Experts: Camden will feel layoffs

In the first week after layoffs cut the Camden Police Department nearly in half, predictions of doom and gloom and outlaws running wild in the streets have remained just that - predictions.

But experts in law enforcement say there's no way a city like Camden can avoid feeling the impact of the massive layoffs, which also included about one-third of the city's firefighters.

"You can't police the same way you did with half the police force," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.

Wexler and others interviewed last week said cutbacks and layoffs tied to economic problems had occurred in departments throughout the country.

But, Wexler said, "there is no department that I know of [facing the kind of crime in Camden] that has lost half of their police force."

"There is always a need to have some sort of balance between reactive and proactive policing," said Maki Haberfeld, a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. But "when you're losing that many officers . . . this balance goes out the window."

As the city moves into week two of the layoffs, statistical data to assess the impact are scant. There has been no crime wave, no uptick in assaults, shootings, or the other mayhem that have branded Camden a city on the brink.

But that hasn't stopped experts from worrying.

"For a reasonable-sized city, this is one of the most catastrophic law enforcement stories in the country," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College.

Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson has said he and others have developed a plan that they believe will provide necessary police services. The plan involves, among other things, taking officers off desk jobs so more than 90 percent of the force is on the street.

Meanwhile, City Hall and the unions representing the police and firefighters continue to discuss contract changes and cost savings that could bring back at least some of those let go on Tuesday.

Mayor Dana L. Redd described the layoffs as part of an attempt to bridge the city's $26.5 million budget deficit.

The Police Department lost 168 of its 365 officers. The Fire Department lost 67 of its 220 firefighters. More than 100 other city workers were also let go.

The reduction in the Police Department brings Camden, with a population of about 78,000, closer to the national average of 2.1 police officers per 1,000 residents, said John Firman, director of research for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

But Firman and others said using that ratio as a standard was simply playing a numbers game and avoiding the reality of police work.

There is, Firman said, no standard.

"Staffing has to be based on three things," he said. "What's your mission, and what is needed to ensure public safety and officers' safety."

Those factors vary by municipality, and trying to establish a common ratio is foolhardy, he said.

"There are no such standards," according to an IACP report on police staffing and development. "Nor are there 'recommended numbers of officers per thousand.' Nor is it useful to make comparisons with other communities."

A suburban, middle-class community with the same population as Camden will have entirely different needs and goals, experts say.

Camden, rated one of the most violent cities in America and beset with staggering poverty, high unemployment, and a dwindling tax base, cannot be compared to any other municipality.

"It's problematic," Firman said of the situation in Camden. "Is it a bad thing? The answer is yes."

He said problems would develop in both the short term and the long term.

Police will have to be reactive rather than proactive in fighting crime. And the long-term community-policing initiatives, whose benefits are difficult to codify, will largely be discarded, a development that Firman said would show up in negative statistics in the years to come.

"For the last two decades, police have been investing heavily in problem-solving and community policing," he said. "And overall, crime rates are down. We can infer that these kinds of programs have resulted in good things."

Take those programs away - as Camden and other cities hit with budget problems have done - and the benefits begin to dwindle.

"These are results we're going to see five and 10 years down the road," Firman said.

Jerry Ratcliffe, chairman of Temple University's department of criminal justice, said the challenge facing the leadership in Camden was "how do you invest in long-term crime prevention and still provide proactive policing and social support to the city?"

"In modern times," he said, "police are being asked to do more and more with less. . . . We've probably hit the breaking point."

In the fall, when the city announced that it planned massive layoffs in the new year, law professor O'Donnell said implementation would devastate the department.

"The quality of policing is going to decline," he predicted. "All the political talk in the world is not going to change that."

Firman, from the IACP, pointed to another issue that communities standing on the sidelines should consider.

"Camden isn't an island," he said. "Remember, criminals run and manage their businesses in a borderless fashion. If a police presence is reduced in Camden, it's bad news all around. All the adjacent departments are equally threatened."