A police officer who chased down an armed man near Comly and Edmund streets was named the 15th Police District Advisory Council’s Officer of the Month for June.
Officer Robert Sellers was on the lookout for a man with a gun when he spotted David Ramos speaking to a woman at 7:45 p.m. on June 28, said Capt. Frank Bachmayer, the 15th district’s commander.
Ramos, 33, fit the description Sellers had received on the police radio. Before the officer could approach him, Ramos spotted Sellers and fled. Sellers chased Ramos and found him hiding under a van. The officer found on Ramos a loaded .22-caliber handgun and 96 Xanax pills, Bachmayer told PDAC members during their July 30 session at St. Joachim’s Roman Catholic Church in Frankford.
Ramos, who is in custody at the Curran Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road, is facing charges for illegally possessing the gun and the drugs. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 9.
“We always try to get illegal guns off the street,” Bachmayer said.
The captain said last week that his officers have confiscated 52 illegal weapons so far this year. During the same period in 2011, the 15th district officers took 38 off the streets.
Bachmayer said armed robberies have remained a problem in the 15th district, the city’s largest.
Year to date, he said, the district has seen 165 robberies compared to 141 last year. That’s a 17 percent increase, he said. Strong-arm robberies, however, have gone down from 252 to 238. Burglaries, a citywide problem, have decreased in the 15th district from 477 to 441, Bachmayer said.
The next meeting of the district’s Police Service Area 1 will be at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 15, in Aria Health’s Frankford campus, 4900 Frankford Ave. The PDAC will meet next at 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 27, at the same location. ••
