Sam Wood and Michael Boren’s latest article on Camden’s Metro Police highlights that the new police department is hemorrhaging officers, and even filing suit to recover training costs for policemen who are leaving to join forces in neighboring towns. The story is important, and the Camden County NAACP who has been gathering information on this issue since the creation of the force, deserves a lot of credit (as do the reporters). The sustained pattern of turnover for the Metro Police highlights some serious questions about the long-term sustainability of the force, and highlights some of the weakest aspects of the move to a county force. While the new force saves money, primarily by tearing up the Camden City Policy union contract and moving to a more favorable contract, it fails to grapple with the the logic behind the original contract’s history — that payment for police in Camden might need to be higher to retain officers in a city with serious challenges. All of which begs the question which the Metro Police now faces — is the Metro Police sustainable?
Here’s a quick summary of Metro’s dramatic loss of officers:
Since the creation in May 2013 of the Camden County Police Department, which patrols only the city of Camden, more than 100 officers have resigned. At least 50 have taken jobs with other departments, most of them at the Jersey Shore.
Photo by Lori Nichols SJ Times
This has been a concern from the beginning of the new force — much of the cost savings (and the theory behind the new force) was that if a cumbersome union contract could be jettisoned, more officers could be hired. Given that the local spike in crime was, in part, connected to the release of 168 police officers in 2011, that made some sense. But like many “market-based” reforms, there is a remarkable lack of consideration for broader aspects of the market. Yes, renegotiating the union contract could make for a cheaper force, but it also puts the force at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to recruiting and maintaining staff. We can already see the results of that — police officers when faced with the choice of lower earnings policing a difficult urban environment, and a better contract in a quieter town, will choose the latter.
What does that mean for the Metro Police? There has always been a question as to the sustainability of the force’s savings. Part of that has to do with the nuance of the contracts of police who moved from the Camden City force to the Metro. New officers at the Metro found themselves at the bottom of their new pay scale. This is a little confusing, but this is how Camden County NAACP President Kelly Francis explained it to me. Essentially, there are all different pay levels in a police force. But when you start a new union, each officer starts at the initial payment level for their given level. Within these levels, police then receive pay bumps based on their years on the force.
If that’s too confusing, imagine it this way. Police get paid for promotions, but also smaller amounts for time they’ve spent on the force. By starting an entirely new union, every officer (at all different levels) was at the starting line of the possible salaries for their position.
This means that the first few years of a new police force would feature artificially low personnel costs, almost as if every officer was in the first year of a new position. Over time, as the force fills out and police officers have a more usual distribution of experience, the force would become more expensive. So Metro is cheaper than the Camden City Police because of a cheaper contract, but also as a quirk of each police officer being in the “first year on the job.”
The cynical in Camden point out that this artificially low cost (and subsequent unsustainable ramping up of the police force) coincided directly with Gov. Christie’s presidential run. But that’s not exactly how it’s worked out — officers have been leaving the force so quickly that the target of over 420 officers hasn’t been reached. Even if the Metro Police were to keep officers, it likely wouldn’t be sustainable at the 400 level (given current funding). As officers progressed through the pay-scale, the force would have to contract. In that case, the force would resemble other forces around the state — with a balance of new and experienced officers — while also staying approximately within the historical norms of total officers.
That’s one equilibrium. But the rapid rate points to the second equilibrium. Rather than move to a force with a normal distribution of officers, the force could move to a model in which it always has a high number of young officers (who are constantly leaving). This would echo the direction the education sector has taken in the city where a charter sector takes advantage of churning (and cheap) teachers with little experience.
On one hand, this solves some of the potential financial problems coming down the pipe for the Metro Police. But there are reasons to be skeptical. As the NAACP has documented, the new, young force is significantly whiter than the Camden City Police — a heart-breaking development for a local NAACP branch that spent decades advocating to ensure Camden had one of the most diverse forces in the country. The public relations campaign highlighting community policing has overshadowed a more difficult challenge for the force — that it’s officers have little experience with urban communities. That likely contributes to their eagerness to leave, but it has to potential to be much worse. When officers don’t understand their surrounding communities, it raises the chances of difficult miscommunications. There has long been concerns bubbling up from different sources in Camden that the focus on “community policing” was obscuring a harsh, broken windows approach to policing. One local resident described it to me by saying, “until they get to know me, I’m a suspect.” Stories are starting to trickle out about aggressive police tactics, potential harassment, and other problems. It remains to be seen how these play out in court, and if the goodwill the force has built by increasing its presence in many urban communities asking for more officers is enough to counteract the more recent struggles. But there are real risks associated with asking young officers unfamiliar with the community to engage in difficult police work for little pay.
All of this points to two different equilibrium points for the Metro Police. In one scenario, the force has to deal with officers who stay — and the economic consequences of that reality, which cut into the savings provided by the Metro. A second scenario is a transient, inexperienced police force that, while cheap, poses significant challenges for the type of reasoned, culturally-informed policing in Camden.
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