Margie Fishman, and Jenna Pizzi

The News Journal

Charles Ramsey, a former top police official in Philadelphia, has been hired as a consultant in Wilmington.

Since his retirement, he also has won consultant contracts in Chicago and Cleveland.

Ramsey's hiring took some Wilmington City Council members by surprise.

When Charles H. Ramsey was hired last month under a $112,000 no-bid consultant contract, he was the third outside consultant brought in by Mayor Dennis P. Williams to try to improve the Wilmington Police Department in three years.

But of the three contracts obtained by The News Journal, Ramsey's is the most expensive – $4,000 more than Police Chief Bobby Cummings' salary – and the thinnest on details. The three-page document includes no specific scope of work, no concrete deliverables and no requirement that Ramsey work a minimum number of hours during his seven-month stint.

In one line, the city sums up its overall expectations of the retired Philadelphia police commissioner:

"Consultant shall provide services to the city relating to the assessment and review of public safety in and by the city of Wilmington."

The vagueness of Ramsey's contract, coupled with Williams' reluctance last month to have Ramsey appear before the City Council in a public forum or submit a final report for public inspection, has baffled some City Council members and defies best practices for police contracting, according to one criminal justice professor.

"A more detailed scope of work is par for the course for police contracts," said John DeCarlo, a retired police chief and associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. "It's what you're buying and what the public is paying for."

Councilman Bud Freel, chairman of the city Finance Committee, agreed: "I think any time you have a consultant, it should be right up front in their contract that there are some deliverables," he said. "I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be shared with the council and public."

Williams recently reversed his earlier position and agreed to have Ramsey brief the council on Monday at its quarterly Public Safety Accountability meeting. After previously stating that Ramsey would not produce a formal report, Williams said this past week that Ramsey will likely create a report at the end of his contract, which may or may not be made public. The consultant's work will broadly focus on community policing and crime analysis, the mayor said.

City spokeswoman Alexandra Coppadge said Friday that "taxpayers have the right to request [the report] upon its completion."

"The contract is intentionally vague to allow the chief and Commissioner Ramsey to adjust the flexibility and issues as they may arise," she said.

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Ramsey, 65, is highly regarded as an authority on community policing strategies, with a track record of driving down violent crime when he presided over police departments in Philadelphia, formerly known as "Killadelphia," and Washington, D.C., the nation's former murder capital. Wilmington, meanwhile, has been dubbed "Murder Town," because of its high per capita murder rate.

Despite Ramsey's strong résumé, Freel doesn't think the police department needs another consultant. Since 2013, the department has had a full-time consultant, former city police detective Richard Iardella, who serves as the mayor's public safety liaison for $65,000 a year.

From fall 2013 to spring 2014, the department also paid $35,000 to another former city police officer, James Nolan, to implement and evaluate a city community policing strategy, along with providing advanced data analysis.

Both contracts were initially questioned by council members in 2013. The response from the administration at the time: The mayor's office budget was not subject to review at a public meeting, according to a News Journal report.

Like Ramsey's contract, contracts for Iardella and Nolan include no mandate for a written report. Both consultants also agreed not to publicly release "confidential" information, “defined as any information or material related to the business or operations of the city or that may be designated as confidential information by the city, and not generally known by non-City personnel.”

Reached by phone Friday, Nolan, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at West Virginia University, said he submitted several internal reports to the police department. The city piloted his relationship-building strategies in Browntown, he said, but ultimately abandoned the effort for Operation Disrupt, a 2015 zero-tolerance initiative that involved flooding violent streets with police officers.

"We were trying to implement something we thought was innovative," he said. "It was basically up to the administration to decide what they were going to do."

Nolan also provided his research to the Public Safety Strategies Commission, created by Gov. Jack Markell and the Legislature to study crime in Wilmington. That state-funded $200,000 report, compiled over two months last year, included a list of 114 recommendations. Among them: increase the size and experience of the homicide unit; standardize investigation protocol; and invest resources in hot spot areas like the North Market Street corridor, West Center City and the Hilltop area.

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In a separate report last year, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined "epidemic levels of urban gun violence" in Delaware's largest city, providing a series of indicators for those at risk of committing gun violence.

Williams said the majority of the state commission report's recommendations have been implemented. Council members disagreed.

"It was unnecessary to bring in a consultant on top of the consultants that were already brought in by the governor, said Mike Brown, chairman of the City Council Public Safety Committee and the only Republican on council. "All they had to do was follow the plan."

