June 5, 2008 edition


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COVER STORY:


Chattin’ with the chief

Charles H. Ramsey has a dead drug dealer to thank for becoming Philadelphia’s 31st police commissioner.
It’s a far-removed connection, to be fair. But as Ramsey tells it, his long journey from being a young Chicago beat cop to commander-in-chief of the nation’s fourth-largest municipal police force began on a bitterly cold night in January 1973.
As Ramsey sat with his partner outside a West Side apartment building, guarding a murder scene there, the meat wagon showed up.
Ramsey watched as a couple of fellow cops, particularly one 60-something officer, lugged the lifeless 400-pound body down three flights of stairs and across a snow-encrusted street.
Steam billowed from the nostrils, the mouth and the scalp of the veteran cop as he struggled with the load.
"It was like every step, he was just counting the steps to get to that wagon," Ramsey recalled. "And I looked at him and suddenly it just flashed. . . .

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Editorial:

Make it a dry spell

Summer is nearly upon us, a time when too many youngsters have too much time on their hands.
The message at a special presentation at Delaware Valley High School last week was sobering indeed. It was enough to bring state Attorney General Tom Corbett to the Somerton school to tout a prevention program, Girl Talk: Choices and Consequences of Underage Drinking. The message is pertinent to girls, to be sure, but it’s just as relevant to boys . . .

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