Mark this day down, I was wrong about something. It seems that the disbanding of the Camden. New Jersey police department and replacing them with a county police force has actually been good for the city. Not only has their been a drop in the murder rate in Camden but they’ve dropped off the list of most dangerous cities where they’re usually in the top 3.
While this is good news for the people of Camden it’s still going to take a very long time before businesses and taxpayers move into the city. Not to mention that I have concerns if the other taxpayers of Camden County are helping foot the bill for a police force that is county in name only as they only patrol Camden itself.
There are reports coming out of Detroit that the city is looking to bulldoze 22 percent of city property that has been abandoned or blighted. The city is not looking to build on those properties either. They’re hoping that private companies and developers to rebuild, in theory.
So I’m sure you’re asking yourself what this has to do with crime. There’s a city in New Jersey that I think is worse off than Detroit even though they haven’t declared bankruptcy yet, surprisingly. Of course that city is Camden.
With less than half of the properties in Camden paying taxes it does no good to leave these properties dilapidated and as potential arson targets. Instead the taxes that are collected in the city can go towards bolstering its ‘metro’ police force rather than the infrastructure that’s being wasted by these properties.
I’m kind of disgusted with humanity right now, I mean more so than usual.
41-year-old Fatima Perez of Camden, New Jersey was buried alive and covered in lime in a shallow grave and left to die in Monroe Township, New Jersey. She died from asphyxiation since here eyes and mouth were covered in duct tape. While she may have died in Middlesex County this crime has Camden written all over it. The same Camden, New Jersey that constantly competes with places like Detroit and Gary, Indiana, as one of the most dangerous places in the country. The same Camden that disbanded its police force and replaced it with a county police force except Camden is the only place it patrols, yet the state taxpayers foots the bill.
Ms. Perez was on her way to purchase a car. She had $8,000 in her possession. She was able to get a ride from a man who had done landscaping for her before, one 36-year-old Carlos Alicea-Antonetti of Camden. It seems that instead of trying to earn money like that honestly he decided he was just going to take it from Ms. Perez and dispose of her, allegedly. Alicea-Antonetti then picked up a co-worker, 57-year-old Ramon Ortiz. Ortiz claims that when he got in the vehicle Ms. Perez was already bound and gagged. So the pair allegedly took her to Monroe Township which is an hour drive away, dug a shallow grave, threw Ms. Perez in it and then covered her with lime, dirt and leaves, all while she was still bound, gagged and alive. She was reported missing this past Monday and unfortunately she was not found alive. Alicea-Antonetti was said to have been found with $7,000 of the money when the pair were arrested in Cherry Hill on Wednesday.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. Camden is a lost cause. While this story may be shocking to a lot of people it’s not shocking to me that this started in Camden. Inept government, the fact that less than half the city’s properties are tax paying and the fact that the city is basically being propped up by the state financially should signal the death knell for Camden. This could have happened over $800 or even $80.
No one will ever come into Camden to develop it. It’s been tried and it’s failed miserably. The state would be better off relocating whatever decent folk are left in Camden then razing the city and starting over. Otherwise it’s never going to get any better, ever.
If you’re unfamiliar with Camden, New Jersey it’s a little slice of hell located across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. The local joke is that one day Camden will jump the river and rape Philly. Camden is consistently ranked in the top 5 most dangerous cities in the country and for good reason. Just within the last year Camden had to disband its police force since less than half the properties in the city actually pay taxes. So when Famardy sent me links to this story I was not surprised at all.
31-year-old Florence Pollard and her boyfriend, 29-year-old Brian Craig have been allegedly arrested for keeping Pollard’s 10-year-old son chained to a radiator. The boy escaped from the home and Pollard asked a neighbor to grab him. The neighbor said that the boy was scared to return to the home so he called police. When police investigated the house they found a length of chain attached to the radiator along with plastic zip ties. The only thing that’s publicly known why the boy was chained to the radiator because it was some kind of punishment. If I had to hazard a guess just from the posts on this site ‘stealing food’ comes to mind.
