In 2013, the Camden Police Department was disbanded, reimagined, and born again as the Camden County Police Department, with fewer officers, lower payand a strategic shift toward community policing. That meant focusing on rebuilding trust between the community and their officers. For us to make the neighborhood look and feel the way everyone wanted it to, it wasnt going to be achieved by having a police officer with a helmet and a shotgun standing on a corner, Thomson said. Now, he wants his officers to identify more with being in the Peace Corps than being in the Special Forces. A conversation with Thomson about community policing is likely to involve many such catchy maxims. Destabilized communities, he told me, need guardians, not warriors. He explained the Back to the Future Paradoxuse technology wisely, but pair it with regular-old Bobbies on the street. And he stressed the idea that public safety is about access to social services, economic rejuvenation, and good schools, not just cops: Nothing stops a bullet like a job.