Police Chief Gordon Ramsay may leave Wichita to take over troubled Texas department
Police Chief Gordon Ramsay may be leaving Wichita after five years to take over a Texas police department that’s been under fire for potentially abusive use of force against racial-justice protesters.
Ramsay has applied for the open police chief position in Austin, Texas, said City Manager Robert Layton, Ramsay’s supervisor at City Hall.
“I am very happy living and working in Wichita, and this community has been very good to my family and me,” Ramsay said in a statement issued by the Wichita Police Department. “We have accomplished a lot together over the last five and a half years, and the decision to apply for this position was difficult, as I love Wichita, the WPD staff, and this community.“
Layton said he hopes Ramsay stays, but understands if he gets the job and decides to take it.
“I think Gordon has done a tremendous job here in Wichita,” Layton said. “I’d love it if he’d retire here.”
However, he added “I’m always supportive of people who are pursuing good, solid professional opportunities.”
Austin, at 950,000 population, is more than twice the size of Wichita.
The job there opened up in February when Police Chief Brian Manley announced his retirement.
Manley has been dogged by protests over the department’s fatal shooting of an unarmed man last year and faced withering criticism for the department’s use of force during protests sparked by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
Austin, the state capital, home of the University of Texas and a liberal enclave in a largely conservative state, was the site of mammoth protests after the Floyd killing.
At least two of the protesters, ages 16 and 20, were hospitalized with head trauma after being struck by “less lethal” munitions fired by crowd-control officers.
Ramsay, who came to Wichita from Duluth and was a former president of the Minnesota Police Chief’s Association, has been a leading and outspoken critic of the police action that resulted in Floyd’s death.
Floyd died when an officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes, despite his pleas that he couldn’t breathe and bystanders who recorded the incident and pleaded with the officer to let up.
Within three days of the May 25, 2020 killing of Floyd, Ramsey became one of the nation’s first large-city police chiefs to call it an act of murder, saying: “I get a lump in my throat when I try to talk about it, but in that video I see a murder committed by those who are violating the very oath they swore to uphold.”
Ramsay later joined Wichita demonstrators protesting the killing and demanding racial justice who gathered outside the north Wichita police substation.
In April of this year, he hailed the second-degree murder conviction of Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin: “Justice prevailed today in the reprehensible actions of the Minneapolis police officer.”
Contributing: Jason Tidd and Michael Stavola of The Eagle
This story was originally published June 17, 2021 at 12:39 PM.
