The transformation began after the 2012 homicide spike. The department wanted to put more officers on patrol but couldnt afford to hire more, partly because of generous union contracts. So in 2013, the mayor and city council dissolved the local PD and signed an agreement for the county to provide shared services. The new county force is double the size of the old one, and officers almost exclusively patrol the city. (They were initially nonunion but have since unionized.) Increasing the head count was a trust-building tactic, says Thomson, who served as chief throughout the transition: Daily, noncrisis interactions between residents and cops went up. Police also got de-escalation training and body cameras, and more cameras and devices to detect gunfire were installed around the city.
While many departments define reasonable force in the line of duty vaguely, Camdens definition is much clearer. The department adopted an 18-page use-of-force policy in 2019, developed with New York Universitys Policing Project. The rules emphasize that de-escalation has to come first. Deadly forcesuch as a chokehold or firing a guncan only be used in certain situations, once every other tactic has been exhausted. It requires that force is not only reasonable and necessary, but that its proportionate, says Farhang Heydari, executive director of the Policing Project. Most important, theyre requirements. Theyre not suggestions.
An officer who sees a colleague violating the edict must intervene; the department can fire any officer it finds acted out of line. By the departments account, reports of excessive force complaints in Camden have dropped 95% since 2014.
Like most matters of policing, however, Camdens success story isnt that simple. Members of the police force are now more likely to live in the suburbs than in the city of Camden, according to the local NAACP chapter. Ninety percent of Camdens population is minoritywe have a lot of young individuals who dont look like us that are getting these jobs, says Kevin Barfield, the chapter president.