DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Defunding Police? Camden, New Jersey has done such a thing.

I will certainly say it's refreshing to see a constructive conversation for a change. And that's where this all needs to begin.

i do have a huge issue on tactics such as "stop and frisk". Not that it's impossible for it to work, but to do so it would have to be so heavily regulated and controlled that the cost and oversight of it would be a massive and expensive undertaking. The statistics I will be using come from the example of New York's stop and frisk policy.

During New York's stop and frisk policy, in 2011 alone, 685,000 people were stopped. Out of those 685,000 people, only 12% resulted in an arrest or a summons. I find it very repulsive that 88% of the people who were stopped and frisked had done nothing illegal to be charged with. To me that is certainly police overreach.

By contrast, in 2018 only 11,008 people were stopped and that rate went up to 31%. For some reason, looking at the statistics, just telling cops to "use your own judgement" without having actual just cause to approach, stop and frisk a suspect seems to be quite the overreach of power with results that can vary greatly with none of those results being efficient.

What also transpired is that over 82% of those stopped were black and hispanic in a city where they comprise 52% of the population. Hopefully you can see with only a 12% rate of people being sighted or arrested, combined with an inordinate percentage of minorities being stopped, this does damage in trying to get minorities to trust police and believe that race doesn't play a factor.

Here is source of my statistics...

https://theconversation.com/stop-and-frisk-can-work-under-careful-supervision-127785

It's both. Very much so.
The unions are just a roadblock and a negative reinforcer. The Silent Blue Line, however, is very real - and a major threat.

Cops absolutely MUST have each other's backs, and they need to be able to count on each other on the street.... but, that does NOT extend carte blanche.

Not contradicting, just commenting.

Did the "true" percentages really change that much or did the reported numbers only change that much?

In my experience, people in bureaucracies often cook the books to make themselves look better, especially when a change was their idea. Even at the lowest level, people don't want "their judgement" to look bad, so the percentages of positives are actually probably lower ("bad" stops going unreported).

On the other hand, are/were the percentages so low because of the threat of stop and frisk? Would more people be carrying if they didn't have to consider the risk of being stopped and frisked?

There aren't easy black and white/cut and dried answers to a lot of the issues we keep running into. It seems like there should be, but history shows otherwise. Most issues are complex and simplifying them to a single, simple, universal solution doesn't work.

Chopping the tops off of icebergs just makes them harder for ships to see and avoid.

I was looking for debate and discussion on the policy, not why nothing about the topic I posted was worthy of discussion. I guess since nothing or no statistics actually mean anything, there might not even be a problem and nothing needs to be done.

And I thought this discussion had promise. Sadly it has ended as I thought it would.

Yep, defund the police. Brilliant.

911, what is the emergency?...


Someone is trying to break my door down!!...I am at 432 Elm street.

Thank-you, we will send prayers immediately.

If you would read the articles, you would learn that's not actually what this is.

Come on. You're better than this.

LOL....my friend, I know. Just making a comment.


I have never been in favor of the militarization of police forces. Then again, I am not in favor of them being shot by criminals.

I'll try to find the article, but a female cop was recently fired for intervening when another cop was choking someone for no reason. That is why most good cops don't come forward with stuff. It's crazy.

Just listened to the Mayor of Camden on TV.. It was hard to do, but it seems to be working very well.. Even the Union is onboard now.

Keep in mind, we are talking about CAMDEN NJ.....

I drove through Camden once,,, saw an old Howard Johnson hotel... Side of the hotel was painted white and it had a wording on it... It said, "Rooms by the hour"!

Hooker Heaven...

Looks like they may have made strides...

When I first read the plan, it appeared to me like if you made that call, the first person who was going to show up was some social worker/victims advocate person... who would swing by to check on you tomorrow to see how you were processing the crime committed against you.

Nice report.

It does make some sense, but Camden did double the size of its police force.


I do think cops walking the beat is a good method. Or put them on bicycles.

Getting out, talking to the people rather than just slow down, eye someone and drive does promote interaction. The bad guys still don't like the police, but the honest folks who maybe distrust the police now get to know them and get to know them as people. The police get to know the people. I think that promotes a bond or friendship of sorts. I think that can lead to more people tipping off the cops when something has happened. These days, everybody gets kind of tight lipped. If it's officer "Johnny" who has been walking around the neighborhood the last 10 years talking to people by their front step, walking in the store to say hi to the shop keepers, talking to kids down by the school or playground, it has to do good. If something happens to "your" police office, who has been helping you move the riff raff out, people are going to be ticked.

I can agree with this.

It's not as simple as Andy of Mayberry, but it couldn't hurt anything if we mixed in a little of Mayberry policing. At least people would know the cop is a good person and if he had to club somebody, somebody probably deserved it...sometimes cops have to do that.

I think everybody understands that.

To me it is kind of like park rangers. They are the police in the parks around the country be it city, county, state, or federal. They can be police anywhere if required. If they go in to a McDonalds to grab a burger for lunch and see a crime in progress, they can pull the gun and detain people. They don't have to wait for a city officer, county deputy, or Highway Patrol to show up. They are going to arrest you if you are acting up one way or another but most people view park rangers a decent people and approachable. You wave at them when they drive by in their car or golf cart.

I'm not at all sure how this works in todays bigger cities,, But in my little hometown, we had only one cop. He worked 24/7 on call.

But he would park his car on the square and walk around talking to people.. going into stores, talking to the store owners or operators.. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone. He knew what kid might be sliding down a bad path and went to talk to that kids parents. There was mutual respect and things worked out just fine. We have an area that was mixed race with about 35% or so were people of color.

No issues, no riots. Peaceful and quiet.

As the town grew so did the police force. When I moved away, there were 3 cops with 3 cop cars.

They all learned from the first cop,, meet the people, let them know you are there.

It worked,, Not sure how that plays today. But if community policing is a way to accomplish this, I'm all for it. We've got to stop the madness.