News Room February 24, 2004 Public Oversight Hearing on the Metropolitan Police Department's Proposed Plan to Restructure the Police Service Areas (PSAs) Charles H. Ramsey Chief of Police Metropolitan Police Department Chief Charles H. Ramsey delivered the following statement to the Council of the District of Columbia, Committee on the Judiciary, the Honorable Kathy Patterson, Chair, on February 24, 2004, at the Council Chamber, John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. For more information about the new PSA plan, including maps and proposed staffing levels, click here For a printable version of the testimony, click here* Madame Chair, members of the Committee, staff and guests – I appreciate the opportunity to present this opening statement outlining the Metropolitan Police Department’s plans to restructure our Police Service Areas, or PSAs. And I want to thank the Committee for holding this hearing and furthering the public dialogue that the MPD has engaged in, over the last nine months, as we have developed this plan. For the benefit of the audience watching on Channel 13 and others, the text of my statement is posted on the Police Department’s website: www.mpdc.dc.gov. As I have said throughout this process, the new PSA structure is not a “magic bullet” that, in and of itself, will address all of the public safety issues confronting our city and our Police Department. But this is a significant step forward in improving police service in our neighborhoods. I firmly believe that the new structure, as presented to the Council, will put our Department in a stronger position to fight crime and make DC neighborhoods safer. How? By helping us put police officers where they are needed most to fight crime. And by giving us the staffing flexibility to do a better job in every neighborhood of answering calls for service, targeting crime “hot spots,” and engaging the community in neighborhood partnerships and proactive problem solving. All of these are critical elements of our community policing strategy, and I believe we will be more effective in carrying out community policing in DC under the proposed restructuring of the PSAs. The underlying PSA system is sound. It supports the type of comprehensive community policing strategy that all of us are working to achieve. But the current structure is too inflexible and not neighborhood-oriented enough for us to be as effective as we could be. The new structure goes a long way toward overcoming some of these barriers and helping us improve police services at the neighborhood level. Page 1 of 6                         1   2   3   4   5   6    * This document is presented in Portable Document Format (PDF) and a PDF reader is required for viewing. Download a PDF reader or learn more about PDFs.