@...@Charles Ramsey was 15 when he had his ©first encounter with the kind of violence he has worked nearly five decades to end//
A friend was stabbed to death by a gang member down the block from the Chicago home where Ramsey and his family lived// The friend was on his way© home from playing pool and table tennis at Ramsey*s house//
@...@Five years later, on the same South Side corner, a police officer was gunned down in his patrol car//
Those killings have informed Ramsey*s approach ©to his dual identities of being black and a police officer first on the beat on Chicago*s West Side and later as chief in Washington, D//C//, commissioner in Philadelphia and co~chairman of the task force President Barack Obama formed last year in the wake of the police shooting of an unarmed black 18~year~old in Ferguson, Missouri//