There were also five other children and the house. Craig is only the baby daddy of one of them.
They both should be chained to a radiator and have it thrown off the Ben Franklin Bridge.
This story is actually a few weeks old. I had saved it then forgot where I saved it.
Even though I don’t live in New Jersey anymore I’m actually a fan of Governor Chris Christie. I like his no-nonsense style and his willingness to reach across political boundaries for the people of New Jersey. While he would not be my first choice if he ran for president I might be inclined to vote for him. However with his endorsement of the new Camden, New Jersey police force he’s lost a little credibility in my eyes.
As I’ve posted before Camden disbanded its police force and replaced with the Camden County Police. That name is somewhat of a misnomer. The Camden County police are only patrolling Camden itself. None of the other communities in Camden County use this police force yet the taxpayers of Camden County are paying for this police force. But it’s not just the county that is footing the bill for this new police force, it’s the entire state.
According to the article I linked to at the Philadelphia Inquirer the state gives Camden $102M of the city’s $150M budget. As I’ve also mentioned before less than half of Camden’s properties are tax paying properties. So the taxpayers of New Jersey are keeping the disaster on the Delaware afloat.
There is only one thing that could save Camden and I have to attribute my brother for pointing this out to me. In most crime filled hellholes (Philly, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, Houston, etc.) they have at least one ‘nice’ neighborhood (ie, rich). The only way for Camden to be self-sustaining again is to bring in businesses and people with money. Unfortunately you can’t get the people with the money to move in to a city that is constantly ranked in the top 3 of most dangerous cities in the country. Sort of a chicken and egg type of problem.
I think the state needs to look into why these properties are not taxpaying properties and what it would take to correct that. Then if it can’t be corrected the properties need to be razed.
As I’ve mentioned before I spent most of 2011 in South Jersey on family business. While I was there I was a short drive away from the crime infested suckhole that is Camden, New Jersey. During that time I wrote a lot about Camden and its ineffective government and its not so slow descent into hell.
Since I came back to North Carolina I haven’t really paid too much attention to Camden unless it somehow made national news. It did not too long ago with a Camden woman who killed her son and killed herself. I let that one slide because I thought it was just a fluke that it made the headlines. Then this week a similar story also made national headlines which made me rethink my Camden writing policies. So from now on I will be keeping a sharper eye on the Disaster on the Delaware.
Today’s story is just more evidence that Camden needs to be put out of its misery.
31-year-old Osvaldo Rivera has been charged in the brutal murder of 6-year-old Dominick Andujar and the attack and possible rape on Dominick’s 12-year-old sister. It seems that Rivera was high on weed laced with PCP and decided to burst into a random house. The house he chose not only had Dominick and his sister in it bust also a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl who was watching them. Dominick and his sister’s mother was in the hospital recovering from surgery and their father lives out of state.
Rivera allegedly slit Dominick’s throat then attacked his sister slitting her throat, stabbing her and possibly raping her. In what order that was done I don’t know. The girl survived her attack and managed escape to a neighbor’s home. Dominick was not so lucky. The girl was able to identify Rivera as the attacker by using the name “Poppy”. Rivera’s street name is “Popeye”. I guess we know what he considers his Spinach.
Police caught up with Rivera at a place he sometimes stays between a mattress and a wall. You know, the first place a cop would think to look. Police were also able to match the bloody sneakers Rivera had to bloody footprints at the scene.
Now because of this and the aforementioned murder-suicide Camden seems to think it has a PCP problem on its hands since the mother was supposedly high on PCP as well. They do, I won’t dispute that. The problem is what are they going to do about it? They have a skeleton crew of a police force due to layoffs and the new proposed Camden County Metro Department isn’t going to be much better.
No wonder the city is invincible, the city is in the control of criminals, the criminals are on PCP and the cops can’t do anything about it.
UPDATE 12/7/2014: This past week Rivera was sentenced to 110 years behind bars for the brutal murder of Dominick Andujar and the rape of Dominick’s then 12-year-old sister.
