Camden New Jersey did away with their Police Department?
I had not heard about that. Then their experience should be studied closely as a real world example of what happens if you simply give up on having a local police force in your city.
They are touted as the go to standard for exactly this. The local news (Kare11 MN) had a segment on it, and of course it was all rainbows and lollipops.
They turned over responsibility to the county (which wasn’t as heavily minority as Camden itself), then complained that the city wasn’t patrolled by enough minorities. There is a key point here that shouldn’t be ignored: THE WHOLE IDEA WAS TO TRANSFER CAMDEN’S COSTS TO THE SURROUNDING AREA.
How many of the Camden residents pay for police protection? I assume 90+% don’t. Here in NJ our urban police forces are increasingly just jobs programs for preferred minorities, to maintain the illusions of assimilation and a middle class among certain demographics. Few are paid by local taxes (as suburban forces are); they are paid by the “county” - meaning the suburbs.
I worked in medical diagnostic imaging maintenance in 1998-99 timeframe. Part of my area was Camden medical facilities. We were required to call hospital security to be escorted from and back to our vehicles. There had been too many incidents of robbery and theft in the parking lots. Saw several incidents of people loitering in the lots; those people disappeared when security showed up. I’m sure the situation hasn’t improved over the past two decades.