The Camden Experiment: How a City Fired Its Entire Police Force to Save Itself

The true story of how Camden, NJ, dismantled its corrupt police department and rebuilt it from scratch, leading to a historic drop in violent crime and a new model for community policing.

In 2012, if you Googled "Camden, New Jersey," the results were a litany of disasters. It was frequently ranked as the most dangerous city in America per capita. It was a place where the social contract had thoroughly disintegrated.

The statistics were grim monuments to failure. The murder rate was astronomical, dwarfing cities ten times its size. Open-air drug markets operated with near impunity on street corners. Thousands of abandoned buildings stood as hollowed-out symbols of urban decay.

But the most profound crisis in Camden wasn't the crime rate. It was the complete collapse of trust between the 75,000 residents and the police department tasked with protecting them.

For decades, the Camden Police Department had operated like an occupying army. Officers, many of whom lived far outside the city limits, patrolled in cruisers with the windows rolled up, emerging only to make arrests or respond to shootings. They were viewed by many residents not as guardians, but as another gang—one wearing badges.

Corruption was rampant. Excessive force lawsuits were bleeding the already bankrupt city dry. The "stop-snitching" culture on the streets was a direct response to a police force that few believed was on their side. Why talk to the cops if you believed they were just as likely to plant evidence on you as they were to catch the guy who shot your brother?

By 2012, the situation was untenable. The city was broke, the streets were warzones, and the police were ineffective. Traditional reforms had been tried. New chiefs were hired. New policies were written. Yet the culture of the department remained toxic, insulated by powerful unions and decades of entrenched "us versus them" mentality.

Camden was dying. And its protectors were holding the pillow over its face.

Then, city and county officials made a decision that sounded, to the outside world, like municipal suicide.

They decided they couldn't fix the Camden Police Department. So, they fired them.

Part I: The Nuclear Option

The plan was radical, risky, and fraught with political peril. The idea was to use a legal loophole to dissolve the city-run Camden Police Department entirely. Every officer would be laid off. The union contracts would be voided. The entire structure would cease to exist.

In its place, they would build a brand new organization from the ground up: the Camden County Police Department.

When the announcement was made, the backlash was ferocious. Police unions called it drastic union-busting disguised as reform. Residents were terrified. If the city was a warzone with police, what would happen in the vacuum between dismantling the old force and building the new one?

Critics predicted anarchy. They said criminals would overrun the city.

But the city leaders, including then-Mayor Dana Redd and county officials, argued that the status quo was already anarchy. They believed that the current departmental culture was irredeemable. You cannot patch a foundation that is completely rotted through. You have to demolish the house and pour new concrete.

The goal wasn't to get rid of policing. It was to reinvent it.

Part II: The Hard Reset

The transition was chaotic and painful. Nearly half of the former city officers were eventually rehired by the new county force, but they had to reapply. They had to go through a rigorous screening process designed to weed out the "warriors" and identify the "guardians." They had to agree to new terms, lower pay initially, and, most importantly, a completely new philosophy.

The new department, led by Chief Scott Thomson, started with a blank slate. Thomson knew that badges and guns don't create safety; legitimacy does. If the community doesn't believe the police have the right to enforce the law, the police can only rely on brute force.

Thomson laid out a new mandate that fundamentally changed the job description of a Camden cop.

"I don't want you writing tickets," Thomson famously told his new officers. "I want you walking the beat."

The cruisers were parked. The new force was pushed out onto the sidewalks. The directive was simple but revolutionary: Officers were required to get to know the residents in their assigned sectors by name. They were told to knock on doors not to look for suspects, but to introduce themselves. They were told to play basketball with the kids in the parks.

It was called "community policing," a buzzword often used and rarely practiced. In Camden, they made it operational reality.

They rewrote the use-of-force policy. The old ethos of "command and control"—dominating a situation through superior aggression—was replaced with mandatory de-escalation. Officers were trained to use time and distance, to talk people down rather than take them down. The new policy stated clearly that the preservation of human life was the highest priority—even the life of a suspect.

They changed the metrics of success. Officers weren't evaluated on how many arrests they made or how many tickets they wrote. They were evaluated on their relationships with the community. Were the residents in their sector talking to them? Were they sharing information?

Thomson’s mantra was: "We are not invading; we are occupying. And the only way we survive an occupation is if the people want us here."

Part III: The Slow Thaw

The change didn't happen overnight. Trust that has been eroded for fifty years cannot be rebuilt in fifty days.

When the new county officers first started walking the beats in neighborhoods like Whitman Park or Bergen Square, they were met with cold stares and folded arms. Residents regarded this "new" force with the same old suspicion. They had seen reform initiatives come and go. They assumed this was just a PR stunt.

But the officers kept showing up. Day after day. They walked in the rain. They walked in the snow. They stood on corners not looking for trouble, but just being present.

Slowly, the ice began to crack.

A grandmother who had watched drug dealers operate in front of her house for a decade realized the new officer on her block wasn't leaving. Eventually, she offered him a cup of coffee. They started talking.

A group of teenagers playing basketball realized the cops watching them weren't waiting to bust them for loitering; they were waiting for next got.

The critical turning point wasn't a major bust or a press conference. It was thousands of tiny, undramatic interactions. It was an officer helping someone carry groceries. It was an officer knowing that Mrs. Johnson’s son was struggling in math class and asking about it.

The police shifted from being an external force acting upon the community to being a part of the community.

And when that shift happened, the information started flowing.

In the old Camden, "snitching" could get you killed, and the police wouldn't protect you anyway. In the new Camden, residents started quietly tipping off the officers they knew by name. They pointed out where the stash houses were. They identified the shooters.

Crime fighting became a partnership. The police provided the resources, but the community provided the intelligence.

Part IV: The Dividend of Peace

Seven years after the dissolution of the old department, the data told an undeniable story.

By 2019, the murder rate in Camden had dropped by over 60% from its peak. Violent crime was down nearly half. Shootings were down.

Perhaps most importantly, excessive force complaints against officers plummeted.

The city wasn't miraculously cured. Poverty, addiction, and lack of economic opportunity remained deep-seated problems. But the war was over. The streets were no longer free-fire zones. Children could play outside. Businesses started slowly returning.

In 2020, when the United States erupted in protests following the murder of George Floyd, cities across the country burned. Police precincts were attacked. Riot police fired tear gas at demonstrators.

In Camden, the police chief and his officers marched with the protesters. They held banners reading "Unity." There were no riots in Camden. There was no tear gas.

The image of Camden police marching alongside residents against police brutality was shocking to the rest of the nation. But to the people in Camden, it was the logical outcome of eight years of hard work. They had already had the difficult conversations. They had already broken the old system.

Conclusion: The Lessons of Ashes

The story of Camden is not a fairy tale. It is a gritty, difficult lesson in the realities of power and change.

It teaches us that sometimes, institutions are too broken to be fixed from within. When a culture becomes deeply toxic, when the foundational relationship between an organization and the people it serves is severed, incremental reform is just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Camden proved that radical change is possible, but it requires immense political courage. It requires the willingness to endure short-term chaos for long-term gain.

Most importantly, it destroys the dangerous assumption that order can only be maintained through fear and force. The old Camden police had guns, badges, and the authority of the state, and they presided over chaos. The new Camden police prioritized legitimacy, relationship-building, and de-escalation, and they helped create peace.

They proved that the most powerful weapon against crime isn't a militarized police force. It is a community that believes its police are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Camden had to burn its old department to the ground to learn that truth, rising from the ashes not with more firepower, but with more humanity.