How Camden's cops use blankets to change kids' lives, one knot at a time

The dozens of blankets will go to sick kids at Cooper in need of comfort — but it's where they came from that stands out.

CAMDEN -- As Tim Gallagher watched a handful of Camden County police officers hand over 10 plastic bags bursting with bright-patterned fleece blankets to Cooper University Hospital staff Wednesday afternoon, he took it as a good sign.

Not just because of where the blankets are going -- to bring comfort to children trying to heal in the hospital's pediatric unit -- but where they're coming from.

Each of the dozens of blankets were assembled, knot by knot, by Camden youth in the midst of a different kind of recovery -- an effort to live a life outside of the city's prolific crime.

Gallagher, assistant director of the CASA Youth Development Program at Guadalupe Family Services in the city, said the process of making the blankets and the change of perspective it brings about in the kids and teens as part of the Camden County Police Department's Project Guardian show they're making progress.

"There are not many programs like this in other cities," he said. "It's huge... This is how you're going to see change in the city."

The Project Guardian initiative identifies youth in the city who show signs of involvement with criminal activity -- anything from breaking curfew to being a full-fledged gang member can draw an invite -- and brings them in for an intervention where they meet with counselors, social workers, police officers and city residents who have escaped a life of crime.

The blankets are constructed during group discussions, and serve as not just a way to ground and focus the teens as they talk, but provide an avenue to break down the walls they build up around themselves to survive in the city.

"That interpersonal connection is what's lacking when they're being violent," said Gallagher, who admitted he was worried crafting wasn't going to go over too well with the teens. "These are hard kids."

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But it did work, he said, and they took to it quick. He knew they were really getting through, however, when one teen who had been stoic and shut down during the first intervention program came to the second one, eager to get to work and open up.

He went one step further and pressed the facilitators about how the blankets were getting to the children, even asking if he could do the honors himself.

"Something changed in him," said Gallagher.

The teen couldn't be in Cooper's lobby Wednesday afternoon to see the donation in person, he had a test and couldn't miss class, but it likely won't be the last time the project sends over the products of its work.

Deputy Chief Joe Wysocki said the initiative is an integral part of the department's overall community policing efforts and another way for them to intervene with the city's youth in a proactive, encouraging interaction before they end up in the system.

"We can't arrest ourselves out of the problems in this city," said Wysocki. "We need to change the culture, and we do that one kid at a time."