When he started as a police officer at 19, Gabriel Rodriguez was on a mission. Growing up in a housing project in Camden, NJ, Mr. Rodriguez was determined to take down the gangsters who made his neighborhood unsafe. They regularly arrested three or four people a day. He took stacks of guns and drugs off the street. They shot him. But over time, it became clear that his tactic wasn’t working. “After so many years of preventive work and thousands of arrests, I realized that not much had changed,” he recalls. “Every time I went out, there was another person on that corner, selling more drugs.” Camden was struggling, with violent crime rising even as its population shrank. A decade ago, this city of fewer than 80,000 residents across the Delaware River from Philadelphia had the highest per capita homicide rate in the United States. During the nadir of the Great Depression, Camden laid off nearly half its officers in a round of budget cuts. In 2013, the state took dramatic action. He disbanded the city’s police force and replaced it with a newly formed force under county auspices. A sign welcomes people to Camden.Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail Over the next few years, the Camden County Police Department made significant changes, in part at the instigation of reform-minded leaders and in part due to pressure from local activists. Officers were now required to spend much of their time patrolling on foot, introducing themselves to the neighborhood and organizing community events. They were also trained to de-escalate confrontations and prevent the use of force. Since the changes, Camden has seen a sharp drop in crime. Homicides fell to 23 last year from a high of 67 in 2012. Violent crime overall has dropped 40 percent in the past decade. Not everyone agrees that the police department, which Mr. Rodriguez became chief in 2020, has really turned things around. Activists are pushing for a civilian watchdog to handle complaints, something the force lacks. Also, about half its staff is white, policing a community that is 90 percent Hispanic or Black. Crime in Camden is still relatively high and the city’s population is still declining. Officers, community leaders and residents, however, say the department’s approach has been effective. And as the US grapples with rising gun violence, it may offer lessons. As other cities have seen spikes in shootings since the start of the pandemic, Camden’s numbers have been mostly steady. “The culture of the agency has changed,” Mr. Rodriguez, 39, told The Globe and Mail as he sat at police headquarters on a blustery August morning. “When I got out of my car, I started talking to people, drinking coffee at their houses, being invited to dinner, then they would call me before anything happened.” Officer Macpherson and colleague Lissandra Sime bring free cases of bottled water to seniors.Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail Officer Tawand Smith volunteers at an event making sandwiches for the homeless. Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail The Camden County force replaces a municipal one that was disbanded in 2013. Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail A former industrial center, Camden has suffered a long period of decline due to factory closures and suburbanisation. From a peak of 125,000 in 1950, the population has declined by 40 percent. Its median household income of $27,000 is less than a third of that state total. Amid persistent city budget cuts and a lack of economic opportunity, crime soared. The solution was to dismantle the police department and start over. The main effect of the movement was to break the officers’ union. The new force hired more cops while paying them less and implemented a community policing model with little resistance from veteran officers. Community organizations also worked to change the city by showing disadvantaged youth alternatives to gang life. At Cure4Camden, which started in 2014, referral center workers look for people who are either at risk of perpetrating or becoming a victim of violence. Sometimes, this involves going door to door. Sometimes, it involves locating shooting victims in the hospital. The workers help their charges find work or education and try to dissuade them from criminal activity. When conflicts simmer, they head to the neighborhood to try to defuse the tension. “It takes some time to build trust. Once they see you’re there to help them and you actually show up every time, they come to you,” said Maria Hernandez, 40, who started working for the group after her partner was killed. Abdul Malik Jackson and Maria Hernandez are supervisors at Cure4Camden.Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail Abdul Malik Jackson, a program supervisor, tells the story of a Cure4Camden participant, a homeless 17-year-old who was shot eight times. When officers found him at the hospital, his main request was for a gun to protect himself. But thanks to their work, he was able to graduate from high school, get a job and move in with his family. “We need to stop this transmission of violence and introduce new rules, that there are other ways to react when you are confused or angry,” Mr Jackson said. “I’m 48 and all my friends are dead. Every last one of my childhood friends has died from communal violence.” At the Jerrothia Riggs Community Center, a group of nonprofits and volunteers have spent the past four years renovating a formerly abandoned building into a hub for youth programs. There is a dance school, a radio station, a basketball league and mentoring groups. “This generation is the generation of creators and entrepreneurs. What they were not given, they created. You have less time to get involved in the bad stuff,” said Nyemah Gillespie, 34, who runs the dance program. He said the police also helped. Where they used to try to shut down big community events, they now show up to direct traffic and play basketball. “When you give respect, that kind of experience, it breaks that barrier,” he said. Pam Grayson-Baltimore and Nyemah Gillespie run programs from a renovated community center. Adrian Morrow/The Globe and Mail Gradually, the city saw its lowest crime rate in 50 years. It has also posted an improvement in solving murders – more than 90 per cent in 2020, compared with a third a decade ago – which police attribute to people now being more willing to help their inquiries. The Camden County Police Department, however, has faced widespread criticism. In the early years, he implemented a crackdown on minor offenses, handing out bundles of tickets for things like disorderly conduct and driving with burnt-out tail lights. The new force is also whiter than the one it replaced, with many officers living outside the city. A heavy investment in surveillance cameras has sparked an outcry from civil liberties advocates. Eventually, the department backed away from the “broken windows” theory of policing as it became clear how badly it damaged goodwill in a city where people couldn’t afford to pay fines. Now, officers are discouraged from chasing too many minor offenses. Their computer system is designed to flag officers who issue large numbers of fines so they can be investigated and disciplined if the tickets are unreasonable. On the equity front, Camden successfully lobbied the state government to drop the requirement that prospective recruits sit civil service exams. The aim is to attract more cadets from the city, who often lack the time and resources to study, compared to more affluent candidates from the suburbs. Amid pressure from the NAACP and other social justice groups, police also adopted a new use-of-force policy in 2019. It requires officers to de-escalate confrontations before resorting to weapons and to intervene if colleagues use excessive force. Activists are still pushing for a political oversight board. While complaints of police misconduct fell from 65 in 2014 to five in 2020, they are still mostly dealt with internally. Some critics, meanwhile, argue that community policing tactics are not as effective as advertised. Eugene O’Donnell, a criminologist at John Jay College, argues that Camden’s model allows certain crimes, such as traffic offenses or shoplifting, to go unpunished and unrecorded. Those things, he said, may not show up in the top numbers for reducing violence, but they still affect what it’s like to live in a city. “They’ve made a deal to coexist peacefully with people who are destroying the neighborhood,” said Professor O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and district attorney. “The Camden miracle is a hoax.” A memorial in Camden pays tribute to a resident who died. Violence in Camden has declined in recent years, but remains higher than in other communities.Rachel Wisniewski/The Globe and Mail Although the reduction in officer pay has allowed the department to hire more officers, the force has struggled with high turnover: The average age of a Camden officer is just 23 years old. Levels of violence in the city remain relatively high despite declines in recent years. The violent crime rate in 2021, for example, was four times the national average. Poverty and immigration have not yet changed. It is also often difficult to attribute changes in crime rates to policing compared to other factors, such as demographic trends or the work of anti-violence groups in the community. During…
