If Camden Can Do It, Wildwood Is Now Without Excuse

Many cities of our state have their drug and other crime issues, and Wildwood is one of them. The city has been grappling with them for years, but to this point not much has changed. There is light, however, at the end of the tunnel, and it is coming out of Camden, of all places.
According to a Sept. 1 front-page article in The New York Times, Camden, the city which has suffered with a well-earned bad reputation for decades, is getting its act together. Drug gangs are being run off the streets; murders, in the summer of 2012, are down from 21 to six; shootings are down 43 percent in two years; children are walking to school – alone. And children are now coming from outside the city to take part in Camden’s Little League.
What happened? Management changed, management within the police department, that is. It is not that the cops were corrupt; it is simply, management did not know how to deal with the problems. There needed to be a change at the top. To accomplish that, the City of Camden did away with its own police department and turned it over to the county. In the process three-quarters of the officers were rehired into the new force.
Drug gangs are being run off the streets and children are now
coming from outside the city to take part in Camden’s Little League.
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Under the new management, more modern methods of fighting crime and more modern technologies are being utilized. The entire police culture has changed. Cops are now out from behind the desks and out of the patrol cars and are now walking the streets. Two years ago, children shook their fists and shouted obscenities to them but now chat with them. The cops are making friends everywhere they go. One young person referred to in The Times article said he used to be afraid of the police bit now he wants to be one.
The improvements in law and order are now also bringing economic improvements: Shop Rite is building a new supermarket, Camden’s first new supermarket in three decades.
Instead of militarizing the streets, the police are knocking on doors, seeking information from the residents about their concerns. The police know they cannot clean up the city by themselves; they need the cooperation of the residents.
Response time to calls is now under five minutes, whereas it had been an hour, or not at all. Instead of being overwhelmed, the new force is even going back and reopening old, unsolved cases.
Naturally, this is not a walk in the park. With Camden’s poverty and high unemployment rate, a turn-around does not happen overnight. There are many problems, but conditions have improved well ahead of the anticipated timetable.
Given that the unthinkable has happened in a city with the enormous problems Camden has become known for, there is every reason to believe the same can and will happen in Wildwood, when the citizens demand it.
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Wildwood is not the only Cape May County trouble spot, but it is the most egregious. Lower, Ocean City and Woodbine also have their challenges, and Middle Township is grappling with its own problems. Given the vision spelled out in Mayor Timothy Donohue’s excellent op-ed piece in the Herald Sept. 3, I am betting they will.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If Camden can do it, nobody else has an excuse.
Art Hall