the rix mix

Camden ranked second in the nation behind New Orleans in an annual rankings of most crime-ridden cities from CQ Press.

Camden topped the list for two years before slipping to fifth two years ago and then fourth last year.

Trenton and Newark were also among the 30 most dangerous cities out of the 385 ranked.

But the news wasn't all bad for New Jersey. Five of its largest suburbs -- Brick, Toms River, Edison, Hamilton and Woodbridge -- were among the safest cities.

The ratings are based on numbers from 2007.

There may be one way for Camden to get off the list. If its population dips below 75,000, it won't be included.

If the population does slip, Camden can join Irvington, probably the most dangerous smaller city in Jersey. I rarely read any news out of Irvington unrelated to crime. My city is well down the list at 101, a score of 81.6, sandwiched between Boston & San Francisco, about where it was last year. Certainly there's room for improvement. Mayors protest that the ratings skew F.B.I. statistics, but few in the top 25 could claim that juggling the stats some other way would make much difference if the city is scoring over 200.

Everybody picks on Camden NJ. It's difficult to imagine how that city could have escaped its fate. Even when poet Walt Whitman lived there after the Civil War it was a tough, industrial port city across the river from Philly. When the manufacturing base collapsed after WWII, along with the port, & with cheap white-only tract developments crawling across surrounding farmlands, there was little reason for the white middle & working classes to stick around. The nostalgia one hears for the old ethnic neighborhoods in Camden is just that.

I haven't been back to Camden since visiting the Walt Whitman House in the 1980' s. A terrible area, maybe it's better now. The house appeared to be closed, but the brochure said it should be open. I knocked on the door & was admitted by a suspicious caretaker after she sized me up as a pilgrim. I probably looked a bit awestruck. My girlfriend & I were the only visitors at the time, & the caretaker mostly left us alone as we wandered through the little house. It was a deeply moving experience, but we hustled ourselves of out Camden afterward.

# posted by Bob : 4:29 PM

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