Crime in Kensington has fallen significantly and there are more robust services for quality of life issues since Mayor Cherelle Parker began a public safety initiative in the neighborhood one year ago, city officials said Monday.
The officials touted the progress at a press conference hosted by Impact Services Corp., a nonprofit that offers low-income housing and other resources along a stretch of Indiana Avenue once plagued by an open-air drug market and routine violence.
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One of Parker's first actions as mayor last year was declaring the addiction and homeless crisis in Kensington a public safety emergency. The city since has invested more than $12 million in organizations focused on anti-violence measures and overdose prevention, along with establishing the new Kensington Neighborhood Wellness Court and Wellness Support Center to divert people accused of low-level offenses toward treatment programs, officials said.
"We started our work in Kensington with a core conviction — that is, the status quo is unacceptable," Adam Geer, the city's public safety director, said. "We reject the status quo. We can and must do better. We have come a long way this year, but we have (more) road to go. We acknowledge that."
Homicides in Kensington fell by 45% last year and there was a 44% decrease in shootings, Geer said. He called the reductions a welcome departure from the heavy case load he saw there when he worked in the homicide unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.
"What it means when we reduce homicides and shootings is the trauma in the community — the trauma to our children, all of that — every single time we have one saved life, one less homicide, it has a tremendous impact," Geer said.
More police are out working with Kensington residents and community organizations
Philadelphia police have boosted staffing levels in Kensington by 271% over the past year by increasing foot and bike patrols, officials said. And in addition to the larger police presence, the city's violence intervention strategy has included organizing community meetings, conducting home visits with Kensington residents who live on high-crime blocks, and cleaning up crime scenes that historically have been left for neighbors to address.
"We don't put that on our community anymore," Geer said. "So when there's crime and this vestige of the crime is there, we send our team to professionally clean those crime scenes."
The city also has set up programs to proactively meet with high-risk groups in the neighborhood, including young people under court supervision and others linked to past crimes. These programs aim to steer them away from retaliatory violence.
"The Kensington Community Revival plan has yielded success in crime reduction, narcotics enforcement, and more importantly, community stabilization," said Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, who was appointed last year to lead the department's efforts in Kensington.
Kensington had a 17% decline in overall violent crime last year and also made major strides in getting drugs off the streets, officials said.
More than $10 million in narcotics was seized in Kensington last year — including 845,208 doses of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid blamed for the vast majority of fatal overdoses in Philadelphia.
"We had city resources, state and federal partners all focusing on that area, working on long-term investigations to yield those results," Rosario said.
Of the 1,473 narcotics arrests made in Kensington last year, 1,208 were drug dealers and 265 were buyers, authorities said. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said reaching drug dealers often starts with building cases based on arrests and interactions with buyers.
"It's not just about the numbers. It's about quality," Bethel said. "I can go out and lock up 20,000 buyers tomorrow, but that's not going to have an impact on sales that are happening in these communities."
Overdose deaths in Philadelphia declined for the first time in five years in 2023, the most recent year with available data, according to the city's health department.
Before becoming police commissioner, Bethel was the chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia. He often worked in Kensington schools, where administrators complained of bullets crashing through their windows. Bethel said Parker made it clear that his top priority would be improving life in Kensington, and he called the progress last year only the start of a multi-stage process.
"We are in here for the long haul," Bethel said. "We are not going anywhere."
City aims for more transparency as concerns loom over actions in Kensington
City officials on Monday revealed a new dashboard that includes data on violent crime, drugs and community programs in Kensington. The site is part of the Philly Stat 360 initiative that was launched to increase transparency into government programs.
"We want every Philadelphian to have the information they need to understand how the Kensington Community Revival plan is working for them," Kristin Bray, director of Philly Stat 360, said during a walkthrough of the new website.
The dashboard will track the city's progress on a variety of neighborhood issues, from reducing violent crime to the creation of patient beds that will serve people in recovery. The dashboard also includes maps and information on how the city is responding to quality of life issues in Kensington, including everything from syringe collections to block clean-ups, graffiti removal and nuisance fires.
Some outreach groups have been critical of the Parker administration's initiatives in Kensington, fearing the mayor's law-and-order approach will stifle lifesaving services and prevent advocates from meeting vulnerable people where they are.
Over the past year, the city has cleared large homeless encampments on Kensington Avenue and under Interstate 95 in Port Richmond. On Monday, city officials called those efforts successes that helped connect people with treatment services and dealt with the longstanding concerns of families in the neighborhood. The city's critics have argued these enforcement tactics only displace problems to other areas, making services less accessible to those who need them.
Geer said the city does not have any imminent plans for more encampment resolutions, but will consider moving forward with them in areas that meet legal definitions for the city to intervene.
There also have been concerns about City Council's consideration of a law that would restrict outreach groups from providing mobile services in some parts of Kensington. Many of these organizations provide food, medical care and other resources to unhoused people in the community. Some residents have voiced frustrations over the way these services impact their blocks.
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada (D), whose Seventh District covers Kensington, introduced a bill banning some mobile services in Kensington last year. The bill was passed out of committee in December, but never made it to a full vote and has not been reintroduced this year.
The New Kensington Community Development Corp. published an action plan last year that stressed the importance of community participation in shaping the path toward a safer, cleaner and healthier neighborhood. The report called for a trauma-informed approach that recognizes the long-term impacts violence and drugs have on communities, as well as the need for regular collaboration with city leaders.
On Monday, Rosario said having police officers available to residents around the clock has played a vital part in reducing crime in Kensington.
"Our foot beats — walking, meeting, speaking with the business owners (and) speaking with the community residents — was one of our best assets in really trying to address the problems that plague this area," he said.