CNBNews

Camden expects to save $14 million from the police department cuts, but there is growing alarm that the city, one of the country’s poorest and most violent, will wind up paying a much higher price for its budget savings. Camden residents, already afraid to venture out after dark, worry that the city will become even more hospitable for criminals. “They’ll be coming into the houses,” one fearful resident recently told the New Jersey Star-Ledger. “They know you can’t call the cops. There won’t be any cops to call.” The local press has reported on drug dealers’ openly relishing the prospect of a diminished police presence. 

Camden’s Democratic mayor, Dana Redd, has held firm on the budget cuts. Echoing Republican governor Chris Christie’s tough talk about fiscal responsibility, Redd has insisted that Camden has no choice but to “live within our means.” Redd has also adopted Christie’s confrontational stand against public-sector unions. She has placed responsibility for the layoffs—not implausibly—on the police union, which unanimously rejected her plan to save 100 police jobs through a pay cut in the form of unpaid furloughs. The average salary for a rank-and-file police officer in Camden, after benefits, the mayor points out, is around $140,000 a year—in a city where more than half of the residents live below the federal poverty line.

via www.city-journal.org

- See more at: http://www.gloucestercitynews.net/clearysnotebook/2011/02/page/3/#.dpuf