At Harvard summit, Camden County police chief touts the department's gains

Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson boasted of his department's achievements in curtailing crime and repairing its relationship with the community at a Harvard University summit hours after a standout high school football player was gunned down and became Camden's eighth and youngest homicide victim this year.

"This is a watershed moment for law enforcement organizations," Thomson told a Cambridge, Mass., audience just after 4:30 p.m. Saturday. He was alluding to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo.; South Carolina, and elsewhere.

In each case, he said, trust between the community and law enforcement was irretrievably broken. "The public wants to see police be able to deliver services in a way in which safety is enforced and has the trust of the citizens as well," he said.

Camden was one of four case studies highlighted at the summit, an annual gathering of law enforcement leaders to share information and strategies.

In 2012, Camden became the first city in the United States to dissolve its police force (a 141-year-old institution), making it possible to restructure the force at the county level.

To improve public safety, Thomson said, Camden's police reduced administrative and personnel costs, replaced outdated technology and infrastructure, and implemented a community-policing model with more officers walking the beat. It hired new officers to increase the force by more than 60 percent.

Amid that transformation, Thomson said, shootings have decreased by 43 percent and violent crimes by 22 percent.

An Inquirer article last month cited improvements, but not enough to lift Camden from the ranks of the most dangerous U.S. cities. Homicides are sharply down from three years ago, when there were a record 67. But the number last year, 33, was close to what used to be the norm when Camden was routinely at or near the top of the list of the nation's most violent cities.

And despite the gains, police data showed Camden was still New Jersey's most crime-plagued city, as it has been since 2007. Its violent-crime rate - while registering one of the largest declines statewide - remained the highest among New Jersey cities, 2,015 per 100,000 people. Second was Atlantic City, at 1,322 per 100,000 people.

"It's about maximizing organizational capacity that combines what the city of Camden is demanding and what the citizens want from their police force," Thomson said of his department's approach.

In the early morning hours before Thomson's remarks at Harvard, 18-year-old Camden football star Jameer Bullard was shot and killed. The senior, an inside linebacker at Woodrow Wilson High School, was being recruited by Temple.

Police were alerted to Bullard's shooting at 12:25 a.m. at Green and Mechanic Streets by the city's "ShotSpotter" gunfire-detection system. Bullard was rushed to Cooper University Hospital, where he died about a half-hour later.

Thomson had no prepared speech Saturday, saying he spoke from "what he knew and from the heart."

Law enforcement "is about the culture of the police organization," he said. "The oath we take that stresses service before self. When you have a police organization that considers itself guardian of a city, its performance is not based on the number of tickets or offenses it writes up. It comes down to better policing of the community in which you are patrolling."

His remarks come as the Camden police are facing increasing scrutiny by the American Civil Liberties Union over the number of complaints about excessive force, and the number that have been dismissed since Camden switched to a county-run department in May 2013.

In that time, the number of excessive-force complaints has nearly doubled, from 35 after the takeover to 65 in 2014 - the most in the state, according to an Inquirer analysis. Of the 65 complaints, 44 were dismissed by Camden authorities, and 21 are still pending.

Thomson said in a phone interview before his remarks that he had no comment on the excessive-force complaints.

"I'm very proud of our organization in Camden," he said. "We still have a very long way to go. But when you consider where we were two years ago, when we had very little capital in terms of a relationship with the community, we've come a long way. It's a strong sentiment of the commitment of the police force and the resilience of the residents of the city. They both want to have a safer city.

"The residents of Camden want to reclaim their streets," Thomson said. "They want to be able to live in a safe community, go out at night, and be able to go to public parks without fear of getting harmed."