Zombie-like fentanyl users are still stumbling through the needle-littered parks, but apparently this WOE-Bent suburb of Philadelphia gets better.
At least, that is the message from Mayor Cherelle Parker, who opened a 'wellness court' last month to get more addicts of the destroyed streets of Kensington.
Campaigners criticize her tribunal and say that it accelerates users in rehabilitation without tackling poverty and mental health problems that support their problems.
But Parker is a tough democrat who deserves the name 'Trumps' the progressives of her party and her during her election campaign in 2023.
And the mood has changed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, making cities in blue cities to become drugs, gangs and homelessness more difficult.
For long-suffering inhabitants of Northeast Philadelphia, change could not come fast enough.
Dianne Hoffmann, executive director of Mother of Mercy House, leads through her office window to East Allegheny Avenue and has a dozen addicts on the cool corner outside.
“We are here in the front line,” Hoffmann told DailyMail.com.
This week, Kensington Avenue in northeastern Philadelphia is still grabbed by a crisis of homelessness, drug addiction and psychological problems
But at least a year ago, Ding was worse, when Mayor Cerelle Parker was approaching on the basis of a promise to restore public safety (photo above taken in December 2023)
“Our new mayor came in last year and really wanted to help what is phenomenal, and she does the best she can.”
Her Catholic charity sets food on the hungry and homeless, but there is no rented out in question.
Some days an increase in the police seems to have made the streets safer, she adds.
But not today.
“It's an overwhelming problem. [Parker] Has a lot for her, “she said.
Hoffman's expired area of ​​open -air medicine markets became a portrait of America at its darkest.
The Trafficfare, Kensington Avenue, was called the 'Street of Lost Souls and Forgotten Dreams', was the scale of despair and human wreck.
Drug addicts and prostitutes were seen those needles slide into their necks while they were sheltered under raised train tracks.
Large groups took over the sidewalks and turned into homeless camps where people lived in their own dirt.
The homeless people fainted on the street next to empty bottles and plastic bags.
The sidewalks were more reminiscent of a scene from The Walking Dead than a bustling metro.
It was a 'soil' for the opioid crisis of the region, a bag of post-apocalyptic massacre nestled between more prosperous and pleasant areas in the area.
Mayor Cerelle Parker is called 'Trumpian' after she defies progressives with her policy of law and order
Although it is better than before, Kensington Avenue (above Tuesday) remains a pathetic portrait of America at its darkest.
Mayor Parker hired 75 more agents for Kensington after attack last January 2024. The police will be seen on the street this week
The chaos was fed by the rise of the Xylazine drug, or 'tranq' – a deadly calming means that was used to increase the effects of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine.
It became so bad that foreign governments used images of Kensington's miserable in advertising campaigns to scare their own young people from drugs.
Casey O'Donnell, the boss of Impact Services, a local non-profit, said it had become an 'international shame'.
Residents said they had been abandoned by the city.
Some confronted junkies in front of their door, even questions and begging to move so that children could play outside safely.
“There are great families who live behind the doors, but most of them are not rich enough to leave,” said Hoffmann.
“It's such a great cluster of everything that is wrong.”
Against this miserable background, Parker easily defeated her democratic opponents in a Primary of May 2023, by promising to hire more agents and to restore order.
A columnist from the Philadelphia researcher called her 'Trumesque' for her uncompromising approach.
After she took office last January, she hired 75 police officers for the streets of Kensington, where she destroyed homeless camps and increased arrests of drugs.
Then in November the voters again express their frustration about social problems, immigration and the economy by choosing Trump.
The Republican turned Pennsylvania and won winnings in Liberally Leaning Philadelphia.
The homeless of Kensington are often addicted to opioids and get everything they can get into their hands. Displayed: McPherson Square on Kensington Avenue this week
Parker launched a system 'Wellness Court' in January that operated from a police station
Critics say that Kensington's problems have just been moved to nearby Backstreets. Kensington Avenue on Tuesday
He even took five departments in the city, including the 45th, which borders Kensington.
Parker says she is willing to work with Trump and even offered to have a sit-down with her.
The day after he was sworn in a second term, Parker signed an executive order to open a weekly 'Neighborhood Wellness Court' in Kensington.
She called it an unprecedented step 'to restore the community and a quality of life' in a neglected area that is flooded by drug trafficking in the open air.
Residents of Philadelphia have to stop 'closing our eyes, closing really tightly, trying to desire what we see before our eyes,' she added.
Police people now sweep through Kensington every Wednesday.
They have new powers to collect the committing of brief offenses – including disorderly behavior, public intoxication and criminal violation – as well as serious violations, such as drug possession.
According to the scheme, they can then be traced by the Wellness Court to get problems with the order and to be diverted to a treatment program instead of spending days or weeks in prison.
It is too early to say whether the pilot initiative works.
According to reports, it has only led three arrests so far, two of which took the treatment option.
But opponents of the scheme even fought before the first cases were heard.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that people in Kensington look out for a different kind of justice than even a mile away.
Those who have been picked up by the police will become fast treatment programs, often without getting the chance to discuss their options properly with a lawyer.
ACLU Staff Attorney Solomon Furious Worlds says that the system encourages agents to take off their handcuffs.
“Instead of the strong standard to arrest, the strong norm to arrest,” he said Kensington Voice.
A year after Parker's leadership, and there are signs of progress.
A homeless addict on the left winds in the so -called 'Fentanyl Fold'
Those who are held in the new Wellness Court system will be visited to the hospital where their pine wounds are cleaned up
“Nobody there is happy. They are very sick, “says Dianne Hoffmann, executive director of Mother of Mercy House in Kensington
DailyMail.com saw more agents on the street this week, road crews that clean up grass -rich areas and metal barricades along sidewalks that were once homeless camps.
And yet, in door openings, parks and outside of buildings, drug users are still seen, often doubled – a pathetic attitude that is known as the 'Fentanylfold'.
A research study in December showed that shootings fell to a decade low in 2024, with only 58 incidents, compared to 210 in 2022.
But that was part of a wider decline of gun violence.
The quality of life crimes and nuisance that Kensington plagued did not seem to get better.
Although Kensington Avenue and other nearby hotspots had improved, the homelessness and drugs probably just continued to less visible areas in the neighborhood.
For Hoffmann there are no quick solutions for Kensington, where decades of neglect, failed police and political missteps brought the neighborhood to a breaking point.
Extra agents and wellness courts help around the edges, but 30-day rehabilitation programs have difficulty turning homeless addicts, she said.
It takes much longer to solve someone with mental health problems that has been cut off from their family and cannot hold a job.
“Nobody there is happy. They are very sick, and most of them are sad, “said Hoffmann.
“You can't just arrest them and say: 'Do it better. 'The Wikkelzorg they need is a long and a very expensive process. '
