@Ella :
www.politico.com/new s/magazine/2020/06/1 2/camden-policing-re forms-313750
A movement grows in American cities and suburbs to overhaul police departments and confront their long records of racially unjust, violent enforcement, Camden is one rare-and complicated-success story, a city that really did manage to overhaul its police force and change how it operated. And it took a move as radical and controversial as what some activists are calling for today: Camden really did abolish its police department.
And then the city set about rebuilding the police force with an entirely new one under county control, using the opportunity to increase the number of cops on the streets and push through a number of now-heralded progressive police reforms. And with time, the changes started to stick in a department that just years earlier seemed unfixable.
Over the past two weeks, Camden has become an example of reform that works-cited in articles, tweets and on network shows as an example of what can go right. And it's true that the reforms produced real change in the statistics: The excessive use of force rates plummeted. The homicide rate decreased. And new incentives laid the groundwork for a completely new understanding of what it meant to be a good cop.
"You had to change the underlying principles of the way police officers were being trained and taught, and the culture in the department," said former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who supported the changes in Camden. "The most effective way to do that was to start over."
The reforms carry lessons for what it takes to transform the police in any city. They ultimately amounted to nothing less than a reboot of the culture of policing in Camden, changing the way every beat cop in the city did his or her job. And they also required enough political will at the top-all the way to the governor-to survive opposition from police unions and some residents. The case of Camden shows that if there's enough motivation to blow it all up and start over from both the top and the bottom, reforming a police force is achievable.
But nothing is as simple as it sounds in a tweet. While largely a success story, the overhaul was by no means a clear win for social-justice progressives who are driving the police-reform debate nationally. The Camden police reform was-and remains-politically divisive. In part that was because union contracts were thrown out, leaving many on the force earning a lower salary and with fewer benefits. And it required very strange bedfellows to succeed-an all-powerful Democratic machine, a Republican governor, conservative budget-cutters and progressive police thinkers, all aligned to break an established department and start over.
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In 2010, Camden hit rock bottom. The city,
population 77,000, was widely considered one of the most dangerous in America. A depopulated former manufacturing center across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, and the home of the first condensed Campbell's soup plant, the city had more than 3,000 abandoned buildings. Almost 40 percent of residents lived below the poverty line. At one point, the city had 175 open-air drug markets, and 80 percent of drug arrests were of nonresidents, suggesting that out-of-towners were making a stop in Camden just to buy and sell.
Violent crime had been high in the city for decades, but it was about to get worse, because the police department was broke. In 2010, Camden, faced with a $14 million budget deficit, laid off half of its police force. Arrests in 2011 fell to almost half of what they had been just two years earlier, and burglaries increased by 65 percent. The murder rate skyrocketed. Eventually, residents largely gave up on calling police for minor crimes.
On top of that, the police department had a reputation for bad cops. Of the 37 excessive use of force complaints levied in 2011, not one had been "sustained," or clearly proven or disproven, which raised serious red flags about accountability with the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey at the time. In 2010, five officers in the department were charged with evidence planting, fabrication and perjury. Later, state and federal courts would go on to overturn the convictions of 88 people who had been arrested and charged by those officers.
The idea for dissolving the Camden police force came amid the backdrop of a push by both Governor Christie and Democratic state lawmakers to regionalize city and town services in a new era of government austerity. State Sen. Don Norcross, Camden County Freeholder Lou Cappelli and Mayor Dana Redd started promoting the idea of dissolving the Camden police force and creating a new county-led force to replace it. The plan also had the support of George Norcross, an insurance executive and Democratic power broker in southern New Jersey (and brother of Don), and Christie.
A state statute was already on the books allowing counties to create police departments that towns then have the choice to opt into. But the plan would also involve busting a union: The city force had already been unionized, but the new county one would not be unionized, at least at first. The plan, as a result, was met with opposition from the police union. But the state of crime in Camden, coupled with the complete lack of money, dulled Democratic resistance to the proposal overall. "There's no alternative, there's no Plan B," Democratic City Council President, Frank Moran, told the New York Times in 2012. "It's the only option we have."
Without the restrictions of the union, proponents argued, more cops could be put on the streets of Camden, and hopefully, the city's deadly spiral could finally be stopped.
Not everyone agreed with the changes. A group of Camden residents who saw this as high-handed intervention submitted a petition to stop the disbandment with the goal of placing the issue on the ballot in 2012. Redd and Moran filed a complaint against the residents on the grounds that the petition amounted to an unlawful restraint of legislative power.
The case would work its way through New Jersey courts while the city went ahead with the changes.
In May 2013, the Camden City Council approved resolutions that eliminated the city police department and established a new one under county control. The remaining city cops were all laid off and had to reapply to work with the county, under far less generous nonunion contracts.
In a strange legal coda to the whole drama, the case filed by the Camden residents to save their local police department worked its way through New Jersey courts and ultimately ended up in front of the state Supreme Court, which ruled 6-0 in favor of the residents in 2015. But it was too late: The Camden County police force had been around for four years, and by most accounts, was already a success. In this case, politics had moved faster than the courts and, legally or not, the Camden city police force was long gone.
Those who championed the disbandment of the department say the upheaval was critical to the department's ultimate success. Scott Thomson, the Camden police chief at the time, had locked horns with the police union for years over contracts and virtually "any type" of managerial decision, he says.
"I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do," he said. "All of the barriers were removed. I was now driving on a paved road."
The most obvious change was that the Camden police was now bigger: By cutting salaries, the county was able to hire more officers, increasing the size of the department from 250 to 400 and putting the number of Camden police officers close to what it was before the 2010 budget cuts.
But the more important changes went beyond the size of the roster. Thomson, who had been appointed chief in 2008 and oversaw the department through the transition, also used the changes as a way to implement a number of progressive policies. The challenge, he said, was reframing how officers viewed their roles. No longer would officers be the "arbitrary decider of what's right and wrong," he said, but rather consider themselves as "a facilitator and a convener."
Those who championed the disbandment of the department say the upheaval was critical to the department's ultimate success. Scott Thomson, the Camden police chief at the time, had locked horns with the police union for years over contracts and virtually "any type" of managerial decision, he says.
"I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do," he said. "All of the barriers were removed. I was now driving on a paved road."
The most obvious change was that the Camden police was now bigger: By cutting salaries, the county was able to hire more officers, increasing the size of the department from 250 to 400 and putting the number of Camden police officers close to what it was before the 2010 budget cuts.
But the more important changes went beyond the size of the roster. Thomson, who had been appointed chief in 2008 and oversaw the department through the transition, also used the changes as a way to implement a number of progressive policies. The challenge, he said, was reframing how officers viewed their roles. No longer would officers be the "arbitrary decider of what's right and wrong," he said, but rather consider themselves as "a facilitator and a convener."
Those who championed the disbandment of the department say the upheaval was critical to the department's ultimate success. Scott Thomson, the Camden police chief at the time, had locked horns with the police union for years over contracts and virtually "any type" of managerial decision, he says.
"I was able to do in three days what would normally take me three years to do," he said. "All of the barriers were removed. I was now driving on a paved road."
The most obvious change was that the Camden police was now bigger: By cutting salaries, the county was able to hire more officers, increasing the size of the department from 250 to 400 and putting the number of Camden police officers close to what it was before the 2010 budget cuts.
But the more important changes went beyond the size of the roster. Thomson, who had been appointed chief in 2008 and oversaw the department through the transition, also used the changes as a way to implement a number of progressive policies. The challenge, he said, was reframing how officers viewed their roles. No longer would officers be the "arbitrary decider of what's right and wrong," he said, but rather consider themselves as "a facilitator and a convener."
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