Regarding the disbanding of the Police Department, I saw this article about what happened in Camden, NJ (a suburb of Philadelphia) after they disbanded and reformed their Police Department in 2013:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/...camden/549542/
Quote:
After a particularly deadly year in 1995, Camden’s Cathedral of Immaculate Conception began illuminating one candle for each homicide victim. In 2012, the year ended with 67 candles—a rate of about 87 murders per 100,000 residents, which ranked Camden fifth nationwide.
But on New Year’s 2018, just 22 candles were lit: The city’s murder rate fell to its lowest since 1987. The number of annual killings has been in decline since 2012; so have robberies, aggravated assaults, violent crimes, property crimes, and non-fatal shooting incidents.
So what’s happening in this city, which for many years has been deemed among the dangerous in America? Thomson, who took the helm of the Camden police force in 2008, says the biggest factor may have been the change in structure of the department itself. In 2013, the Camden Police Department was disbanded, reimagined, and born again as the Camden County Police Department, with fewer officers, lower pay—and 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 wasn’t 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.”
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That article is 2 years old, but I found this with numbers up to date through the end of 2019:
https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden...er-past-decade
Across the board, 2019's overall crime numbers were down from 2017's, except for 2 more murders, which were still less than half of 2012 and 2013's totals.