The former chief of the disbanded police Camden Police Department in New Jersey told on Tuesday how crime in the town went down after the department was torn up and replaced by one in which cops held neighborhood barbecues and went door-to-door to introduce themselves to residents in a bid to win their trust.
Camden got rid of its police department in 2013 after becoming known as one of the most violent towns in the US. A new police department replaced it and officers were taught to focus less on arrest quotas and more on making the community feel safe.
Since then, crime has gone down drastically; there were 67 murders in 2012 compared to 25 in 2019, and 65 excessive force complaints in 2012 compared to just three in 2019.
The unorthodox move has become a national talking point as protesters around the country call for other police departments – namely that of Minneapolis – to be completely dismantled in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of four white cops.
Critics say that instead, it should be replaced with community activists and leaders.
Others are calling for less drastic measures like reducing the amount of funding police departments get without totally wiping them out, and putting the divested taxpayer’s dollars towards schools instead.
What happened in Camden after the force was disbanded and replaced is now being heralded as a success story.
Cops in Camden, New Jersey, where the police department was disbanded and replaced with one which focused on community outreach. Crime has dropped significantly since the move was taken
A cop in Camden plays jump rope with children in the street. Now, officers are trained to connect with the community rather than focusing on making arrests
A cop in Camden shakes hands with a Black Lives Matters protester
In this Saturday, May 30, 2020, photo, Lt. Zack James of the Camden County Metro Police Department marches along with demonstrators in Camden, N.J.
In an interview on Good Morning America on Tuesday, the former chief of police, Scott Thomson, said the good came from getting residents to ‘trust’ the new force.
He took over in 2013, serving under the new department, and was at the helm until 2020.
Scott Thomson, the former Camden County Police Chief
‘There was a reinvestment into the school systems and by employing a policing practice wherein we stopped focusing on the number of tickets we wrote or the amount of arrests we made.
‘What we were more interested in was making people feel safer, making people trust us or getting people to trust us,’ he said.
In 2012, the city was known as the most dangerous in America.
By August 2012, there had already been 39 murders in the town of 77,000. In 2011, the murder rate was ten times than that of New York City and 30 percent higher than New Orleans, Louisiana.
The crime rate has dropped from 79 per 1,000 to 44 per 1,000 since the new department was brought in.
Camden was once a bustling industry town where Navy ships were built including the USS Kitty, Dakota, Dale, Saratoga, Idaho, and Indianapolis.
The boom in shipyard jobs brought thousands to the town and housing had to be constructed quickly to accommodate them.
With the rush of activity came other jobs, specifically in manufacturing.
But from the 1950s onward, as shipyard work declined and factories shuttered, the population declined and work dried up.
By the time the police force was disbanded, more than half the children in the city were living beneath the poverty line and 40 percent of the city were unemployed.
It plummeted the town into high crime rates and a bitter distrust between residents and police ensued.
A Camden police officer pats down a suspect during a patrol stop in Camden, New Jersey March 24, 2005
Camden police department officers search suspects in a night raid in Camden, New Jersey March 24, 2005
Two men talk on a rooftop near crumbling residential buildings in Camden, New Jersey, July 30, 2000
Camden police arrest a youth following a fight on October 11, 2012 in Camden, New Jersey
The vision of Black Lives Matter activists for how to defund and replace traditional police
Following the death of George Floyd, thousands have taken to the streets across the US to demand justice. Activists are even calling for police to be defunded, while acknowledging this is a gradual process.
The group MPD150, which says it is ‘working towards a police-free Minneapolis,’ argues that such action would be more about ‘strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention’.
The group states on its website: ‘The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises. Rather than strangers armed with guns, who very likely do not live in the neighborhoods they’re patrolling, we want to create space for more mental health service providers, social workers, victim/survivor advocates, religious leaders, neighbors and friends – all of the people who really make up the fabric of a community – to look out for one another’.
Following the death of George Floyd, thousands have taken to the streets across the US to demand justice. Activists are even calling for police to be defunded, while acknowledging this is a gradual process
Adding that those who commit crime often only do so when their basic needs are not filled by other means.
Retired Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza told the group: ‘The idea of police as crime preventers is rubbish. By the time the cop appears the criminal has been formed and the crime has been committed .’
Speaking at a BLM protest today Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said: ‘I will never stop saying, not only do we need to dis-invest in police, but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis police department, it is rotten to the root. And so when we dismantle we allow for something beautiful to arise. And that re-imagining allows us to figure out what public safety looks like for us.’
Among plans put forward by Black Lives Matter, MPD150 and other activists to replace police are:
- Mental health responders to attend mental health crisis in place of armed police Street outreach teams, more shelters and affordable housing to help solve homelessness and stop the homeless from being criminalized
- Traffic stops to be eliminated entirely, with traffic violations dealt with via mail
- Community members to attend domestic violence calls, to help intervene and establish long-term safety for the individuals
- Specialized physical and emotional support for victims of sexual violence
- Investing in prevention of sex trafficking to end economic and social conditions that lead to deeply rooted vulnerabilities
- The legalization of marijuana to stop incarceration for the ‘harmless’ drug
- Better handling of drug offences to stop ‘criminalizing of communities of color’
- Decriminalization of sex work and formation of an independent union to ensure individuals have insurance, child care and safety precautions
- Restorative justice (meetings between victim and offender) to be used to deal with property crimes such as theft and burglary
Crime escalated at an astronomical rate. In 2008, the city logged 2,333 violent crimes for every 100,000 residents, compared to the national rate of 455.
In 2012, the city of Camden and Camden County announced it would be disbanded in favor of the Camden County Police Department, an entirely new force, amidst multiplying excessive force complaints.
All of the officers from the Camden Police Department were laid off but given the chance to apply for jobs at the new department.
Training required a mental exam and on every officer’s first day, they had to go door-to-door in the neighborhood to introduce themselves.
Now, cops host drive-in movie nights on a street once known as ‘heroin highway’.
They lay on barbecues and ice cream vans for the community and play with children in the street.
While the still exist as an unequivocal police force, Thomson say their shift in focus is exemplary and could serve as a blue print for the rest of the nation.
‘That’s a bit extreme. I don’t see a democratic society wherein you could completely eliminate a police force. I do think that there are some serious conversations that can happen with regards to defunding police.
‘There are greater public safety returns on investment with programs other than putting money towards enforcement.
‘I would have traded 10 cops for another Boys & Girls Club, but the system needs to change as far as having police respond to incidents such as mental illness.
‘Police are not equipped. They’re not trained. They’re not specialized in that. But yet it continues to get delegated to them,’ he told NPR’s All Things Considered podcast earlier this week.
Whether or not it is a model that can be replicated successfully elsewhere remains unknown.
Minneapolis, for example, has a population five times the size of Camden and the demographics differ.
In Camden, the majority of the population is black, whereas in Minneapolis, nearly 60 percent are white. It poses the question of how to staff the department.
Despite Camden having a predominantly black population, there are still more white officers in its police force than there are African Americans.
‘The demographics of the city do not reflect these demographics. With a white chief, as thoughtful and progressive as he is, and only one African American captain out of seven, both the dynamics and optics of race are a problem,’ Ojii BaBa Madi, a minister in Camden, told CNN.
In Minneapolis, the city council says it is moving to disband the police department entirely.
Among officials who support the effort is Congresswoman Ilhan Omar who described the department as a ‘rotten cancer’. They have not yet laid out plans for how to replace the department.
Mayor Jacob Frey says he is against it and that while police reform is undoubtedly needed, doing away with the force entirely is uncalled for.
It is an issue that has electrified political debate over the last several days.
President Trump, who describes himself as a ‘law and order’ leader who will never waiver in his support of the police and military, says calls to disband police departments are ‘crazy’.
Attorney General Bill Barr has urged people against ‘demonizing’ the police.
Barr expressed his concerns during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. ‘I think defunding the police – holding the entire police structure responsible – for the actions of certain officers is wrong and I think it’s dangerous to demonize police,’ Barr said.
The attorney general, who said there are approximately 900,000 police officers in the nation, backed up his statement by saying departments ‘understand the need for change and there has been great change’ in the last 60 years.
Barr then told the network that if police were to be defunded: ‘You would have increases in vigilantism and increases in chaos in the city’.
He said that it has ‘been shown’ that an increase in vigilantism would result in more killings.
Barr’s remarks come as Black Lives Matter activists pushing to defund the police proposed plans to replace officers with social workers, mental health advocates and homeless charities.
Their chants called for widespread disbanding of US police departments after Minneapolis councilors voted to abolish the city’s police force in an historic move following days of protests over Floyd’s death during an arrest on May 25.