City officials are giving each other tentative congratulations for progress made on taming Kensington’s open-air drug market over the past year.
They point to steep declines in shootings and homicides in the neighborhood’s core, the clearing of homeless encampments, a crackdown on public drug dealing, and early steps toward creating a system that quickly moves drug users off the streets and into treatment.
“You got them guys shook,” Councilmember Jim Harrity told police department leaders during a council hearing Tuesday. He was referring to 20 to 30 drug dealers who used to regularly sell on Hilton Street, where he lives. “You guys were able to actually clean my corner off. You guys have really made a difference.”
But this week’s data dump on shootings, arrests, drug seizures, treatment beds filled and other measures was also a reminder of how much more work would need to be done to fulfill Mayor Cherelle Parker’s goal of shutting down the decades-old drug market — and of potential limits on what law enforcement, social service agencies and the legal system can do.
As predicted, unhoused drug users have migrated to streets just outside the main police focus area and to other neighborhoods, and it’s unclear whether their total numbers have decreased. Additional personnel are not available to address the displacement, officials suggested. And a new Neighborhood Wellness Court designed to get speedy help to people in addiction has yet to make an impact.
“The rate of progress has just been too slow,” Alfred Klosterman of the Harrowgate Civic Association told councilmembers Tuesday. “We’ve been at this fight for over five years now, please realize that. We’re tired and patience is really hard to come by.”
Nabbing buyers, sellers and drug organizations
Two years ago, the police department had 39 officers in Kensington; last year the number rose to 115, due the deployment of 75 new officers there as well as the entire Narcotics Division. A tent encampment along Kensington Avenue near Allegheny Avenue was shut down in May, and another under I-95 in Port Richmond was cleared in November.
Last spring city officials estimated 675 people were living on Kensington’s streets. An updated estimate was not available this week.
As part of the Kensington Community Revival effort, police have continued to do periodic sweeps, arresting people with drug paraphernalia or warrants, while sanitation workers clean streets and others tow abandoned cars and ticket nuisance businesses.
“We’ve been able to expand a significant amount of police resources in the area, and that’s played a critical role in stabilizing the public safety aspect of this neighborhood,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, who oversees the effort, at a press conference in Kensington Monday.
In the department’s East Division, which includes Kensington, Fairhill, Fishtown and other neighborhoods, arrests of drug sellers increased 58% last year compared to 2023, and arrests of buyers nearly doubled, police said. There were nearly 2,500 arrests from March to December 2024, with $40.8 million worth of drugs seized — including 2.4 million doses of fentanyl — and 330 firearms, they said.
Reported violent crime in the neighborhood fell 17%, including a 45% drop in killings and a similar decrease in shooting incidents, per police data. Those are bigger decreases than the roughly 35% reductions citywide.
Police have largely focused on arresting drug buyers and the street-level sellers who residents complain about, but they’ve also been working more with the FBI, DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies to target the criminal groups that bring in drugs and supply sellers, said Deputy Commissioner James Kelly, who oversees special operations.
“We’ve probably touched upwards of maybe 15 to 20 organizations, and gone deeper into those organizations than we have in the past,” he said. “A lot of where it’s coming from and where it’s being stored is by organizations that are up in the Northeast [Philly]. So we’ve had tremendous seizures and takedowns of different groups in the Northeast that are supplying specific corners and specific gangs down here.”
The Monday press conference was held at Impact Services, a nonprofit on Indiana Avenue that provides housing, trauma-informed education, community planning and other services. One of the speakers was Guillermo Garcia, who lives across the street and has worked to rid the neighborhood of drug dealing and blight.
He said the recent improvements follow years of efforts to move people off the streets, fix up homes, clean up vacant lots and restore nearby Hope Park.
“Now this neighborhood looks, feels and even smells better,” he said. “I can see up and down Indiana Avenue and up my street, and I see children riding their bikes, families barbecuing and old timers playing dominoes.”
As users relocate, a struggle to respond
As some residents enjoy the first major suppression of drug traffic in years, more sellers have been active and tent encampments have been visible in other areas, residents and officials say.
Klosterman said police are concentrating their crackdown on areas south of Allegheny Avenue and neglecting Harrowgate. In addition, promised foot patrols never materialized.
“Yesterday’s nice weather doubled the number of users passing my house to score fentanyl,” Klosterman said Tuesday. “The growing numbers are really discouraging. It appears there’s not much the police can do with the users and dealers when we call. They come to a troubled corner, chase the dealers and users away — who come right back — and the police are gone.”
