“Big brother’s watching,” El, 50, recalls telling her neighbor.
Recently, the Camden County Police Department received a donation of over $400,000 to purchase two new drones to add to its fleet of seven.
While residents say they don’t mind some use of police technology, they say it largely makes them feel surveilled, causing concerns that it could be used to violate their civil rights. They said they would rather see funding go to grassroots initiatives that address the root causes of crime.
“We can invest in surveillance technology, or we can invest in people,” said East Camden resident Tim Merrill, 65. “I’m not saying not to invest in some surveillance technology, but that should be the lagging edge of our investment.”
Still, authorities say these technologies help them police and that residents welcome them.
“We have a lot of technology in the city. We’ve been a very early adopter of technology,” said Lt. Gordon Harvey, who oversees the department’s technology. “We can use the tools to give us extra time and safety.”
USE OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY
According to John Shjarback, an associate professor of criminal justice at Rowan University, most of the investments in technology arrived after the county took over the department from the city in 2013. At the time, the Atlanticand VICE News dubbed Camden “Surveillance City.”
Shjarback says the label isn’t wrong.
CCPD uses various technologies from CCTV cameras to gunshot detection systems, he said.
Taken together, that means “People’s every move is tracked in and out and around the city,” Shjarback said.
A Mosaic analysis of data from the Atlas of Surveillance, a database that monitors law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology, showed that Camden police use more technology than any other department in the county. Camden ranks among the highest for its use of technology when compared to other urban cities in the state.
The data also showed that most police forces across the state are using surveillance technology.
A note about the data: It includes the technology used by sheriffs’ offices and prosecutors’ offices. Mosaic only analyzed the technology used by police.
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SURVEILLANCE AND CIVIL RIGHTS
For Merrill, CCPD’s continued investment in surveillance technology is “troubling.”
Merrill recounted his family’s experience in 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Merrill said his son and some friends wanted to host a demonstration, so Merrill called an officer to alert police of the event, but was asked to come to the station to discuss the plans, prompting one of his son’s friends to post about the meeting on social media.
When they arrived at the station, the officer told one of his son’s friends to take down the post.
“I was really taken aback,” Merrill said. “You knew what they had posted, and you are now demanding ... that they take down that post.”
“That’s scary,” he said.
Dan Keashen, a spokesperson for the Camden Police Department, declined to comment.
But Gordon said the department only monitors public social media posts available to everyone.
“We don’t have any tools or any resources that allow us to monitor anything that the public doesn’t.
“We want to make sure that we’re monitoring anything and everything that can help keep the citizens safe,” he added. “And if people put something on social media, we’ll keep an eye on that.”
El said the department’s embrace of technology is a slippery slope.
“For example, there’s incidents with biometrics, where people have been wrongly identified,” she said, referring to national incidents.
Gordon said the CCPD applies the best standards and practices when using drones, following guidelines and directives set by the state Attorney General’s Office. He noted that the CCPD typically uses drones to respond to service calls and monitor areas such as hotspots and parks at closing time.
He added that any resident who has concerns can come to the station to view the technology.
“The city has supported, by and large, everything that we’ve been able to do with technology because it has results, and they see that it’s not oppressive,” he said.
ROOT CAUSES OF CRIME
Recently released data showed that Camden’s crime rate has dropped significantly since 2012, but it still exceeds those of other urban cities in the state and remains about four times the national rate.
Shjarback noted that the technology has helped fight crime in the city.
“When there is a crime that the police and prosecutors want to solve, they can lean heavily on the technology to identify a suspect and trace that suspect’s movement back,” he said. “It aids them in being able to more effectively make arrests of offenders.”
Shjarback said decades of research on CCTV cameras show they reduce crime. He said he is not aware of any empirical research examining the relationship between drones and crime because drone technology is relatively new.
However, Shjarback said these technologies are not addressing the root causes of crime.
“These technologies may assist police and prosecutors in the short-term, but a broader effort needs to be made to address poverty, unemployment/lack of economic opportunity, poor educational outcomes, etc., in the long-term,” he said.
Sean Brown, of East Camden, agrees.
“I think the cameras have done a great job of helping police departments solve crimes throughout America, including in Camden,” said Brown, 43. “So what are we going to capture through drones that we have not already been able to capture?”
Brown would rather see the funds used to address homelessness and substance use in the city.
“If you want to make Camden safer, then you’re going to go to Broadway … and Haddon Avenue and scoop up the folks that are pooping on people’s front steps and shooting up heroin and smoking crack pipes on the lawns of families,” he said. “Drug addiction is the biggest unresolved issue in the city, and I just don’t see how drones get us any closer to solving that issue.
“We need to continue social services, to invest in our education programs, to look at the family as a whole and support families, and get away from things like drones,” Brown said.
Keashen said the county has made “tremendous investments in social programs,” ranging from tackling homelessness to youth truancy.
“There’s a lot of money going into root causes and trying to dissect how we get out of a place where people turn to criminality,” he said. “Those monies are being spent, and those investments are being made.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Camden’s ranking among urban cities in the state for its use of technology.
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