Annette John-Hall: Where is the voice of the good guys?

He's been on the job only 19 months, but Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has already demonstrated nearly perfect pitch in attempting to maintain a harmonious Police Department.

Yes, for the most part, he's been in tune. Even when the bagpipes have wailed too many times to count.

Five fallen officers on Ramsey's watch alone. But in each case, the commissioner has displayed tough yet compassionate leadership, steadfast in the face of heartwrenching tragedy.

And when it comes to brutality and racial injustice, Ramsey has shown zero tolerance, handing down swift and decisive reprimands even when it wasn't the most popular thing to do.

That's why I'm astonished by Ramsey's tone-deaf response to Domelights.com, the racially toxic Web site created and run by one of his supervisors.

It supposedly is "devoted to the abolition of political correctness" and carries the slogan "The Voice of the Good Guys."

Really? Do good guys relentlessly hurl racial stereotypes at black Philadelphians as if they were PAL softballs? Do good guys accuse Ramsey of "playing the race card," after he suspended the officers who posted racist decals in their lockers?

And do good guys call innocent children "a bunch of ghetto monkey faces," as one poster referred to the kids of the Creative Steps camp?

Can't help but wonder if that's whom the Domelights faithful see when they patrol minority neighborhoods.

So now we're supposed to applaud the commish for finally restricting officers from accessing Domelights at work. But he acted only after a group of African American cops sued to have the site shut down. The site was disabled last night.

I can't think of any workplace where employees would be allowed to racially skewer their coworkers and get away with it.

Talk about a hostile environment.

I remember asking Ramsey to weigh in on Domelights last year, after the site exposed a colleague's address and phone number because its users took issue with one of her stories.

"I haven't gone on it, and I don't intend to," Ramsey said in a tepid response. "God bless 'em. Just because you have a few people voice their opinion doesn't mean it's widespread. . . . I think we have a good department."

Apparently, he continued to ignore numerous complaints from officers about the site until the lawsuit forced his hand last week.

We don't know how the commissioner feels nowadays because he "is not commenting at this time," a department spokesman said in an e-mail. "However," the e-mail continued, "Domelights is not a Web site constructed or authorized by the Philadelphia Police Department."

Oh, I guess we're supposed to ignore that a PPD sergeant is running the thing.

I don't doubt that most cops in the department are good cops. Still, we have the right to expect more from public servants who vow to protect and serve us - all of us.

Just as world-renowned intellectual and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. should have a right to think that he wouldn't be arrested in his own home.

Or black and brown campers should think they have the right to swim anywhere.

Or all police officers should have the right to go to work knowing that their colleagues aren't sitting next to them posting degrading and ignorant garbage for all of cyberspace to see.

Sure, our nation has come so very far. A coalition as diverse as it gets came together to elect our first black president, which opened the door for our first Latina Supreme Court justice.

But race, President Obama said this week in answer to a question, still haunts us.

So it's not about playing the race card. It's about how we respond once it's been dealt.

It sickens me that a courageous group of black cops were the only ones in the department to speak out against a Web site that should be offensive to everyone.

The white parents who protested the campers being kicked out of a suburban swim club understood that racial attacks on one are an assault on us all.

But so far, nobody from a group that we trust the most has said a word. Not the commissioner. Not the Fraternal Order of Police, which is supposed to represent all officers. And, for that matter, not the mayor.

We're still waiting to hear the voice of the good guys.