You’ve got to wonder what Camden will look like in 10 years, but it’s a pretty good guess it will look like one of those post-apocalyptic cities on “The Walking Dead.” It’s well on its way to that state now, with row after row of abandoned, burned-out buildings, crumbled infrastructure and crime-ridden streets that have earned it the national designation as the Most Dangerous City in America. But in a few weeks, it stands to get even worse.
Camden’s financial troubles are well known to most Jersey residents. It was so poor and corrupt that in 2002 the state took over most of its municipal authority and has pumped millions of dollars into it every year to keep the schools running, the cops on the streets, firemen at the station houses, and every other thing a city of 77,000 needs to provide the most basic level of services. That takeover ended in 2010, but the state has still been pumping money into the place to make up the difference between its budget ($167 million in 2011) and what it takes in from property taxes ($21 million for the same year). That’s money out of my pocket, and your pocket if you pay income taxes in this state, and one of the contributing factors in making our state and local tax burdens the highest in the nation.
But that state funding will soon go away (if you’re waiting for a tax reduction, don’t hold your breath), and officials in Camden are looking at a disaster in the making. Case in point: the 273 remaining members of the police force. Although much reduced in size from better days (it cut an additional 100 members of the force in 2009), the unionized members of the force now make between $47,000 to $81,000 a year, with added money for shift differentials, longevity and other perks. Even so, due to liberal sick and leave policies, 30 percent of the force doesn’t show up nearly every day, according to a recent story in The New York Times.
The results have been absolutely horrific. The city has the highest per capita murder rate in the nation at six per 10,000 residents, more than 18 times higher than New York City. Last month, in two particularly awful killings, a baby was decapitated and a 6-year-old was stabbed in his sleep. But while those murders made state and even national news, the daily butcher’s bill is staggering, and other crimes, like drugs and prostitution, are so ubiquitous that they hardly merit mention. There’s so much drug activity and so little chance of getting busted that buyers flock to Camden from hundreds of miles away to buy narcotics at what police call the Heroin Highway.
Obviously, new businesses — which would be necessary for any revitalization — are frightened away by the crime, and nobody in their right mind would go there for any reason, unless they plan to visit the state aquarium, which is on the very periphery, or they are tourists who took a wrong turn off I-95 (“Holy @#$%, Ralph! I told you to buy a better GPS!”) It’s so dicey in fact that if you type Camden City Center into MapQuest, it comes back asking, “Are you sure?” And now it could get even worse.
Last week, officials announced their intention to fire the whole police force, starting in November. In the short term, they’ll be counting on protection from a new county police force, but long term, they plan to hire a non-unionized force to control crime. That’s right, they’re firing the whole police force and replacing them with scabs.
They’re putting a good spin on this, of course. They say that with the money they save from union obligations, they’ll be able to put 400 officers on the streets, instead of the current 273 — but there’s still that nagging question of money. With so little coming in, and the state closing the financial spigot, how will they pay for even this less expensive force? The truth is, they won’t — and the bottom is so deep and murky for this beleaguered hellhole that nobody can even predict what it will look like.
Still, you have to give them credit for trying. Who knows? Maybe it will work. I hope so. All I know for sure is that Camden Mayor Dana L. Reed has the worst job in America.
So here’s a better solution for Camden. I don’t know if you caught it, but last week in Roseville, Mich., authorities brought in a construction crew and destroyed a shed because they had evidence that Jimmy Hoffa was buried beneath the concrete floor. After much hoopla and breathless stories on nearly every national news program, it came a cropper once again. No Hoffa. This sort of thing happens with amazing regularity. Remember when they dug up that horse farm near Detroit, or when they ripped up a Detroit home, or when they dug up that backyard pool? Seems like every time someone has a cockamamie story that Jimmy Hoffa might be buried somewhere, someone is happy to bring in a crew to demolish, dig and search.
So all Mayor Reed has to do is let it slip that Jimmy Hoffa is buried somewhere in Camden and voila, federal crews will come in, they’ll demolish the joint, and the good people of Camden (there are a few, believe it or not) can start over. That’s the Occam’s razor approach to the problem, and I don’t know why no one has thought of it before. That’s why they need me around, I guess. Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].