Society Hill residents pool money to hire a private security guard for the summer

On a late Friday afternoon in July, a driver got out of a car on a typically serene block of Society Hill and opened fire at another vehicle. Bullets peppered a nearby UPS truck. Neighbors ducked for cover. But no one was hurt.

It was a rare shooting in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, a historic enclave wedged between Old City and South Street. But the incident has since galvanized a group of residents to form a town watch, pool their money, and do something to prevent crime in the area.

The newly formed Delancey Square Town Watch has secured more than $39,000 to hire a private security guard to patrol a swath of the neighborhood by vehicle this summer. The goal is not only to prevent violent crime but also deter homelessness, drug use, and petty theft.

“In Society Hill, there’s always been a sense that there’s been this kind of imaginary gate around it. There’s almost like this feel of a gated community, but it’s not,” said Joe Dain, 50, cofounder of the town watch.

Some are skeptical about the impact of a security guard to solve ubiquitous problems like stolen packages and people sleeping outdoors.

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Nonetheless, pandemic-era violence has led some residents to pursue extra patrols on public property. Business owners in the Italian Market and Manayunk hired a security firm during the 2020 social unrest, and some Temple University parents sought to do the same amid concerns about off-campus crime.

Delancey Square plans to contract with OPS Security to patrol from 7:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. on weekends during the summer. The hope is that the Philadelphia-based firm will provide more eyes on the street, amid a broader policing shortage that has strained patrols citywide.

“They just do not have the number of bodies that they need, so we’re faced with this perfect storm,” said Steve Smith, the 46-year-old cofounder of the town watch, whose family moved to the neighborhood from Fishtown two years ago.

Not everyone has been on board with the plan.

Some argued that Society Hill remains among the safest places in the city and that security might invite more problems than it solves. Dain assured neighbors the patrol would not turn into “some Wild West scenario.” The guard will be unarmed, and serve as a visual deterrent who will contact the Police Department in the event of an incident.

Delancey Square does not exist on a map.

But the town watch — a portmanteau of a Delancey Street and the nearby Headhouse Square — has grown from a few concerned neighbors on an email chain to dozens of active members. Neighbors were unified by incidents beyond the July shooting.

“There was an uptick in packages being stolen, there was an uptick in some really aggressive panhandling. We started to see car windows being smashed,” Dain said.

A person experiencing homelessness twice “attacked” parents walking with their children, he said. In a separate incident, a brick was thrown through an elderly resident’s window.

Town watch members now volunteer for walking patrols around the neighborhood. A town watch newsletter this week included names and pictures of “various dangerous people on our streets” alongside allegations of assaults and sex offenses.

Still, Society Hill remains a relatively sleepy hollow compared with other neighborhoods. So far this year, police data show two aggravated assaults in the town watch area, which runs from Front to Fifth Street, from Spruce to Lombard, and the area around Headhouse Square, but most of the reported crimes are property-related thefts.

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The security patrol GoFundMe drew more than 80 contributions, including $2,000 from the Society Hill Civic Association, the neighborhood’s most prominent advocacy group.

“Some of our members think that, generally in our neighborhood, we don’t need this sort of thing, but the city is in real trouble right now,” said group president Susan Burt Collins.

Recent violence on South Street — including last summer’s mass shooting in which 14 were shot, three fatally — brings concern about problems bleeding north during the summer. Delancey Square Town Watch said neighbors feel the city police don’t have the resources.

“People really said, you know, we’re not as safe as we thought we were,” Smith said.

The Police Department does not publicize staffing levels by neighborhood or police district, but a spokesperson said the force remains about 860 officers short of its budgeted 6,380. That’s an improvement from last summer, when about 1,300 positions sat unfilled due to a wave of departures and sluggish recruitment efforts, but the department remains beset by internal staffing problems as well.

The town watch’s GoFundMe has also attracted criticism from outside the neighborhood. Some said it felt like a gatekeeping mechanism

“I would be embarrassed if I lived in Society Hill and my neighbors thought this is what they should do to make their community better,” said Dena Driscoll, a public space advocate who lives in South Philadelphia. “Do people steal packages? Absolutely. Do people sleep in the park by my house? Yes. But none of those things make me feel unsafe.”

When he approaches people struggling with homelessness or drug use hanging out in the neighborhood, Dain said, he’s had some success with offering to connect them to outreach services.

When it comes to sleeping outside, he refers to a city ordinance that bans encampments to discourage people from congregating overnight. Dain and his husband moved back to his native Philadelphia last year after 27 years in Los Angeles, where he said he saw encampments and crime overrun neighborhoods.

He argued that people sleeping outside and thefts have a “spiral effect,” but some neighbors have pushed back on this approach.

“We keep trying to educate,” Dain said. “We have an opportunity to get out ahead of it before it gets too bad.”

How exactly a security guard will curtail issues like outdoor sleeping or drug use remains unclear. In the event the guard witnessed a crime, they would have to notify the Police Department to handle it.

“If patrolling a certain area, private security guards have no authority to enforce laws,” said Cpl. Jasmine Reilly, a department spokesperson.

The town watch said that, once the contract is signed before Memorial Day, the hired guard will meet with residents in the neighborhood for a meet-and-greet before a patrol begins.

R. Paul McCauley, a professor emeritus of criminology at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said supplementing the police force with private security is a “touchy issue” that requires ironclad agreements between parties.

”If something goes south, it will all come down to what’s in the contract,” McCauley said. “The devil is in the details.”