Posted on 06/09/2020 8:06:24 AM PDT by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas
Camden dissolved its police department to root out corruption.
The city's crime rate was among the worst in the US. Within nine square miles and among nearly 75,000 residents, there were over 170 open-air drug markets reported in 2013, county officials told CNN. Violent crime abounded. Police corruption was at the core.
Lawsuits filed against the department uncovered that officers routinely planted evidence on suspects, fabricated reports and committed perjury. After the corruption was exposed, courts overturned the convictions of 88 people, the ACLU reported in 2013.
So in 2012, officials voted to completely disband the department -- it was beyond reform.
And in 2013, the Camden County Police Department officially began its tenure. No other city of Camden's size has done anything quite like it.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
My county in NJ got rid of its county cops years ago, then pressured the local departments to hire them. It is sold as a cost-saving measure, but it didn’t save anything - just moved their costs from one line (county tax) to another (municipal tax).
I Know! I surprised myself, LOL!
Exactly. Well said.
DING...DING...DING...winner!
“””This city disbanded its police department 7 years ago. Here’s what happened next””””
Another headline that does not match the story. Camden did not really disband. Camden merely replaced a bunch of corrupt cops with a new bunch of cops who may or may not be also corrupt.
But 356,000 people will not know whether there has been an improvement in Camden policing since that is the number of Camdenites who have left their fair city in the ensuing 7 years.
Metro Dade and Miami police are two distinct departments
Metro Dade can work the whole county
Miami much like Coral Gables or Miami Beach and countless other Dade municipalities has its own police department
Nashville has only Davidson metro cops with only two exceptions I think
Berry Hill and Belle Meade
Both tiny police departments
Daniel Boorstin wrote a triligy entitled, The Americans. First volume subtitle: The Colonial Experience, Second volumesubtitle: The National Experience, and last volume subtitle: the Democratic Experience.Interesting history books, distinctive for the absence of any war narrative. A true peoples history, talking about American society rather than American government. In the second volume he addressed the issue of vigilantes. And he made the point that vigilante action would arise in places where there were no established lawmen in place. And he asserted that vigilante justice typically did not require scare quotes - they conducted serious inquiry into the nature of the offense and the quality of the evidence against the accused. And this was actually a real sacrifice - the men who were in these places would much rather have spent the day panning for gold &c than spending the day scrutinizing the facts of a case.
“””You actually read it??”””
I also violated FReeper rules and read the entire CNN story.
It’s been my tagline since I got here...
How Cops Are Beating Crime in America’s Poorest City
I didn’t see this in the CNN article.
Surveillance City
Camden was wired to the gills with cameras and microphones. When a
gun is fired in the city, a system of microphones called ShotSpotter can
triangulate the signal and pinpoint the location of the shooter within several feet. Using their home computers, a team of citizen volunteers can direct the city’s many surveillance cameras to zone in on activity
that they deem suspicious.
As VICE reported, Metro captures the license plate numbers of every car entering Camden, and often sends threatening letters to the registered owners on the grounds that these visits could be drug-related
Smile youre on candid camera.
Article dated in 2014
https://reason.com/2014/10/23/how-cops-are-beating-crime-in-americas-p/
It was not until Bill Clintoon and his community polocing program to add 100,000 police that evert little wide spot in the road got a new cop car and a cop to drive it. That was also when police began to militarize and train on weapons and tactics and almost none on community relations. About that tim every citizen became to be treated like one of the ten most wanted.
Not for all this riot crap but a blue light behind me strikes fear and I am a law abiding old white guy. Not everybody going 65 in a 55 zone is John Dillinger. In fact, hardly anyone is.
See: Jacksonville, FL. The largest city in area in FL,and the city/county consolidation created a unified police, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Jacksonville Police in the city limits are a division of the Sheriff’s office.
Since 1968, and not for liberal reasons-— money, and efficiency. They have their own prison. The Sheriff is an elected, State Constitutional officer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonville_Sheriff%27s_Office
“No other city of Camden’s size has done anything quite like it.”
Charlotte police and Mecklenburg county combined their departments decades ago ...
Yeah, they just replaced one police department with another.
When a city disbands their police dept. the county takes over. The Former chief worked for the mayor, the elected county sheriff not so much.
Sophistry, indeed. May be technically true that no place "of Camden's size" did it, but LOTS of places have done this to save money.
Besides, this is NOT disbanding, dismantling, getting rid of the police. County cops do the same job.
Mount Kisco Renews Contract With Westchester [County] Police Department
Camden, NJ. Famously corrupt.
It's in the article at the link. (The poster didn't include in the excerpt.)
I have come to believe that the intent is to drive all sane, normal people out of police work, leaving it to be done by the only ones willing to apply for the job-a new class of Muslims who will rule us with great fervor, and no civil rights whatsoever.
Decades ago Lynwood, Ca disbanded its PD because the officers were either corrupt or fearful of the residents and those coming in from surrounding cities, though the city council told a story of saving the city money. The PD was replaced with LA County Sheriffs. This is what will happen with the smaller cities that drop their police departments and it will result in less protection because the Sheriff departments or county police will not add the same number of officers to patrol as the cities lose.
Some folks don't want to hear it, but the 'drug war' breeds corruption at every level.
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