Camden's Police Force

The NY Times has an article about Camden's crime problem, and the what the city is trying to do to solve it. The city has become so poor that it can no longer afford to sustain a police force of the size that it needs (the article cites generous union contracts as a partial cause). In order to resolve the issue, Camden is planning to shutter its police department in favor of pooling its resources with other municipalities to establish a county-wide police force of 400 officers.

As a point of reference, I should point out that Wilmington, DE - just 30 miles down the Delaware from Camden - has a comparable population (Camden is home to roughly 6,000 more people) and a comparable police department (289 officers to Camden's 273; Wilmington's force costs about $5 million less than Camden's). In 2010, Camden's violent crime rate was 2,328 per 100,000 residents, while Wilmington's was 1,909 per 100,000 residents. Neither of those numbers is good (by the violent crime rate measure, Wilmington and Camden are both more dangerous than Detroit), but I think that they imply that there are a number of things that Camden's police department could do to improve public safety that are less radical than shutting down completely.

From The Streets of Camden.

The larger issue is that it's unclear how a county-wide force will make things better. The force will have to patrol a much larger area (228 square miles instead of 10) that holds a much larger number of people (513,241 vs. 79,081) with a number of officers that hardly exceeds the size of Camden's department before layoffs in January 2011. It's difficult to see how Camden and the county will both be able to get the service they need.

Perhaps the hope is that a new department will allow officers to start from a new baseline in their relationships with communities in Camden, and in terms of department morale and organization. I think that this is the best justification for a radical restructuring, but I'm skeptical of its success without a sense of specific plans. It's in no way clear that the division of the new department that patrols Camden will be much different from the old Camden police department (even if, as the article says, there is a cap on the number of old officers that the new department can hire, that won't mean that those rehired officers can't be disproportionately staffed in Camden). Alternatively, one can imagine a system like the NYPD's where rookies cut their teeth in places like Brownsville and East NY before gaining seniority and opting to move to more affluent areas. A structure like this would ensure an inexperienced force in Camden. As for relationships with Camden residents, I'm curious about what is planned beyond a simple rebranding.

I sympathize with the city's dire situation and understand that civic leaders feel like the need to do something, but it's worth asking whether this reform will do much of anything to improve Camden's situation.

Thanks for reading.

J