Added Freel: "None of these reports mean anything if you're not going to take the recommendations seriously."

The city has also consulted with the federal Violence Reduction Network, which provides a network of police departments and police experts to help departments struggling with violent crime.

One of Iardella's responsibilities as a full-time police consultant is to coordinate with that network, in addition to attending weekly city police meetings, setting minimum staffing levels to optimize officer patrols and monitoring the department's progress in creating strong and safe neighborhoods. Iardella did not respond immediately to a request for comment Friday.

All three consultant contracts were obtained by The News Journal, after the city failed to quickly respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Freel questioned why the mayor needed a public safety liaison when he already has a police chief who administers the department's $54 million budget.

Cummings and other police executives are busy overseeing other areas, according to Coppadge.

"These consultants have three different roles," she said.

Another perspective

Police departments nationwide often rely on consultants to offer special skills not readily available within the department, according to experts in the field. These contracts are not always competitively bid, particularly when an agency has already identified a candidate with the right combination of experience. In Wilmington, the city is permitted to bypass competitive bidding on professional service contracts for "unique, specialized services," Coppadge said.

An outsider's perspective, such as a consultant skilled in crime analysis tools, can greatly benefit a department in the long run, said Eric Piza, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who consults with nearly 20 police departments.

"If Wilmington is looking to do something different, to put programs in place, it may be necessary for them to bring in Charles Ramsey to get something off the ground," he said.

Since retiring from the Philadelphia Police Department last month, Ramsey has won consultant contracts in Wilmington, Chicago and Cleveland, along with a fellowship at Drexel University in Philadelphia. His $350-an-hour contract in Chicago, where he got his start as a police cadet in 1968, focuses on guiding civil rights reforms.

In Cleveland, Ramsey will lead a team of 14 consultants working for the city and the state Department of Justice under a contract that could cost $4.95 million and take five years. The lowest bid for that contract came in at $3.3 million, but an assistant U.S. attorney recommended the Ramsey team because it was "by far the best qualified," according to court records.

Previously, Ramsey worked as a consultant in such far-flung places as Iraq, Poland and the Czech Republic. He co-chaired President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing to improve community police relations across the country.

An advocate for police body cameras and real-time crime mapping, Ramsey will focus his work in Wilmington on the department's use of technology, personnel deployment and rebuilding trust within the community. Like other cities he has worked in, Wilmington's problems center on gun violence, drug trafficking, gang activity and robberies, Ramsey said in an interview last month.

He praised the department's progress to date."It's not like we're starting from scratch," he said.

Ramsey's hiring took council members by surprise. The announcement came as the mayor has been locked in a political stalemate with state budget legislators. Asserting the city's sovereign control over its police department, Williams has refused to provide police deployment data to the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, potentially jeopardizing $1.5 million in state allotments for the city's crime-fighting efforts.

Lawmakers are offering the money to help combat crime, but only if Wilmington authorities provide data about how current resources are used. Williams has said he will not hand over the information.

Given Ramsey's other obligations, Wilmington City Council members have questioned whether he will be able to devote enough time to the city's objectives.

But Ramsey expressed confidence that he could juggle his multiple projects. A self-described workaholic, he said he planned to visit Wilmington three to four times a month, supplemented with phone calls and email correspondence. Since signing the city contract last month, Ramsey has visited the city three times, according to Coppadge.

Ramsey's main point person on the ground will be Kevin Bethel, former deputy police commissioner in Philadelphia overseeing patrol operations. Under the city contract, Ramsey will earn $10,000 a month, and Bethel will earn up to $6,000 a month. Bethel also is working with Drexel to expand a pre-arrest diversion program for Philadelphia students.

"City Council and state officials should view [Ramsey's] hire as a strong symbol of the city's seriousness and commitment to reducing violent crime and building safe and strong neighborhoods," Coppadge said.

Cummings said he welcomed Ramsey's insights: "I look at it as an opportunity to pick someone's brain who has been in the business for a long time."

Contact News Journal reporter Margie Fishman at (302) 324-2882, on Twitter @MargieTrende or mfishman@delawareonline.com.

If you go

What: Wilmington Public Safety Accountability meeting

When: 5 p.m. Monday

Where: First-floor City Council Chambers at the Louis L. Redding City/County Building, 800 N. French St.