With one of the highest crime rates in the country, Camden has turned to a new police force to battle an old problem. On May 1, Scott Thomson was sworn in as chief of the new Camden County Metro Division which replaced the city police force. Thompson is a 20-year veteran of the Camden police department. He told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that since the changeover, he’s been able to put a significant number of boots on the ground.
According to Thomson, the reason he’s been able to deploy more officers out into the field is due to additional staff.
“We have a civilian logistical support system which is enabling us to put essentially every gun and badge that we have employed moved out in the field,” said Thomson. “That is a stark contrast to the way the organization was staffed before. We would have officers performing functions that really should be [performed by] civilian or police aides.”
Thomson acknowledged that the change in the city’s police force doesn’t change the social inequities that have made Camden one of the most crime-ridden cities for decades. But for the city to turn things around, he said the most important variable in the equation of public safety is the police.
“What we can do is be a guardian figure and bring stability to destabilized neighborhoods,” Thomson said. “In the months leading up [to] and really since the layoffs, you looked at the brazenness of the criminal element in the city and that our shootings had trended from the midnight hour down to the five, six, seven o’clock hour. In a densely-populated, extremely challenged city … that’s negatively defining the lives of virtually every person who lives in the city.”
Community policing will be a priority for the new police force, said Thomson.
“What we need to do as a police force and what we have seen thus far in our launch, especially in the Parkside neighborhood and in the Fairview neighborhood, is that … when we can put boots on the ground, when we can bring stability to a neighborhood and give a sense of security, people will come out of their homes.”
When people feel comfortable about venturing out of their homes, Thomson said that’s when there is a tipping point in public safety.
“Folks that are engaged in the criminal element in the city do not feel as emboldened to pull out a handgun and fire in broad daylight when there are far more good people in the street than bad people,” Thomson said.