Charles H. Ramsey (born 1950) is the former Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department. Prior to assuming that post in January 2008, he had served as Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) from 1998 to early 2007. In January 2017, he became a regular CNN contributor. A native of Chicago, Illinois, he joined the Chicago Police Department as an 18-year-old cadet in 1968. After serving six years as a patrol officer, he was promoted to sergeant in 1977. He was appointed a lieutenant in 1984 and became captain in 1988. He served as Commander of the Narcotics Section from 1989 to 1992 before spending two years as a Deputy Chief of the police force's Patrol Division. In 1994, he was appointed Deputy Superintendent. In 1998, he became the MPDC chief. During his tenure, he was involved in several high-profile cases as chief of police in Washington, D.C., such as the Chandra Levy murder investigation. He has also been in the spotlight since the September 11 attacks focused attention on security issues around Washington, D.C. Ramsey is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois. He has served as an adjunct professor at Lewis University and Northwestern University. Ramsey is a former member of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. Career as Washington, D.C. police chief Ramsey's eight-year tenure as Chief of Police saw crime rates decline about 40%, the expansion of community policing and traffic safety programs, and improved MPDC recruiting and hiring standards, training, equipment, facilities and fleet. He reorganized the department to cut bureaucracy, and created Regional Operations Commands to oversee the quality of D.C. police services. He helped to create a non-emergency 3-1-1 system and made crime information readily available to the public through CrimeReports.com. He and his department assisted the Department of Homeland Security during the state funerals of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. Traffic checkpoints Under Ramsey, the D.C, police instituted traffic checkpoints at which information about motorists who were breaking no law at the time was entered into a database. The move was called an "invasion of privacy" by an official of the police union. Pershing Park arrests On September 27, 2002, the MPD made a mass arrest of a large group of demonstrators who had assembled in DC's Pershing Park to protest the World Bank and International