Camden's Police Is Certainly Not A Little Passeri

This is more or less inspired by my back and forth with fellow Twitch streamer YourStarling over on Twitter these past few weeks, and let me begin that I totally get that she is very passionate about her stance on things, and like with everyone in this world, it does not mean she's wrong or that I'm right, or that I'm wrong and she's right. We all have our different points of view on various situations, we all want to see things improve, however the road to get there is not always clear cut.

Now obviously the topic of Defunding The Police, a battle cry of many protestors and politicians in the United States is triggering bit of conversation in the wake of everything that has happened since the murder of George Floyd up in Minnesota, but the thing is, you don't want to Defund the Police in a period of social unrest, you want to start rebuilding it.

Just about seven years ago, my home town of Camden, New Jersey fired everyone associated with the city police at that time and began the long process of rebuilding it from the ground up. It was a complete wipe out of the old guard and the union that basically was holding up progress. In the time since then, I have seen more police officers patrolling neighborhoods, crime has dropped over 40% since, complaints of the police using excessive force has dropped from over 60 complaints in 2015 to only 3 in 2019. Hell the obvious sign there was a difference made is that I don't hear gun shots every night anymore. The police are now a staple of the community, there is no where near the animosity seen towards out police force as compared to what's seen across the Delaware River in Philadelphia as of late. It's really a night and day approach, 

Now is Camden's more community approach perfect, well no, nothing is perfect, but compared to complete anarchy in letting citizens police themselves and leaving things as they were, Camden certainly is giving an example of how to do things. We went from having half the police force with none of the proper training to one that specializes in deescalation of trouble, after all there has to be a reason why over 130 other law enforcement agencies are looking for new ways of doing things, because it's clear the old ways aren't working and you don't want chaos in the streets. And sure as a city Camden has a long way to go, but guess what, we're on our way and with our improving police department that is changing with the times, we'll get there.

Of course that's just my opinion