zlacker

I don't think disbanding a police force means what you think it means. Take a look at https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-c...

The goal is to wipe the slate clean and rebuild from the foundation.

>>bberen+(OP)
From your article:

"The Camden County Police Department rehired most of the laid-off cops, along with nearly 100 other officers, but at much lower salaries and with fewer benefits than they had received from the city."

So the solution was to keep most of the cops (which I agree with) and then pay them less (which I, umm... I mean... that doesn't seem like a recipe for success but eh).

From that article it sounds like it's too early to tell if it worked. Is the new police force doing better than the old one?

>>eric_b+D
Police are some of the highly-paid government employees out there. And that's not counting overtime.

>>eric_b+D
if they managed to rehire most of the officers and some new ones on lower salaries, that sounds like their salaries were mispriced to begin with. a clear win for the taxpayers in my book.

>>eric_b+D
You can look into a history of similar activities across the world. The process of firing and rebuilding from scratch is the only one I know that has consistently worked. The ones that come to mind other than Camden is Northern Ireland [1] and Georgia (country)[2]. I believe there were a few other cases of this in the US, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

The Norther Ireland article specifically covers a few of the reasons why this works.

Edit: I realized that I didn't respond to your question of whether this demonstrates an improvement in Camden. Citylab seems to think so, but offers a nuanced explanation of why this may not be the case and what other factors are at play [3]

[1] https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2019/p... [2]https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/siezing-mom... [3] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crim...

>>r00fus+g2
Also one of the most corrupt. I wonder if better pay disincentivises fraud and corruption?