By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Camden County police watch over children playing in a park near where a man was shot and left to die Monday night, recording the city’s 22nd homicide this year.
“Yeah, you hear gunfire every day, almost every day you can hear it. My kids are scared. When they hear firecrackers, they start running. It’s really bad,” said Camden resident Sonja Zamot.
It’s a familiar theme in this city. Just as familiar as part of the answer to this question: where are the illegal guns coming from? Camden County Police Chief Scott Thompson said, “We don’t have a gun manufacturer in the state of New Jersey. In fact, in law enforcement we try to attack the root cause. Invariably what we wind up with is dealing with the symptom all day long.”
Part of the answer: targeting the pipeline. Agents with the ATF and DEA used a “confidential source” to infiltrate a group of alleged gun runners over the last year.
Agents seized 22 guns and arrested a woman from South Carolina and five men from Camden County this week — among them 32-year-old Marcus Rutling, a man with a long criminal record.
Federal affidavits show the CS, or confidential source, told the feds “Rutling and his younger brother Joseph Rutling indicated they both transport firearms by way of Amtrak train to New Jersey where they are resold for profit.”
“We’re only as strong as our weakest link and when our weakest link is a $5 toll over to Pennsylvania or down into Delaware or any of the other adjoining states, then that makes us vulnerable to it,” Thompson said.
The 1000-block of Princess Avenue in Camden is a street that’s come to epitomize the image many have formed of Camden over the years; a street where more than half the houses are probably abandoned or boarded up, making this street a haven for crime.
Crimes like gun dealing. The affidavit states the confidential source paid $1,350 for two pistols and a short-barreled shotgun from the Rutlings and another suspect while sitting in the car. Right across from the street from Greg Cooper who grew up here.
“Criminals don’t worry about having guns, so therein lies the problem,” Cooper said.
“They’ll drive the city streets through open air drug markets or challenged neighborhoods and they’ll sell firearms out of the back of their car much like Mister Softee goes through neighborhoods selling cones of ice cream,” said Thompson. “It’s one of the frustrating things for us as a local law enforcement agency. And it really makes us dependent upon our relationships with the state police and with ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to effectively target these people that are outside of our jurisdiction, doing their business in other states and bringing it here and in which we end up dealing with the end result.”
Chief Thompson says the shootings and murders are declining in Camden but it’s no reason to wave any flag for celebration. And the gun running shows just how much more work there is to do.
Catch up on the entire “Crime In Our Cities” series