Camden police have responded with several measures, including putting more than a dozen additional officers on street duty, that Ottenberg said should help quell the surge in violence.
"Camden is a tough place to be for its residents," Camden Police Chief Ed Hargis said. "There are honest people living here raising their families, and they're being held prisoner right now."
Most murders in Camden, the poorest city in New Jersey, have been targeted killings in drug or money disputes, Ottenberg said.
All but two of the victims this year were gunned down. Authorities have yet to identify suspects in most of the killings.
Ottenberg said he believed that many of the deaths were the result of a power struggle within the city's drug trade.
Small, established drug operations are giving way to larger, more organized networks, he said. As the gang presence has increased, so have turf wars over neighborhoods or corners.
"What I think is happening is that some of these [longtime drug networks] are not being taken over as quickly as it might have been assumed," Ottenberg said. "They're pushing back, and we're seeing the friction."
Why gang activity is rising in Camden is unclear, said Jeremiah A. Daley, executive director of the Philadelphia-Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a branch of the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"Camden's been a troubled city for some time, and those are the kinds of situations where street gangs tend to evolve," Daley said. "You have a high concentration of poverty, and young people who are disaffected with the school system or have dropped out already. These people are ripe for the picking to become involved with gangs."
