rank in this room. There is no rank in this room," Ramsey repeats. "Everybody is the same in here, and I want to talk about it. Your voice is as important as my voice, all right?"

Two days earlier, at a meeting of his top staff, Ramsey asked Gainer who would be "facilitating" the focus group, and said he feared "chaos" if the gathering was not well managed. "You have to give them time to vent. They are gonna be beefing about every damn thing, and if you don't let that happen, you'll never get to where you want to get," Ramsey told his deputy. "You gotta let 'em blow off some steam."

Vent they do. The assembled officers, with four facilitators, break into groups and begin to vigorously list problems: understaffing, unsupervised patrol officers, lack of training opportunities, wasted time in court appearances, loads of stupid paperwork, uneven workloads, caseloads in which one detective has nearly 100 cases while another has two, and on and on. Officers who try hardest are the ones most likely to get in some kind of trouble with their bosses, some say, while those who do the least work get away with it.

The focus group would have been unthinkable for Ramsey's immediate predecessors, who did not encourage feedback from the troops. But as an outsider who has inherited deep troubles, Ramsey welcomes the critique. He has made himself more accessible than any recent chief. He has already attended roughly 100 community meetings, has frequently gone out on patrol with officers (making several arrests), and has made dozens of unannounced visits to police stations and crime scenes. He goes out of his way to meet rank-and-file officers before supervisors, and introduces himself as Chuck Ramsey. He also holds "walk-ins" every two weeks, where any officer or civilian employee can come in to talk about anything. Many actually do.

After griping for 45 minutes, the 100 cops attending the focus group spend half as long talking about what is going right under the new PSA system: Some communities are getting more involved, some cops are getting to know people, including criminals, on their beats, and some places seem to be slowly building a slightly better sense of teamwork and improved supervision.

Ramsey, who left the gym so his presence wouldn't impede the conversation, returns now to take questions. Several cops express fears that his new education requirements will hurt their careers. They say they can't afford college or just don't think they need classroom work to be a cop.

Ramsey stands firm. "You have to get your butt back in college if you want to go anywhere in this department," he says. Officers won't lose jobs because they lack degrees, he tells them, but they also might have trouble advancing. He says he is working to reinstate tuition reimbursement, which the city discontinued a decade ago.

Favoritism and cronyism keep coming up. One patrolwoman says that opportunities for training and promotion in the MPD historically have been reserved for the "inner circle" of favored officers. Ramsey's voice rises: "When I got here, I heard everybody is connected with somebody. Everybody is connected to a politician. Everybody's connected to a city councilman. Everybody's connected to a preacher, or to some higher-up in the department. Well, I don't give a damn who you are connected with. That is not gonna get you ahead with me. If you are dead weight, God alone couldn't save you! I give you my word on that. Whatever happened in the past, I don't give a damn."

The room breaks into applause and cheers.

A 25-year veteran detective in the front row raises his hand, and says, "I would just like to thank you for giving us back our freedom of speech."

The cop from Englewood finds himself in the White House Rose Garden. Under a sweltering mid-morning August sun, Charles Ramsey – in full-dress blues – strolls among the white roses, lavender, begonias and geraniums. "This is nice," he says. "This is the first time I've been here."

He is at the White House at the president's invitation for a ceremony marking the expansion of the Brady gun-control law. Ramsey is one of the first to arrive, by himself, and he clearly is a bit awed. "I get impressed by it all," he says. "It's the whole feeling you have of being in Washington." Later, he is totally engrossed as the Marine Corps Band breaks into "Stars and Stripes Forever."

Ramsey had been similarly moved when he attended the Arlington National Cemetery burials of the two U.S. Capitol Police officers slain in July. Then, the MPD put on a demonstration of unity not seen in recent years, attending the 14-mile-long funeral procession en masse. As several hundred motorcycle police assembled at the cemetery entrance, Ramsey had proudly saluted.

Since his arrival in Washington, Ramsey has spoken often of the special sense of pride he feels to be the police chief of the nation's capital, and of his commitment to fixing the many problems that ail the police department. As an outsider from a big city, he has also expressed his surprise at the level of crime many citizens of Washington have come to expect and even accept.

"This is a violent, violent city," he tells a citizens' group at a church in Petworth, a middle-class neighborhood in Northwest. "There is no need to have this level of crime. This is not that big a city, and there is just no reason for it to be as violent as it is. We have experienced a decline in crime, but the level of fear has not declined. People are afraid, and legitimately so, unfortunately."

Ramsey finishes his talk by urging citizens to get more involved and by vowing to not only train better police officers, but to "train the community" how to fight crime. After Ramsey finishes, an old man in the audience, identifying himself as a 50-year resident, rises. He accuses Ramsey of exaggerating the problem in describing the city as a "hellhole. You make it sound like Dodge City."

"Sorry if I offended you," Ramsey replies. "But there are parts of the city like that. I have seen violence. And this is an area that is far more violent than it should be. We have 166 murders so far this year, and one is too many ... As long as we have one neighborhood where a mother can't send her child to the market to get a quart of milk without a reasonable expectation of coming home alive, then we all have a problem."

Peter Perl is a staff writer for the Magazine. Cheryl W. Thompson covers the District police for The Post's Metro staff.