Ramsey to transfer 26 cops to Internal Affairs

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey plans to transfer 26 officers to the department's Internal Affairs bureau next month as part of his ongoing plan to stamp out corruption.

The positions will be filled by officers who are already working in a variety of units within the department, Ramsey said. The transfers will increase the size of the Internal Affairs bureau by about 25 percent, bringing it to just under 130 people.

To many police officers, Internal Affairs has never been seen as a desirable post. But when Ramsey announced earlier this year that he hoped to assign more officers to the bureau, citing the need for the department to crack down on corruption, he got a surprising number of volunteers.

"There are a lot of people who are pretty disgusted by the corruption cases we've seen," Ramsey said. "And they want to do something about it."

The officers will move to Internal Affairs sometime in mid-October. Almost all are lieutenants and sergeants who are transferring from patrol, detective and theft units, among others.

No existing positions will be left open as a result of the transfers, because they will coincide with a series of departmental promotions, Ramsey said.

Currently the Internal Affairs bureau is stretched thin, Ramsey said. When a high-profile case comes to light, it often ends up drawing investigators away from other, less serious cases, which leads to a backlog.

"Every case is important, and we need to be able to treat them that way," Ramsey said.

Ramsey's anticorruption plan was announced in response to a spate of police scandals that erupted this year, including the arrest of three officers on federal charges of stealing heroin. Last month, Ramsey detailed plans to enhance ethics training for officers, implement new hiring standards for new officers, improve ways officers can report each other for misbehavior and to assign more people to Internal Affairs.