I’ve spent plenty of time here criticizing various parties for leaving out importance context about the changes in crime numbers after the creation of the Camden County Metro Police force. Many of these gains depend on comparisons to a pair of outlier years, showing gains that disappear when compared to earlier years more in line with trends. And anyone who ignores the severe budget cuts that preceded the new force deserves a demerit for dishonesty. But it turns out, supporters of the new Metro Police aren’t the only ones willing to commit mathematical malpractice. Yesterday, a press release from the Camden County GOP showed up in my inbox, a press release that I can only suppose was a blatant attempt by kind local Republicans to give my research methods students more local examples of silly statistics. Here’s the press release in its entirety:
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN GRANTS AND NO IMPROVEMENT IN MURDER RATE
County run police department is a failed experiment
VOORHEES – Last week politicians announced a federal COPS grant was obtained that would help hire 15 new officers for the Camden County police force and that the money would cover 75 percent of salaries and benefits for those officers. Camden County Republican Freeholder candidates Teddy Liddell, Winston Extavour, Ian Gill and Rob Stone wondered if 15 officers was enough to cover the mass exodus of experienced police officers from the County Police. 61 officers have resigned between January and August of this year alone according to the County’s own records.
“After a $3 million federal grant last year and a $2 million this year one has to ask if all this money has any positive affect,” Theodore “Teddy” Liddell, an attorney, West Point graduate and former Army Captain from Laurel Springs, said. “Given the mass exodus of police officers it appears the answer is no.”
“According to their own records 61 police officers have resigned from the county police force so far this year,” Winston Extavour, an attorney from Haddonfield, commented. “Obviously throwing money, literally millions of dollars, at the problem isn’t helping.”
Ian Gill of Mt Ephraim, an EMS professional and former Camden County Deputy Fire Marshall, asked, “Are these millions of dollars making Camden safer? Is the money at least helping to keep the department sufficiently staffed?
“When it comes to murders, the answer is no,” Gill commented. “According to records available from the County Prosecutor’s office there have been 26 homicides in Camden so far this year, three more than at the same time last year.”
Rob Stone, an EMS professional from Stratford said, “The county police force experiment is obviously a failure. Homicides in Camden are ahead of last year, one behind 2010 and two behind 2009, both pre-layoff years. Bottom line is that the number of murders are still almost identical to where they were before the Freeholders stole the department from the city. It is time to end this failed experiment and turn control of the department back to local government.”
# # #
Ordered and paid for by CCGOP, Richard Ambrosino, Jr., Treasurer
Where to start? First of all, claiming that a policy has “failed” because crime numbers are“almost identical” to previous years is an odd claim, the piece readily admits that the new force is doing roughly as well as it did in 2009 and 2010 (the years that it uses for comparison — in fairness, these are before the massive 2011 cuts, which makes them a decent comparison). But such numbers can’t be understood in isolation — to truly get a sense of the effect of the force, one would need to, at a minimum, put these results in the context of broader trends across the region. The Camden County PR machine makes this same mistake all the time, taking credit for a regional drop in crime. CamConnect lays it out in their crime report with these three charts: 
Each of the charts shows that crimes are falling in similar (though not identical) metropolitan areas, such as Newark or Trenton. In other words, part of the effect we see in Camden is a regional effect, urban cities without the police force see a drop as well.
This is evidence against those claiming a miracle here, but I still don’t understand why the Camden County GOP think it’s evidence that the Metro Police have failed. We aren’t going to be able to fully evaluate the new force for a number of years (something I’ll continue to say when both critics and boosters prematurely declare victory/defeat).
To make matters worse, the press release alleges that a recently received grant to hire additional officers is not having any effect. The only evidence supporting this claim is a single comparison of murder rates, and a note on police attrition. It’s classic Republican hand-wringing over spending that assumes voters will be shocked by the dollar amount but not think about the broader context. There’s a ridiculousness inherent in using a catchall outcome (murders) to evaluate a specific grant that is a small percentage of overall budget. The idea that the effect of a (relatively) small grant could be directly evaluated based on a single city-wide statistic immediately is nonsensical.
It’s a shame, because there are real policy critiques that can be drawn from what’s happening with the Metro Police. The number of police leaving the force is a warning sign and has long been one of the largest intellectual problems with the new force. There has been a lot of talk about new, community policing methods, but community policing is not new in Camden. In 2000, Louneberry wrote “Camden’s community policing unit draws praise in first 10 weeks.” (you need a subscription to ProQuest to read these old articles) In 2005, Luga wrote “Camden trained in new form of policing.” And in 2014 Ingle wrote, “Camden can be a model for community policing.” In other words, nothing new here folks, let’s move along.
It’s great if police are embracing community policing, but it’s not a ground-breaking strategy. The more honest theory of change here is that by eliminating the city police union’s contract, the county was able to get a more favorable deal and hire more officers. But such a theory of change ignores a key question: why did the police union’s contract include police-friendly options?
Part of the reason was that such benefits were needed to attract police to a challenging and sometimes dangerous district. It’s only natural — if police in Camden are paid less than in other municipalities, and the job is more perilous or challenging — that police will be looking for positions around the state. That’s exactly what the NAACP is documenting here in the city (they’re filing public records requests on how many police are leaving the force). The GOP sites similar numbers here, mentioning that 61 officers have resigned from the force this year. The obvious danger is that in an attempt to create a cheaper police force, the county has actually created a transient one — a devastating development for a police force that appears so dedicated to building long-lasting community ties.
In other words, there are real critiques to be made about the Metro Police. Sadly, the GOP is unlikely to engage with them, because it’s easier to holler that money is being wasted than to acknowledge that creating a stable police force in Camden is expensive and difficult, and that many of the current problems come from an attempt to cut costs.
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