CAMDEN — The mural spans an entire building, 67 white crosses in a row, emblazoned on a black wall.

They are painted there to mark the homicides Camden saw in 2012, a record-setting wave of bloodshed that followed the decision to cut the police force in half.

The city’s homicide and drug task forces were wiped out overnight. One freeholder compared the city to a third-world country.

Residents of the Parkside and Fairview neighborhoods remember those days vividly, but believe now that they may be over.

The drug dealers who left a bullet hole in the deli counter of Donald Madera’s store in Fairview are gone. So is the crowd that used T.I.’s Parkside barber shop as a shield from volleys of gunfire.

"It’s erased, negated," T.I. says. "Non-existent."

One year after Camden was among the nation’s most violent cities, officials have found a way to lower crime and the cost of fighting it. All they had to do was dismantle their police department.

It's been six months since Camden's police were replaced by the Camden County Metropolitan Police Department, the first regional police force created in New Jersey. As of Dec. 1, homicides have dropped 20 percent in the city, records show, while burglaries and robberies have also fallen significantly. Overall crime is down 14 percent.

The city joined with the county to form a regional police force in May, a move that has cut the average cost of a police officer in half. The state provided Camden with $10 million in startup funds for the department, and the city now pays the county for the service with a combination of tax dollars and state aid.

Under the old city contract, $62 million would have allowed for roughly 250 officers to patrol the streets of New Jersey’s poorest and most violent city, according to Police Chief Scott Thomson.

Now, that same figure could pay for more than 400 uniformed officers.

Many consider the new department, with 250 members, to be the first glimmer of hope in years for a city that has long served as an icon of American despair, where nearly 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

The county force has largely focused its efforts in the Parkside and Fairview sections of Camden, where there are small businesses receptive to the effort. The result so far: just one killing since May 1. Thomson said both areas were havens for drug traffickers that he simply didn’t have the manpower to chase last year.

"We’ve been able to make some tremendous inroads with public safety initiatives because we have continuity of officers being assigned to neighborhoods, giving them the ability to get out of the squad car, walk a beat, get to know people," he said.

Experts and state officials have called the progress in Camden encouraging and some have even wondered if the city’s model could be replicated in Newark and Trenton, where large-scale layoffs were followed by surges in violence.

A STATEWIDE MODEL?

Gov. Chris Christie has also praised Camden’s early successes and suggested he’d like to see the model expand.

But within the city, praise for the new force is mixed. In North Camden and Whitman Park, residents say "The Metro" has done little to help them. Crime is as high as ever, residents say, while some of the newer cops have taken to using aggressive stop-and-frisk style tactics. The city’s former police union president also shrugged off the crime decreases, accusing the city of intentionally letting Camden spiral out of control last year to justify the need for a county force.

The city’s "Real-Time Crime Center" is the nexus of the operation. Located at police headquarters, it looks like the inside of an electronics store, each wall lined by televisions and computer monitors that highlight where patrols are concentrated and detect gunshots.

Thomson says the room is indicative of the "more with less" policing strategy he’s had to take on the past few years. By targeting crime hot spots with added technology, police have been able to lessen violence without conducting mass arrests.

"With the finite amount of resources we have, we fish with a spear, not with a net, going after those who are more likely to shoot or be shot," he said.

Camden gained 125 new officers when it switched to the county model, and their roster will grow to 411 in 2014. That number will rival the size of Camden’s city force before the layoffs, but officials say a burdensome union contract forced the change.

The average cost of a city officer was $180,000, said county spokesman Dan Keashen. With the reduction of fringe benefits, officers on the county force cost about $93,000.

Still, with limited resources available this year, Thomson chose a targeted approach to crime. He started in Parkside and Fairview because those neighborhoods have strong community leaders and business districts committed to helping police eliminate the drug element.

In Parkside, business leaders such as barber shop owner T.I. say the county force has sparked a landscape change.

"It was a different neighborhood then. It’s an entirely different neighborhood now," he said. "People felt unsafe, and that’s gone now."

Martin Elsaud, a 22-year-old employee at Mario’s Pizzeria in Parkside, said the increased police presence has chased away the crowd that used to shamble along Haddon Avenue for all the wrong reasons.

"It’s like traffic has really, really slowed down," he said. "I lose some customers, but on the other hand we get a lot of good customers now. We’re really safe and really comfortable."

In North Camden and Whitman Park, home to the bulk of the city’s bloodshed since 2010, residents aren’t as hopeful.

Some residents view the new force with distrust. Nearly 100 of the 250 cops patrolling Camden did not work for the former city department, and residents say those newer officers have been targeting African-American residents unfairly.

"They don’t understand the community, they are out of touch with the community, and the fact of the matter is they can’t differentiate the law-abiding citizens from the offenders," said Gary Frazier, a self-described former drug dealer and one-time city council candidate.

Anthony Davis, a former mayoral candidate, said Camden is only enjoying a crime decrease because 2012’s numbers were unprecedented.

"Although it may appear that crime is down, we’re not seeing that on the streets," he said. "I think all they’re doing is shifting crime from one area of the city to the next."

John Williamson, the ex-police union president, believes the decreases are overstated, and accused the city of allowing violence to persist in 2012.

"What they did is purposely and knowingly withheld police services from the residents," he said. "They allowed the crime to get so bad, so the residents would join with them and say we have no other choice."

Thomson scoffed at the criticism. He said many officers burned through sick days in 2012, leaving the city’s police hopelessly undermanned as they tried to combat a historic surge in violence.

"The daily 30 percent absentee rate put us in a situation of day-to-day crisis management, triaging emergency calls with no ability to proactively prevent crime from occurring," he said. "We currently have the same number of officers as last year. But now that cops come to work and are able to address what our residents have been routinely reporting you can see the impact we have been able to make."

The early successes in Camden have left some wondering if Newark and Trenton could benefit from a similar model.

Both cities suffered massive layoffs in 2010 and 2011, followed by spikes in crime. This year, Newark is on pace to see its highest murder total since 2006.

In August, Trenton recorded its 32nd killing of 2013, marking its highest annual homicide total.

Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. said Mercer officials contacted him to discuss the concept of a countywide force, but there are no plans to adopt Camden’s model in Trenton.

Essex officials echoed that sentiment.

Still, the Attorney General’s Office and Christie have applauded Camden’s efforts, and Christie has expressed an interest in seeing the model tried elsewhere.

"The governor wants to see more of this in New Jersey, and we think local governments are opening up to the possibilities in terms of savings and smaller, more effective government," said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the governor.

Experts warned it would be hard to replicate Camden’s successes and savings. Camden’s situation was more dire than places like Newark and Trenton and their union contract was far more generous toward officers, said Wayne Fisher, a professor at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice.

"They had the worst contract of any city in the state," Fisher said. "They gave away the store when they negotiated."

It remains unclear if the county force will be a long-term success. But thinking back on last year, even the critics can agree one thing — it simply cannot fail.

"I do not want to see the Metro fail," Davis said. "Because if they fail, that means there are more dead bodies."

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