A City Surveilled

Years ago, I created and taught a high school course in Camden City, New Jersey. We discussed the city’s history and the factors that shaped its circumstances, including the events that led to the takeovers of its government, schools, and police. I gave equal time to discussing the takeover of each entity. What the students found most fascinating was the police department’s takeover because it was the most visible and impactful change.

The impetus for the state to intervene in Camden’s law enforcement stemmed primarily from reports that Camden was the most dangerous city in the United States from 2010 to 2013. That’s partly true. The city was the most dangerous in America among cities with fewer than 100,000 residents. Other population levels existed to properly contextualize the most dangerous city. Another reason was a reduction in staff due to budget cuts. 

That had to be explained to students as well as the nuances of state intervention in schools and municipal government. But what the students fully understood was seeing the New Jersey State Police flood Camden’s streets. 

The continuously visible signs of state intervention—starting with the New Jersey State Police—is proof that Camden is both colonized and occupied territory. State and county governments oversee critical functions of the city. The Democratic party boss, whose efforts negatively impact electoral politics in the city, has now funded further surveillance of Black and brown people by the police force, whose oversight comes from the county government, elected by county residents who are majority white. 

Camden’s police department was disbanded and replaced by a county-wide force, the Camden County Police Department (CCPD), which no other municipality joined. CCPD was most known for its emphasis on community policing. That is assigning police officers to specific areas so they become familiar with local residents. It’s because a sizable portion of the CCPD weren’t Camden City residents, whereas many officers from the disbanded Camden Police Department were from Camden and already familiar with the residents, but I digress. 

CCPD, however, continued some of the disbanded police’s previous programs. One such program was the city’s Eye in the Sky surveillance network for high-crime and high drug-trafficking areas. These were 81 cameras strategically placed in the city that could capture license plate numbers and triangulate the location where a gunshot was heard. I showed my students a special report on Vice about CCPD continuing the program and the privacy and civil liberties concerns associated with it.

Those concerns continue with CCPD’s creation of a drone surveillance program, which started six months ago. It’s currently the largest drone program in South Jersey, mirroring the drone initiative of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Recently, CCPD received $430,000 from both the Norcross Foundation and NFI Industries to help purchase new drones and drone equipment. 

The respective leaders of these organization, George E. Norcross and Sidney Brown, were indicted in June of 2024 on state RICO charges for allegedly running a criminal enterprise that used coercion and extortion to gain control over Camden waterfront properties and millions in state tax credits. These charges were dismissed in February 2025. 

The elephant in the room is that these drones aren’t for the residents. Rather they are part of an apparatus of occupation: designed to police local residents to keep gentrified areas “safe” for non-residents. More specifically, white people who work in Camden. Residents deserve a safe city too and eyes in the sky may give residents peace of mind. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of their privacy.

Surveillance using newer technologies is the trend with most police departments, including CCPD, the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, and the county Prosecutor’s office. These include stingrays that collect cellphone data, (highly flawed) ShotSpotters that use microphones to detect gunshots, automatic license plate readers that track where people travel, surveillance lightbulbs that can be installed in streetlamps to monitor neighborhoods, and the list goes on. For example, Newark police use a program called Citizen Virtual Patrol, which allows at-home viewers to stream video from cameras placed around the city. 

What’s concerning, in addition to concerns of violating civil liberties, is that surveillance programs like these are used primarily to police people of color. The ACLU agrees:

“The increasing use of surveillance technologies by local police across America, especially against communities of color and other unjustly targeted groups, has been creating oppressive and stigmatizing environments in which every community member is treated like an enemy of the state or a prospective criminal. Many communities of color and of low income have been turned into open air prisons, where residents’ public behavior is monitored and scrutinized 24 hours a day.”

People of color, Black people particularly, have always come under the surveillance of the white power structure, dating back to enslavement. The most infamous of such programs was COINTELPRO, where Civil Rights leaders were surveilled by the FBI. Most recently, African Americans have come under the watchful eye of law enforcement during protests of the murders of Black people, including George Floyd, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown. 

But drone programs take surveillance to a new level. 

Drone capabilities—equipped with high-resolution cameras, thermal imaging, and even cell-signal interceptors—enable detailed monitoring without physical intrusion, allowing operators to collect vast amounts of data from afar. Already, drones are being operated by an estimated 1,400 law enforcement agencies (out of approximately 18,000 agencies in the U.S.). However, drone programs come with intense ethical issues around civil liberties violations. 

Drones invade privacy beyond the norms of cameras. Drones can travel, and as a result, they can surveil people in areas they believe are private, such as backyards and rooms with windows. Drones collect data, and that data can be sold for a profit or misused to racially profile people of color, particularly Black people. That plays right into the reality of algorithms that racially profile Black and brown people. In addition, drones lack adequate regulation, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lacks the rules to govern their use. Lastly, none of this surveillance is consented to due to the lack of awareness among those being surveilled. 

NYPD—notorious for racially profiling Black and Brown people, in addition to police brutality—after which CCPD patterns its drone program, is using drones with very little to no regulation. Drones used throughout New York state don’t just threaten civil liberties but also threaten lives. According to NYCLU:

“Many of the drones being deployed by police departments in our state have the capacity to be weaponized — and there is currently no law that prevents police departments from doing so. Some departments in other states have already shown an interest in arming technology with lethal weapons. The Dallas Police Department, for example, repurposed a bomb-disposal robot to kill a suspect, and the Oakland Police Department tried to get the City to let it arm robots with guns.”

As a result of these and other law enforcement surveillance tactics, the Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) campaign was launched in 2016 to pass laws that empower local residents, through their city council representatives, to decide whether and how surveillance technologies are used. CCOPS laws are necessary to protect the rights of residents, particularly those in Black and brown communities. CCOPS’s have seen notable success where they’ve been launched. Here is a sample bill that can be proposed within any city council. 

As mentioned previously, Camden is both colonized and occupied by state and political party actors. This reality would compromise the effectiveness of a CCOPS in Camden because the CCPD would continue answering to the same authority since much of city council (who would make up the CCOPS oversight) is under the influence of the party machine. 

That, in concert with all of the Constitutional concerns of surveillance programs, makes for a poisonous cocktail to maintain the surveillance of Camden City and its neo-colonial occupation. Sure, residents want peaceful streets. What they do not want is to be heavily surveilled and occupied. Nevertheless, they are.

Camden doesn’t become what we know it to be by accident. White flight contributed to the deindustrialization of cities. With that, a tax base was withdrawn, and although Black and brown people moved into cities, racism created income inequities whereby people of color couldn’t replace the tax base. The lack of a tax base in Camden compromised essential functions. 

This enabled State actors to point the finger at Camden as a mismanaged city unable to handle its own affairs, thereby requiring state intervention, and, in the name of safety, to argue that more surveillance is the solution for a city that is becoming increasingly gentrified: luxury apartments, corporate offices, open spaces for commercial development, and a hotel who would rather not cater to the Camden community.

Again, the elephant in the room is that surveillance in Camden is a matter of maintaining the peace of mind of white people who work in the city and are slowly moving back into the city. Residents will be happy with reduced crime, but it’ll be their friends and family who’ll be locked up. Residents should have a safe city. But a city safe for business is paramount for Camden to “rise.” 

I am guessing that in order for Camden to really rise, the drones have to rise first.