By Allison Steele
Philadelphia Inquirer
CAMDEN, NJ — The Camden Police Department has lost more than 10 percent of its officers since 2006 despite a crime wave that made last year one of the deadliest periods in Camden’s history.
About 430 members strong three years ago, the force is down to 383 officers, including about 50 sidelined by injuries, disability and suspensions. At least 15 more are expected to retire by year’s end.
“We have been bleeding officers,” said Police Director Louis Vega, who asked the city for 26 hires last year and was denied them. “There’s not a lot we can do about it.”
With Camden facing a growing budget shortfall, law-enforcement authorities don’t know when they will get relief.
What is certain is that the attrition policy, begun in February 2006, has made policing Camden even more challenging.
The city had 53 homicides in 2008, its second-highest number on record. It might have been worse. In response to the escalating violence, police officials reorganized the department in July. The rate of serious crime slowed after several dozen officers in desk jobs were reassigned to beef up patrols.
The hiring freeze could eventually undermine that progress.
“We are concerned about this,” Camden City Council President Angel Fuentes said. “We can’t just wait for the eleventh hour for a crisis to occur.”
Asked how many more people his department could afford to lose, Police Chief Scott Thomson did not answer. He is confident, he said, that hires will come before attrition poses a risk to public safety.
There are more officers on the street than before the reorganization, Thomson said. The department can maintain that coverage through 2009 by continuing to move staff onto patrol duty, he said.
State and local legislators will not let the department’s ranks fall dangerously low, Fuentes said. Nonetheless, he added, replenishing the ranks should be a priority this year.
Theodore Z. Davis, Camden’s state-appointed chief operating officer, is sympathetic to the department’s needs, but, he said, the money isn’t there.
Davis has called for budget cuts in every city department in the current fiscal year. The Police Department has been ordered to trim officers’ overtime by about $500,000, almost a fifth of what it spent on extra hours in the last budget.
“We’re still looking at what can be done everywhere to solve this,” Davis said of police staffing. “We can’t talk about filling vacancies when we don’t even know if we can afford what we have.”
Across the country, municipal and state law-enforcement agencies are struggling to maintain staffing levels. The 364-member Trenton police force isn’t hiring either, said Sgt. Pedro Medina, the department’s spokesman. Twelve of 18 positions vacated last year remain unfilled.
But Trenton’s ranks are not nearly as depleted. The freeze there is only about six months old, Medina said. Until then, virtually all departing officers were replaced.
A shrinking police force does not always have an immediate negative impact on its community, said Maki Haberfeld, a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
There are ways to compensate for officers who no longer perform desk functions, Haberfeld said. Some departments are providing more forms and information online, or cutting the hours when citizens can come in to file complaints and other paperwork.
But if attrition continues, she said, investigations slow down because detectives have less time to devote to individual cases. That leads to more unsolved cases.
When multiple incidents occur simultaneously, having fewer officers also is likely to delay response times, she said.
“The relationship between the police department and the community suffers when that happens,” Haberfeld said. “People tend to measure the quality of their police department in how quickly they respond to calls for help.”
According to John Williamson, president of Fraternal Order of Police Camden Lodge 1, the departmental reorganization has led some officers to retire early.
Some taking retirement “have come to the end of their careers and have decided to move on,” Williamson said. “I think others don’t like the course the department is going on.”
The Camden police administration declined to say how many recently retired officers left early, but Williamson said the majority departed sooner than they had planned.
Thomson’s appointment in July marked the sixth leadership change in six years for the department. He immediately stressed a need for officers to take on increased responsibilities, including more time on the street. The reorganization combined Camden’s homicide and narcotics units, among others, into one task force.
Patrol officers now receive mandates on how much time to spend in various neighborhoods, Williamson said, and in his opinion spend inadequate time in any one place. Because they work in multiple capacities, he said, officers have found their workload drastically increased.
Reducing desk positions has led to a paperwork backlog and is not the long-term solution to inadequate manpower, Williamson said.
Thomson said his changes have had a positive impact: Statistics show that the rates of homicides and non-fatal shootings have slowed. Residents say they are pleased to see more police in their neighborhoods.
Most officers leave the department because they are retiring from police work, Thomson said. But he acknowledged that his redeployments have affected “employee comfort levels.”
“Changing culture and establishing accountability increases attrition, something I’m more than willing to deal with,” he said.
But the shrinking force means it’s a constant struggle to keep certain divisions staffed, Vega said. When civilians are transferred to fill jobs formerly held by officers, that only leaves new shortages: Civilian hires are frozen, too.
“It can be frustrating,” Vega said. “We have a plan and we have a vision and a goal, but then we have these other issues.”
Frustrating and maddening, Williamson added. Officers have historically considered Camden a desirable place to launch a career. Experience on the city’s streets leaves them well-positioned to move on to other law-enforcement jobs, he said.
“The Camden Police Department should be a place people are breaking down the doors to get into, not the other way around,” Williamson said.
Even if the department were able to fill half of its vacancies, Vega said, it would be lucky to have the officers at work by the year’s end.
Police officials are required to consider several applicants per slot, and candidates must establish residency in Camden. After passing the entrance exam, screenings and training take more than nine months.
“It could be a year from the day the job is approved before that person is on the street,” Vega said. “In that time period, I could lose another 25 people.”
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer