OUT OF
TOWN COPS
ways of improving it, but do not
eliminate it,” he said.
‘A WAR ZONE’
At the heart of the battle over the
policing plan are Camden’s 267
cops, who face the imminent loss
of their jobs, even as they contend
with a city that seems to some to
be spinning out of control.
Times were not always so
tough in Camden, which sits on
the banks of the Delaware River,
across the water from Philadelphia. As recently as the 1960s, the
city was an industrial powerhouse,
with dozens of major factories
employing thousands of residents.
With a population nearly 70 percent higher than today, crime was
just a fraction of its current rate.
But in 1971, long-simmering
racial strife exploded into riots,
accelerating the flow of middleclass whites to the suburbs. Factories closed down, taking with
them about 60,000 manufacturing jobs, part of a wave of deindustrialization that hollowed
out the economic heart of cities
across the county. As the economy tanked, crime soared.
It has remained that way for
decades, making Camden among
the toughest beats in all of lo-
HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
cal law enforcement, often topping the FBI’s annual list of most
dangerous cities.
Today, thousands of abandoned
homes blight the streets, their
porches often doubling as tombstones, with spray-painted tributes to murder victims. Across
broad quarters of the city, drug
“SOME PARTS OF THIS PLACE
ARE A WAR ZONE. MY FRIEND
OPENED UP A FREEZER AND
SAW A KID’S HEAD LOOKING
BACK AT HIM.”
dealers and prostitutes roost on
stoops and street corners, scattering only for a moment at the approach of a police cruiser.
The intensity of police work in
Camden can reach almost unimaginable levels. Just this September,
officers handled two grisly crimes
involving children that made national news. In one, a mother high
on PCP decapitated her 2-year-old
son, then called police to report
the crime. Weeks later, a young
man, also high on PCP, broke into
a Camden home and stabbed a
6-year-old boy to death and sav-