How a police department reimagined its force in NJ
A do-no-harm philosophy puts Camden on display
CAMDEN, N.J. — To Scott Thomson, changing the culture of policing in America is a relatively simple process. It’s just not an easy one.
Thomson led a tumultuous police department makeover in Camden, New Jersey — a poor city of mostly brown and black residents across the river from Philadelphia — in 2013.
After state officials disbanded the old department and started anew, Thomson transformed policing in Camden from the law-andorder, lock-’em-up approach of the 1990s to a holistic, do-no-harm philosophy that’s put the longmaligned city in the spotlight during the national reckoning over race and police brutality.
While police elsewhere clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters outraged by the latest death of a black man detained by police, Camden officers marched calmly with residents and activists.
“Our actions can accelerate situations. What we should be trying to do is deescalate them,” said Thomson, a past president of the Police Executive Research Forum who retired from the Camden job last year.
But if the recent protest was peaceful, the county takeover of the Camden Police Department was cataclysmic. More than 300 officers lost their jobs. Only half joined the new force.
Along with the switch came a reliance on hightech, citywide surveillance, more patrols, and younger, cheaper, less diverse officers who often aren’t from Camden. Their average age today is 26.
“That is a very different vision of what a new police force looks like than we’re hearing from protesters, who want less policing,” said Stephen Danley, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University-Camden.
Ashly Estevez-Perez, 21, has spent most of her life in Camden, which is now about half Hispanic and 40 percent black. She remembers when children were rarely allowed to leave their front stoops given the threat of gunfire.
“The new police force came in, and you saw cars everywhere. Everyone was kind of taken aback,” she said of what some would call “over-policing.”
“Growing up in the city, I don’t see what other alternative works,” said EstevezPerez, a recent RutgersCamden graduate.
The police changeover followed state budget cuts that had forced Camden to slash municipal services in 2011. Nearly half of its 360 officers were laid off. Crime surged.
Then-Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, joined local Democratic power brokers in engineering a plan to eliminate the department, shed its costly union contract and create the Camden County Police Department with Thomson at the helm.
Over time, his philosophy evolved from a “broken window” approach that saw the department cite people for failing to have bicycle horns to a friendlier approach that sends officers into the community to host barbecues, hand out ice cream and shoot hoops.
“I think we’re received a lot better than we used to be,” said Sgt. Dekel Levy, 41, as he helped distribute diapers to young mothers last week in North Camden.
The neighborhood, long one of the city’s poorest and most dangerous, shows signs of progress. The state prison that dominated the nearby waterfront has been replaced with a park. Crime rates have fallen — whether due to the police engagement, the increased investment, the booming Philadelphia economy or the national decline in violent crime.
According to police department data, Camden’s annual homicide tally has fallen from 67 in 2012 to 25 last year; robberies from 755 to 304; and assault with a gun from 381 to 250. The city, with about 73,000 residents, spends $68 million per year on policing, far more than some comparable cities.
“There is no doubt that Camden is safer than it was in the austerity era. There’s a lot of doubt about whether that’s directly due to the new police force,” Danley said.
As Estevez-Perez marched in Camden’s Black Lives Matter protest May 30, Police Chief Joe Wysocki helped carry the banner at the front of the pack.
“I just felt I had to do it. George Floyd’s death was very difficult to watch, and it was horrifying what he went through,” Wysocki, who is white, said last week. “I think every cop that watched that — every good cop — had a knot in their stomach.”
Across the bridge, Philadelphia police in riot gear that day clashed with protesters.