Ramsey Defends Dept.'s Handling of Protests

On WTOP's Ask the Chief program, Ramsey says his department looks at the totality of a protest before making arrests. Unlike the unpermitted IMF demonstration, Ramsey says the city has handled many other demonstrations with few, if any, arrests.

"With the number of protests that we have here in the city and kinds of things we're called upon to handle on a regular basis, I think our people do a very good job," he says.

But the IMF gathering, he says, was different. It came soon after the first anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, after the nation's terror alert had changed from red to orange and after a lot of Internet chatter where groups had talked about shutting down major roads through the city.

"Not everyone there was just an innocent bystander," Ramsey said. "There were people who came here to try to shut down the city and cause a great deal of disruption and we made an awful lot of arrests that day."

The mass protests led to multiple lawsuits against the city and prompted police to make changes in their procedures.

Some of the changes include the use of bull horns to disperse crowds and less restrictive wrist-ankle cuffs. When police department computers fail, Ramsey says officers will now manually process people who are arrested.

Ramsey, who is known for diffusing tense situations at protests, says if his department made mistakes, he's acknowledged it.

"If there is someone who legitimately was caught up in the middle of it, obviously that was unfortunate. But the majority of people who showed up that day came here that to take over Washington, D.C., to try to cause property damage and disruption. I offer no apologies for people with that kind of mindset. You don't come here and take over anything. But for those people who were inadvertently caught up in the middle of it, obviously that should not have happened. For that there are some regrets," Ramsey said.

A spokesman for group, Mobilization for Global Justice, says his group did not back the destruction of property and says members were in the city for non-violent, civil disobedience.

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