Gloucester City cracks down on blight to stem rise of crime

Under a gray morning sky, Mayor Bill James is at the wheel of his Hummer conducting an impromptu tour of Gloucester City, where he has lived his whole life.

Coffee cup in hand, he points out long-abandoned industrial sites, an old pier on the Delaware River he's having made over, and neighborhoods where you can still walk to the deli for a quart of milk.

But when he gets to Newton Creek, where he fished as a boy for striped bass and perch, he turns the SUV around.

"There's Camden," he said, pointing to the other side of a small bridge. "We worry about being so close. That's why we're doing what we're doing. We don't want to turn into another Camden."

James, a former deputy chief with the Gloucester City police, has spent three years leading a campaign to keep the small Camden County river town a working-class haven. His foes are the plagues of crime, drugs, abandoned homes, and unemployment that have intensified as the economy has continued to struggle.

"Gloucester City isn't Gloucester City anymore," said Belinda Carroll, who recently moved back to her childhood neighborhood after a long stay in Massachusetts. "When I was growing up, you knew everybody on the block. Now, you don't know anybody."

A few years ago, with the number of vacant homes growing and residents fearful that the town could succumb to the blight associated with bigger cities, Gloucester City housing officials and police imposed an all-encompassing crackdown they hoped would reverse the town's decline.

Taking a page from the "broken-window" school of crime prevention popularized by New York City in the 1990s, the city began to fine residents for leaving their trash cans in front of their homes and for allowing weeds to grow in sidewalk cracks. Tickets are issued for cyclists who ride at night without lights. Landlords who don't keep up their property or jam tenants into tiny apartments can have their privilege to rent revoked.

"I'd say we've doubled the number of violation letters we're sending out from five years ago," said Joe Stecklair, Gloucester City's chief housing inspector.

Set in the shadow of the Walt Whitman Bridge, Gloucester City has traditionally been an Irish American enclave. The town, known for its summer block parties and plethora of drinking establishments, has in recent years become more racially and ethnically diverse. Its minority population doubled between 2000 and 2010 and now accounts for 14 percent of the city's 11,500 residents, according to census data.