By Naomi Yaeger-BischoffCaption: Dudley Edmondson, left, visited with Gordon Ramsay in November at a community event. In December, Ramsay was named Chief of Police in Duluth.
Duluth has a new Chief of Police, Gordon Ramsay. Ramsay is a champion of neighborhood programs and intends to invigorate the community policing and neighborhood watch programs. Ramsay was promoted from within the Duluth Police Department. He most recently served as a lieutenant in the Central Hillside.
Ramsay said he intends to apply the model that the domestic violence support program of Duluth uses. The Duluth program of coordinating police, court, and other agencies to deal with domestic violence is a model that is studied and copied around the world. “It’s a coordinated plan that works very well,” he said.
Rasmay said that it is the same 30 to 40 people who are causing the problems. A new model of working to end the problems would give the police the tools and the training to get those people off the streets or fear the punishment enough so that the crime would not be worth committing.
Some of these tools include helping citizens know what to write to prosecutors and starting neighborhood mini-court watches. A court watch means citizens actually attend court proceedings. Ramsay says the courts and prosecutors will begin to take cases more seriously when they see people who have been affected by crimes sitting in the courtroom.
“People think their problems end with the police,” said Ramsay. He said television shows and lack of knowledge contribute to the public’s idea that stopping crime all falls on the police. He said often times “the police know the trouble and pain individuals and neighborhoods are going through, but that feeling doesn’t get conveyed through the courts.”
When community policing takes a leading role in neighborhoods, people will get to know an individual officer. Ramsay hopes to have cops on bikes and in the neighborhoods meeting people. He said people feel more comfortable calling the police when they are familiar with the faces behind the phone. “Relationship building is huge,” said Ramsay.
