Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Concentrate on Dividend Record and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Freedom Force
  • Dick Young’s Safe America
  • Bank for International Settlements

How Camden Brought About Safe Policing

June 10, 2020 By Debbie Young

By SevenMaps @ Shutterstock.com

Several years ago it would have been laughable to think of Camden, N.J. as a shining example of good urban policy. Camden’s homicide rate was 87 per 100,000 population, 50% above the prevailing rate in America’s most murderous large city – Baltimore.

Last year, Camden reduced its homicide rate almost two-thirds, reports Stephan J.K. Walters in NRO.

The Sacred Cow: Public Employee Unions

How did Camden achieve this? Not by defunding its police force. Instead, Camden disbanded its police force.

At the time, the cop cartel had pumped up average annual costs per officer (including extraordinarily generous fringe benefits) to $182,168. At that monopoly price, poor Camden could afford to employ just 175 cops, and during peak nighttime crime hours only a dozen might be on patrol.

But laying off the union cops and then rehiring many as county employees reduced costs to $99,605 per officer, enabling lots of new hires while keeping total expenditures roughly the same. Within a couple of years, Camden’s force exceeded 400 — a little over 50 cops per 10,000 residents, about triple the national average for similarly sized cities.

So Camden did not “abolish police,” as some of the more radical voices in the current debate claim, but actually employed more police — and more law enforcement. As the now-retired chief who led the transition explained, understaffing had made his city force a “triage unit going from emergency to emergency.” Staffing up enabled more proactive policing (including the use of some surveillance tools that civil libertarians consider problematic).

Changing the police force’s culture is a heavy lift. Union contracts prioritize job security — even of poor performers — and all but ignore organizational effectiveness, continues Mr. Walters.

Minneapolis is Exhibit A: Of 2,600 civilian complaints filed against cops since 2012, just a dozen — less than one-half of one percent — led to any form of discipline. Most were just written warnings; the harshest penalty was a one-week suspension.

Beyond policing, labor monopolies have made many public-school systems both scandalously ineffective and extraordinarily expensive. Students in strong-union states have lower proficiency rates than those in weak-union states; restrictive labor contracts have a negative impact on academic achievement, particularly for minority students. One recent study found that, nationally, this reduces graduates’ future earnings by over $200 billion annually — with the greatest effects among nonwhites.

The problem for reformers, however, is the awesome political power of these monopolies, especially in large, deep-blue cities. Given the vote blocs and money the unions wield, elected officials are loath to challenge them in any meaningful way. Until and unless they do so, the ongoing demonstrations for greater racial justice may lead to mostly symbolic change — as they have too often in the past.

Stephen J.K. Walters, chief economist at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, is the author of Boom Towns: Restoring the Urban American Dream.

Using examples from Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Portland, Mr. Walters shows how a healthy respect for property rights contributed to the prosperity of American cities. The erosion of those rights helped produce the policies that bankrupted Detroit, for example, and that have led to widespread urban decline.

Related Posts

  • VIDEO: Choosing the Right Safe
  • Is Your Cash Safe? Probably not This Safe
  • Safe Haven
  • Stop Policing the World
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • The Political Downside of Stoking Fear - February 26, 2021
  • Gov. Newsom Discovering the Power of the Pen - February 25, 2021
  • Don’t Let Its Name Fool You - February 24, 2021

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • A Look at the Future of Main Street America
  • Democracy: The Most Dangerous and Insidious Effect of Majority Rule.
  • Your Cash Swept into Your Broker’s Bank Account!
  • Crushing Viktor Orban Victory Will Derail Soros
  • California’s Progressive Liberals Have Created a Monster
  • TAC’s Robert W. Merry Unveils Presidential War Lies
  • Top 10 Political Books #1: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America
  • Can Ginger Combat Heart Disease and Improve Circulation?
  • <i>Warning!</i> Your Survival Guy’s on a Boil Water Advisory
  • Blue Dog Democrats Must Stop the Squad’s Assault on America

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Has the Time Come to Abolish the American Government?
  • Enjoy the Boom While You Can
  • Marry Compound Interest, Divorce Market Timing
  • Texas – More Subsidies for Wind, More Regulations for Oil
  • Richard Young Reports: 50+ Years with Fidelity and Wellington
  • UPDATE: Your Gun Rights and Freedom Are Under Assault
  • Please Don’t Call It COVID Relief
  • Permitless Carry Corridor Expands: Red States Trouncing Blue States on Freedom
  • Biden Tells Audience that Blacks and Hispanics Don't Know How to Use the Internet
  • Long Live Rush Limbaugh: Our Walk in the Woods

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Welcome to the Interest Rate Prediction Business, JACK!
  • Democrats Have a Plan: Don’t Get Too Attached to Your Capital Gains
  • Petrified Snow/Ice Fishing? How about a Boat? and More
  • Bubble in Tech Stocks Will Cause “Clean Out” in Markets
  • COVID Chaos: New York and California vs. Florida and South Dakota
  • Time for the Fed To Stop Babying the Bond Market
  • Richard Young Reports: 50+ Years with Fidelity and Wellington
  • Deep Survival, Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
  • Herd Immunity by April?
  • Corporate Bond Yields: What You Can Earn Today

Neither Cancel Culture nor COVID Can Shut Down CPAC

The Political Downside of Stoking Fear

Welcome to the Interest Rate Prediction Business, JACK!

Has Bill Gates Been Injected Yet?

Fauci Doesn’t Own Your Face

Gov. Newsom Discovering the Power of the Pen

Copyright © 2021 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives