CAMDEN, N.J. — A year after Camden disbanded its
police department and brought in a new one with more officers on the street, reported crime has dropped significantly in a city that still ranks as dangerous by any measure.
After years of doing little more than responding to emergency calls, police are on intensive neighborhood patrols, a move that has sent drug dealers scattering. But residents, advocates, and officials agree that law enforcement alone can go only so far to heal a city that is also among the nation’s most impoverished.
‘‘To me, violence will always be around and so will the drugs,’’ said Melanie Andujar, who was visiting her mother in North Camden. She is still shaken by a shooting on her block a few weeks ago. ‘‘Has it calmed down? Yes. I don’t think it will ever stop.’’
Camden, a once-booming industrial city of 77,000 across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, has had decades of decline, with nearly all its manufacturing jobs disappearing by the early 1990s.
The new department took over officially on May 1, 2013.