[ColdNoMore]

From a city that recognized a problem with their police department and knew, after trying to change the "culture" many times, failed because of the power of the union...and had to do something drastic.


Making a change (click here)

And that debate has quickly brought to light the shining example and metamorphosis of policing in Camden, New Jersey, a city that was once among the nation’s most dangerous with a homicide rate equivalent to that of El Salvador before a funding upheaval and list of reforms resulted in the lowest murder rate the town had seen since 1987. Add to the fact that local police have accomplished as much with a noted drop in use of lethal force and the viral image of its Chief of Police marching hand-in-hand with protesters, and it’s easy to see why people are quick to look to replicate it.

But digging deeper into how Camden was able to spark its amazing transformation reveals that substantive police reform has never been as simple as an issue of funding.

First, it’s worth defining “defunding the police” as policymakers are debating it. Despite some opponents fear mongering with scenes from the movie “The Purge,” in which all crimes are made legal for a 12-hour period, the policy has more to do with allocating a city’s funding away from policing and more towards efforts that might reduce the need for policing, such as mental health resources, public education, or employee training programs. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently summarized, “what it means is [with] the resources that we have, let us spend it in a way that gives the most protection for the American people — protection for their safety, protection for their rights.”

Mainly, that Americans of color are more likely to be stopped by police, and more likely to have police use lethal force against them than white Americans. As New York City data showed during the peak of its notorious stop and frisk policy, for example, blacks were stopped by police at roughly eight-times the rate of whites.

In Camden, the latter issue has been at the forefront of its shift in policing since crime reached its peak in 2012. The following year, the city sought to put more cops on the street, but due to budgetary constraints wound up disbanding the city’s police force and created a county community force instead. The move let the city shed costs by ridding itself of unionized police that cost $182,168 on average with benefits, in favor of hiring back holdovers and new recruits as non-unionized county employees at $99,605 per officer, according to county statistics.

While the move doesn’t necessarily equate to “defunding” police as it’s being discussed today in a perfect sense, what ensued in Camden was more parallel to the thesis, as more resources were allowed to be shifted to other community building initiatives in the following years. Education reform and workplace development programs boosted the local economy and a more than $8 million dollar program to remove blighted and abandoned properties helped eliminate areas once used by drug dealers.

Complaints of excessive force have come down 95% since 2014, according to the department’s own metrics, and unlike violent protests across the Delaware River in Philadelphia last week, Camden enjoyed shared, peaceful protests between police and demonstrators.

Rutrow though...

It’s worth noting, however, that Camden’s county police force eventually unionized after disbanding the city’s prior unionized police force, and its operating costs have soared. Camden budgeted $68.45 million for police this year, accounting for nearly a third of the city’s overall budget. An internal state analysis cited by the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that its police spending “compels the contraction of other vital city departments and services.”