Mayor Parker’s administration boosts Kensington outreach, police presence ahead of encampment clearing

Philadelphia Police and outreach workers are increasing their presence in the city’s Kensington neighborhood this week as Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration plans a larger-scale crackdown on the open-air drug market there.

Administration officials said Tuesday that workers from a variety of city agencies will meet with people who are homeless or living in addiction along Kensington Avenue, homing in on a two-block stretch near the intersection at Allegheny Avenue — the area colloquially known as “K&A.”

Spokesperson Joe Grace said the city is increasing outreach during the evening hours to inform people of housing and treatment options. He said they are also working to create a list of people who are living on the street ahead of a planned clearing of the area, where some people are living in tents, on May 8.

Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said about 75 people are living in the area and that the clearing is part of a “normal process of removing encampments.” The city has for years conducted “encampment resolutions,” during which people are warned to vacate an area a month before a scheduled clearing.

The city will soon begin a longer-term, multi-phased effort to more strictly enforce laws in the neighborhood, but Bethel declined to specify the timeline.

“It’s not a short-term thing,” he said. “We want to do it in a thoughtful and respectful way. We’re not going to solve a six- or seven-year problem in a day. It’s a long-term effort and we expect to be down there for quite some time ... to restore order to that area.”

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The planned efforts this week come amid a newly intense focus on the neighborhood from City Hall and days before Parker — who has vowed to end the open-air drug market that has persisted in Kensington for years — is expected to detail her administration’s law enforcement and social services strategy. The mayor signed an executive order directing department heads to create a detailed public safety plan within 100 days of her inauguration, a deadline that falls on Thursday.

Some residents and people living on the streets said anticipation is high ahead of the encampment clearing. And several nonprofits in the neighborhood say they have already made adjustments to how they operate based on the message from City Hall.

The mayor, who ran for office on a tough-on-crime platform, has drawn pushback from some for saying her proposed budget would eliminate city funding for syringe exchange services, which are illegal statewide but have long been permitted in Philadelphia.

And members of City Council have been sharply critical of the network of “harm reduction” services in the neighborhood, including Prevention Point, a large social services provider that operates the city’s oldest syringe exchange and has been credited with helping prevent the spread of infectious disease.

Both Parker and Council members have promised that residents would be kept apprised of changes in the neighborhood, and the mayor has said repeatedly that her approach will aim to connect people in addiction with long-term treatment and housing.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, Kensington Avenue looked busier than it had in weeks.

As the weather broke 75 degrees, hundreds of people lined the corridor. Several city outreach workers were there, but appeared scarce among the throngs who flooded the open-air hot spot where most of Kensington’s drug activity is now concentrated.

Two SEPTA outreach workers were also stationed off the Allegheny Avenue SEPTA stop, and police cruisers blitzed up and down the avenue.

On the 3000 block of Kensington Avenue, part of a two-block stretch where the city distributed notices warning of plans to clear encampments, the warnings have set some on edge.

Patrice Rogers, who runs a nonprofit called Stop the Risk, stood behind an empty folding table last Friday.

Until last week, she had served two meals a day, three days a week, from that table, feeding about 200 people, she said. She also ran a makeshift shelter in the lot behind it, out of two prefabricated sheds-turned-tiny homes and an RV that together could house about eight.

Now, Rogers said, that is shut down. She was there only to offer greetings to her regulars, and to help them sign in for treatment with the nonprofit Courage Medicine.

“They were cracking down on organizations that didn’t have permits,” Rogers said. “People need food. People need clothes. People need a lot of things. But I’m just a small nonprofit, and I can’t afford to take those penalties that will be enforced.”

Rogers said she lives in Kensington and cares for the neighborhood, cleaning up her block, shooing away anyone who tries to use or sell drugs there, and looking out for the nearby businesses.

But she pointed to a vacant lot just off of Kensington Avenue where a new encampment stood.

“They go to places like this. What they’re doing is, they’re moving them off the front and putting them in the back streets,” she said.

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Tom Frey, a volunteer with The Everywhere Project (which serves hundreds of meals, and offers clothing, wound care, and safer drug-use supplies from a parking lot in Kensington), said in recent weeks Philadelphia Parking Authority staffers have showed up questioning his permit for the site.

They repeatedly urged him to move to the sidewalk, he said. He repeatedly refused — leaving the unsettled conflict to roll over from one week to the next.

PPA spokesperson Martin O’Rourke said the group did not have a permit to use the lot. “They need to apply for a permit,” he said, but declined to say what consequences might follow for failing to obtain one.

Nearby, harm reduction group Prevention Point has told clients that, in an effort to move toward one-for-one syringe exchange, it will stop offering 10-packs of sterile syringes to people who use drugs but do not have used syringes to trade in — except in emergency situations.

“We are aware that our service has an impact to the community,“ said Silvana Mazzella, interim lead executive officer of Prevention Point. “It has very many positive impacts like preventing infection, preventing death. It’s a bridge to treatment.”

Prevention Point workers said they’ve received complaints from local officials and some neighborhood residents who say Prevention Point should do more to cut down on the number of syringes in circulation.

“Over the last 10-plus years, we have been asked at various points to operate more like an exchange and we have also looked at data and tried to be flexible in response to HIV and overdose [numbers],” Mazzella said. But, she added, “looking at the papers, the press, and what’s happening in the community, there are multiple pressures to be responsive” to neighbors.

Inquirer staff writer Aubrey Whelan contributed to this article.