3 Stories You Should Read 06/09/2020: Trump, Booker, Camden

June 9, 2020 Confluence

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In the category of: Life goes on

This city disbanded its police department 7 years ago. Here’s what happened next

Camden dissolved its police department to root out corruption.

The city’s crime rate was among the worst in the US. Within nine square miles and among nearly 75,000 residents, there were over 170 open-air drug markets reported in 2013, county officials told CNN. Violent crime abounded. Police corruption was at the core.

Lawsuits filed against the department uncovered that officers routinely planted evidence on suspects, fabricated reports and committed perjury. After the corruption was exposed, courts overturned the convictions of 88 people, the ACLU reported in 2013.

So in 2012, officials voted to completely disband the department — it was beyond reform.

And in 2013, the Camden County Police Department officially began its tenure. No other city of Camden’s size has done anything quite like it.

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In the category of: What’s next?

Democrats’ sweeping new police reform bill, explained

Among other measures, Democrats want to end qualified immunity and chokeholds.

The legislation also incorporates a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker that would create a new national registry to track misconduct as a way to prevent repeat offenders from being rehired at other police departments.

In addition, the bill seeks to ban the use of chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants at the federal level, as well as to incentivize state and local governments to do the same. Both tactics have been factors in police killings of unarmed black people: A no-knock warrant used by police in Kentucky in March ended in the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT who died after officers broke down her door without warning and fatally shot her.

“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Monday. “The martyrdom of George Floyd gave the American experience a moment of national anguish. … True justice can only be achieved with full comprehensive action. That’s what we are doing today.”

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In the category of: Summer re-runs

Trump gets the 2016 band back together as he tumbles in polls

“It’s the camaraderie that he misses,” said a former campaign official. “He had a small group of people with unquestionable loyalty.”

Trump is increasingly concerned that his reelection prospects could be slipping away and wants to bring in staffers he trusts from his original scrappy campaign, the Republicans say.

“Recent internal polling painted uneasy seas ahead and President Trump wanted some of his warriors back,” according to one of the people, who worked on the 2016 campaign.

Trump remains frustrated about the leadership of campaign manager Brad Parscale, himself a 2016 loyalist who served as digital strategist and is now running his first presidential campaign, the five Republicans say. Specifically, the president has continued to complain that Parscale is burning through too much money too quickly, two of the people say.

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