The Best Way to Keep The Peace Is To Build It

for a long time Camden was one of the most dangerous cities in America the city in many neighborhoods face the epidemics of crime dnmt a police force was crippled by bloated union buy

low morale and apps the rate reaching thirty percent on a typical day dnmt some crimes the

force it basically given up responding well we can't do it in that works was in an op for me not responding as governor was in and out find

restoring hope to the city as one of my top priorities as governor and that's why we've invested so much improving

education here and what really continue working to make things better with the mayor and the so and the community leaders in

this city working with us to get the situation on the streets under control we had to take unprecedented and decisive action so

working coalition with the county and community leaders we came up with a plan to fundamentally research please for we

shut down the city police force and we partnered with Camden County to regionalized so now instead of a struggling force it only had about two

hundred forty officers we put a new metro division on the streets with four hundred officers for the same price because

we got rid of expensive work rules and we work within that budget nndb

what restructuring the force was just the start we we also change the call jn and rethought the entire strategy for engaging with the community we

got more police officers walking the beat sitting behind a desk doing paperwork because of that we took the average police response time for

more that's sick the minutes to less than five about vannatter we

got officers focused on community outreach building relationships with community leader there's and dialogue with the residents they

were working with our new force didn't meet and greet events parks and the churches and baseball games they

people likely to report and it becomes voices for peace in their neighborhoods Allison after what we saw in Ferguson I'm

small champions real time because senator we have civilian analysts working side by side with officer to stay alert twenty

four hours a day seven days a week that team is monitoring more than a hundred and twenty surveillance cameras across the city thirty

five microphones that can instantly map the location of a gunshot in the city ok you're fired occurs in nine one one call on fire we

have units already on the way so these are some of the changes we made to make community pulled working camp and

of course we're not take three that fires a lot more to do here nnova fix our job is anywhere near done putting

me but I will tell you this to all of us working together we thought something pretty incredible started to reclaim the streets Camden

for the good hardworking sit we start to put life back in community get we brought in these reforms we've seen a twenty two percent drop in overall violent fifty

one percent reduction in high in this nnj we've reduced incidence of rape by thirty percent with

robberies by thirty percent also and you know who's also seen improvement in Newark and and as well I'm