CAMDEN, N.J. – From the windows of R.C. Molina Elementary School, teacher's aide Carla Noville could see police patrolling at Seventh and Vine streets, keeping the corner by the playground relatively free of the drug dealing that plagues this city.
Just last July, Mayor Dana Redd declared Sixth Street, a block over, a "safe corridor" that police would patrol heavily to beat back the corner drug trade.
That was before crime-ridden Camden – the poorest city in New Jersey and a byword for urban failure — cut its police force nearly in half to balance a $26 million budget deficit. After losing millions in state aid and unable to gain concessions on a union contract, the city laid off 300 employees last month, including 167 police officers and 60 firefighters.
"That's going to be scary, without seeing them being there," Noville says. "They are needed. Come on, how are we supposed to survive without the cops?"
Other cities in New Jersey, including Newark and Atlantic City, have laid off police to close budget gaps and to make up for cuts in state aid made by Republican Gov. Chris Christie. But no other city fired as much of its force as Camden, nor do other cities have a history as woeful as this one.
Camden is one of the poorest cities in the nation: More than half its residents live in poverty. It ranks at or near the top of annual lists of the most dangerous cities. From 2002 until last year, the state controlled the city's finances and government.
Now Redd, the city's first mayor since emerging from state control, is in a stalemate with police and fire unions, which have rejected contract concessions designed to save the city money. Police Chief Scott Thomson has sent all available police to street duty to keep patrols near full strength.
Redd's proposal to raise local property taxes 23%, which required state approval and which would have allowed the city to rehire 35 officers, failed to get City Council approval last Tuesday. On Friday, the main branch of the public library closed. A federal grant will provide $5 million for firefighters to be rehired, if the city can balance its budget.
"We're trying to be fiscally responsible right now," says Redd spokesman Robert Corrales. "That's the paradigm we're working under."
The parts of Camden where redevelopment has succeeded have long relied on their own police. The Delaware River Port Authority police patrol the waterfront, where an aquarium, a minor-league ballpark and a concert venue draw out-of-town visitors. The Camden campus of Rutgers University has a 19-member police force in addition to 40 security guards.
"From a perception perspective, it's going to have an impact," says Wendell Pritchett, chancellor of Rutgers-Camden. The university is making a video of students talking about safety on campus, and inquiries about security from prospective students spiked after the police layoff announcement, he says. "We struggle to promote a positive image for the city."
Cooper University Hospital announced last week that in addition to its existing security force, Rowan University would provide police officers for its campus and a medical school, to be run jointly by the institutions, that is now under construction.
"When you look at the overlapping jurisdictions, it's why the downtown and the waterfront have been so safe despite" the overall crime rate, says Anthony Perno of the Cooper's Ferry Development Association, the non-profit agency that developed the aquarium and other waterfront attractions. "We don't anticipate any change in that."
Zack Duz, a 32-year-old Turkish immigrant, opened the Market Gourmet deli two weeks ago. It's located in the Victor Building, a former industrial building turned into residential lofts, and across the street from parking lots for the entertainment center, where people tailgate in summer.
"Math doesn't lie," Duz says. "People are afraid of Camden, but I am not."
The diminished police force could have the effect of further dividing the city. "There's this area and others that are very good and are safe," Pritchett says. "There are others that aren't. That's the story in every city in America."
Away from the waterfront and the university, those who hoped redevelopment would spread now fear they are saying goodbye to what dreams survived the real estate crash.
"I can't say that there is a lot of visible crime or a lot of visible peril existing, but I can say that there's a feeling of almost impending doom," says Rodney Sadler of Save our Waterfront, a North Camden neighborhood group. "People are afraid."
Sadler, whose son is a firefighter and whose daughter-in-law is a police officer, says public safety layoffs endanger the city's economic and development prospects as well as the residents' safety. "What we in this neighborhood have been working for 20 years now to try to do is create a quality neighborhood where there is some opportunity and some hope," he says. "You just wipe that out with one stroke of the pen."
On the day of the police layoffs last month, three bullets took out the windows of Janet Vale's Honda as it was parked on the street near her home in the East Camden neighborhood. Vale and her 11-year-old son Benny weren't in the car, she says, adding "Thank God."
"It's everywhere," she says of the drug trade and the consequent violence. "Everything is everywhere. We need more cops."