My hope is that Rivera spends every day of the rest of his un-natural life in the same kind of pain and fear he inflicted on his victims before he’s taken to hell.
For most of 2011 I wrote a lot about the crime infested cesspool on the Delaware River known as Camden, New Jersey. If you don’t know by my recollection Camden has been the number 1 or 2 most dangerous in the city since at least 2004. I wrote about it a lot last year since I spent most of 2011 not only in New Jersey on a family matter but I was but a stone’s throw from Camden. I haven’t written about it at all this year since I’m back in North Carolina and we don’t get much news from New Jersey down here. However this morsel of information happened to make the national news.
It seems that the fair city of Camden was satisfied with just laying off half of their police force. Now they’re considering plans to disband the police department as a whole. Now that doesn’t mean there won’t be a police presence in Camden. It means that it will be replaced by a Metro Police division of the Camden County Police Department. That means that cities and towns from all over Camden County like Berlin, Clementon, Cherry Hill, Voorhees, Atco, etc. will have their tax money used to patrol Camden. Not surprising since over half of the properties in Camden are non-tax producing properties. Not to mention that where will these police officers be going. Not to any of the places I mentioned but probably mostly to Camden.
The Camden cops that will soon be out of jobs or have new non-union jobs on the Metro force are decrying that this is nothing more than union busting but when a city has no money it can’t pay its employees whether or not they’re union. However that makes me wonder how much Camden mayor Dana Redd is being paid by the city.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only thing that would have half a chance of curbing crime in Camden at this point would be martial law and I’m not saying that for hyperbole. Camden is a cancer that could spread throughout the rest of the county where good people live if it is left unchecked. Short of razing it to the ground and starting over from scratch containment is the only possible way to keep the cancer from spreading.
Congratulations residents of the Garden State. Your tax dollars are now going to fund the State Police going into the cesspool that is Camden to assist their already overworked police department. While this is much needed it’s still using a water pistol to put out a forest fire.
This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem with no real solution in sight. The talks about starting a countywide police force is again just throwing more money from taxpayers outside of Camden into a hole that isn’t there problem.
Camden will never be a place that people want to go to unless drastic measures are taken and these band-aids that the city and state keep coming up with are not going to cut it.
Not only should the city declare a state of emergency if there was any city that was in need of martial law it would be Camden. Until you get the crime problem under control Camden will always be a city on the decline.
After a store owner and father of five was gunned down in his own store the City Council President of Camden, New Jersey has called on the mayor to declare a state of emergency in the city.
This past week 48-year-old Miguel Almonte was shot and killed during a botched robbery in the mom and pop store that he owned. Three others were wounded and at last check the gunmen were still at large.
This prompted City Council President Frank Moran to introduce a resolution that would urge Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd to declare a state of emergency in the city. That would mean that Mayor Redd could go to the state and request State Police and National Guard assistance.
New Jersey Governor Christie, whom I usually agree with, said that he would decline such a request if it came to him. He seems to place a large part of the blame on the Camden police union for not being willing to negotiate. That may or may not be true but I think what the larger problem is that more than half of the property in Camden is non-tax generating, meaning that the city does not collect taxes on more than half of the properties in the city. If the union was putting a stranglehold on the city it was mere drop in the bucket compared to the lack of taxes.
If it was up to me I wouldn’t hesitate sending in the National Guard to Camden. It’s only a matter of time before a crime is committed there that will result in a massive body count and then everyone will wonder how it could have happened.
If there is any chance of saving Camden the time to act is now before its cancer spreads into the surrounding communities.
I thought Camden, New Jersey would have been a lock to ‘win’ the not so prestigious title of America’s most dangerous city. After coming in 2nd to last year’s champion, St. Louis, Camden went on to lay off half of its police and firemen. As expected crime skyrocketed in an already crime plagued city.
The only time I’ve ever been to Michigan was a layover in the Detroit airport but if Flint is ranked higher than Camden it must really be a pit.