Councilmember Curtis Jones, who represents sections of northwest and west Philadelphia, connected a rise in homelessness in his district to the pressure being applied in the drug market area.
“There’s a dirty little secret, that what happens in Kensington does not stay in Kensington,” he said at Tuesday’s hearing. “I have tents that are popping up in my district on Parkside Avenue, places that I have to be mindful of, because it does migrate.”
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and Chief Public Safety Director Adam Geer said they were well aware of the displacement and police would respond to reports from residents in those areas.
But Bethel argued that it remains critical to concentrate on transforming Kensington back into more of a normal neighborhood and end its role as a major East Coast drug market that attracts dealers and buyers from far and wide.
“There’s always a tendency to expand. ‘You’re not covering enough area,’ ” he said. “Part of the strategy is being very strategic and really staying focused on those core areas where we have our highest level of violence. The more you expand, you start to dilute the capacity to control what you can control.”
“We’re open [to considering requests] as you talk to community members that maybe want us to expand a block. But we really, really try to stay focused,” he said. “We don’t win the city without winning Kensington.”
Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents part of Kensington, asked about ongoing problems with unhoused people and drug users on SEPTA, but Bethel again warned against expecting the police to expand their work beyond their core focus area.
“That’s a challenge, as they go mobile on us. Many of them will secrete to other areas, as we know, overnight, and then come back,” he said. “We’re trying to better coordinate our efforts, but it does cause some challenges for us as we talked about, when we start to spread our staffing even further out.”
He also noted that, despite the surge in police presence in Kensington, the department struggles to handle issues that arise late at night and early in the morning. “That is one of our challenging periods, even from a staffing perspective, particularly into the wee hours,” he said.
Gearing up the treatment ecosystem
As police and outreach workers have tried to move unhoused drug users off the streets, the city has been trying to create a system to immediately treat their withdrawal symptoms and other health issues, move them through the legal system, and get them into treatment — all in one day.
The goal is to make it more likely they will enter and stay in treatment programs and not return to the streets.
As part of that, the city opened the Kensington Wellness Support Center on Lehigh Avenue to serve as a triage center for arrestees and others. It provides medical care and legal assistance to clear bench warrants that could bar someone from entering a diversion program.
From there, some can go to the new, once-a-week Neighborhood Wellness Court, where a judge can give same-day approval for them to enter drug treatment as an alternative to jail, or to the Police Assisted Diversion program, or PAD, which also funnels people into treatment. The city additionally has an Accelerated Misdemeanor Program that lets some non-violent offenders do community service or enter treatment.
Treatment options include the city-run Philly Home at Girard, which opened last year to provide short-term shelter and addiction care, and the recently opened Riverview Wellness Village, a 336-bed, long-term recovery home in Northeast Philadelphia. Riverview has about 35 residents so far, officials said.
Geer, the chief public safety director, touted the Wellness Court as “somewhat of a game-changer” that will help address homeless and displacement of tent encampments by making it much easier to get people into treatment and put them on a path to leaving drug use permanently.
The Inquirer reported that so far only five people have accepted treatment, three of whom immediately dropped out. But Geer said the program will eventually expand to more days per week and play a major role in making the Kensington Community Revival succeed.
“This is not going to be a panacea. It is not going to change the face of Kensington by itself,” he said. But, “if we can get them that immediate withdrawal management, that immediate stabilization, on that same day, brought in through Neighborhood Wellness Court, I think we are going to see more success.”
“That’s where we’re going, and I think that’s going to be the model that other cities look to,” he said.
Lozada said she was concerned that diversion programs could allow some arrestees to avoid prosecution by agreeing to enter treatment and then skipping out. She asked what was being done to make them “accountable” for their offenses.
Geer and the police said court officials were aware of the issue and can ask officers to track people down and bring them in. But they said it would be counterproductive to start arresting people or issue court warrants when they don’t stick with the program.
“We have the net with PAD, we have another net with the Wellness Court, trying to get as many people into the services as possible,” deputy commissioner Francis Healy said. “Not everybody accepts — they take PAD and then they jump out of the car on the way to services.”
“We give them several shots at the apple, quite frankly, because it takes them multiple times before they actually accept services. They accept it one day and then they change their mind,” he said. “So the goal here is really to get more people into services, not necessarily to penalize them.”