To Fight Crime, a Poor City Will Trade In Its Police

[dadbo46 50]

From today's NY Times. Could this be coming to your community ?

CAMDEN, N.J. — Two gruesome murders of children last month — a toddler decapitated, a 6-year-old stabbed in his sleep — served as reminders of this city’s reputation as the most dangerous in America. Others can be found along the blocks of row houses spray-painted “R.I.P.,” empty liquor bottles clustered on their porches in memorial to murder victims.

http://www.nytimes.c...h_20120929&_r=0

[sfrd18 360]

Camden, NJ: 70,000 people living in 10 square miles. The poorest and the most dangerous city in the country.

[velcroMedic1987 330]

Camden, NJ: 70,000 people living in 10 square miles. The poorest and the most dangerous city in the country.

Mount Vernon is almost 70,000 people living in 4.4 square miles. They have a big crime problem but their PD is dealing with it. How did Camden get so messed up? Their PD is bigger than Mount Vernon's too.

[x129K 1,393]

Some of America's best firemen work there.

[sfrd18 360]

Some of America's best firemen work there.

That's right. They're always goin' to jobs.

[Stench60 29]

Camden, NJ: 70,000 people living in 10 square miles. The poorest and the most dangerous city in the country.

Mount Vernon 15.4k per square mile

Port Chester 12k+ per square mile

Yonkers 10.8k+ per square mile

Camden 8.6k per square mile

Your point?

[sfrd18 360]

Mount Vernon 15.4k per square mile

Port Chester 12k+ per square mile

Yonkers 10.8k+ per square mile

Camden 8.6k per square mile

Your point?

No point really. Just that Camden is not that big of a city(by land or population), yet it's crime, poverty, and murder rate is incredibly high, as compared to the much lower rates of similar towns/cities with more people per square mile. I wonder how Camden got this way in the first place.

[tommyguy 104]

There's another thread about this incident. There's a lot of hot button issues too. But if you read the Times' article carefully it seems to me there's some deeper issues at work here.

For instance the salaries the new County force will be paid.

Salaries range from about $47,000 to $81,000 now.....salaries for the new force will range from $47,000 to $87,000.

Officials are giving a lot of publicity to the fact the County force will be able to "afford" to provide more officers. But it doesn't look like they'll save any money. It looks like what they're really doing is getting the county financially involved. Getting the county to shoulder some of the burden Camden can no longer handle.

The new force will be about 400 officers. Camden used to have the same size force, but they laid off officers because of money problems only to discover -- if you cut through all the rhetoric -- the present force is too small to be effective.

Camden reorganized its Police Department in 2008...the recession forced layoffs...reducing the force by about 100 officers.

I think the underlying issue here is the fact the City of Camden is broke.

Camden’s budget was $167 million last year, and of that, the budget for the police was $55 million. Yet the city collected only $21 million in property taxes.

So this really seems to be a way to shift some of the financial burden from the city to the county, something that usually triggers a lot of political protest from taxpayers outside the city area. I think what this really is about is scapegoating the Camden police to camouflage the shift in financial responsibility from Camden taxpayers to county taxpayers.

It has relied on state aid to make up the difference, but the state is turning off the spigot

If the state is turning their back on Camden it would seem the only avenue open to them is the county.

It's a very disturbing picture because there's probably a lot of other Camdens out there.

We give millions and millions of dollars to equip and train police departments in places like Haiti and Iraq but no one wants to step up and say a city like Camden needs help. I'm sure there are many hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying residents of Camden. I think they deserve a lot better. And so does the Camden PD.