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[SPECIAL JANUARY PROMOTION: Spend $50+ In The FPM Store And Receive A Free Copy Of “Final Battle” By David Horowitz.]
Philadelphia’s new mayor, Democrat Cherelle Parker, has declared a public emergency that targets the streets of Kensington for a massive clean-up. The clean-up will include eradicating the infamous drug culture there, which to most observers is beyond redemption.
“The streets of Kensington four days into the New Year remain a place of open drug abuse, where tents shield against the cold and the addicted writhe in agony,” Fox News reported.
Crime is also on Mayor Parker’s radar.
“In our first 100 days, my administration will announce specific plans to increase the number of Philadelphia police officers on our streets—with a focus on community policing citywide,” Parker said. “Our Police Commissioner will deliver plans for those crises and for crimes—like car theft, shoplifting, and illegal ATV use—that diminish the quality of life in our city.”
What you see in Kensington—homeless encampments on sidewalks; addicts shooting up on stoops in front of closed businesses; people bent over or passed out in drug intoxicated states—is the result of years of failed Democrat policies.
Since my neighborhood is near Kensington, there’s an overflow of drug (homeless) traffic not far from my house. There are also mini-tent encampments next to high end 500k houses (most populated by former New Yorkers who wanted to escape the migrant-infested Big Apple.)
The influx of drug addicted homeless into heretofore “good areas” has increased security in many businesses, making shopping in many parts of the city a bit like walking through an airport filled with TSA agents.
This Democrat spin on security—let’s call it the Orwellian Democrat Surveillance System (ODSS)– is in overkill drive, because when it comes to the Kensington drug crisis, the city is playing a frantic game of catch up at the 11th hour.
The frantic catch up involves hyperactive policing, meaning that an average Wawa or Rite Aid might employ a security guard in addition to a police officer.
The police officer is there because the security officer on duty is not permitted to apprehend shoplifters or even put their hands on anyone who breaks the law.
The guards watch as homeless addicts shoplift, in some cases picking and choosing their items as they walk through the store like shoppers. The guards are powerless to do anything.
The armed police officer can do something but only if he or she knows that the items stolen from a store exceed $499.
As The Washington Examiner reported:
“One of DA Krasner’s horrific policy changes was instructing prosecutors to seek less jail time for shoplifting. Additionally, unless the items stolen are over $500, any retail theft is to be considered only a summary offense. Such foolish policies empower criminals to act, knowing little, if any, action will be taken. And knowing that they can steal $499 worth of merchandise without consequence does little to prevent retail theft.”
As a result, businesses in the city treat paying customers like potential thieves.
It’s much like shopping in a barbed wire camp.
Complicating matters is the addition of ODSS motion-detecting robots with crane like tops fixed with flashing lights.
These “machines” blast verbal warnings to anyone walking in front of them, announcing that they are trespassing and that they have bee recorded.
Day and night, these ODSS machines, which are usually stationed outside a store, scream at shoppers —the systems are always faulty and equate normal foot traffic with trespassing—while another version of ODSS, such as the one in front of my local Wawa, announces at 10 minute intervals that the store is under surveillance “for your security.”
This kind of audio pollution is a blotch on city living—the ODSS voice in front of Wawa is loud and can be heard several blocks away—yet it doesn’t seem to bother most residents because it is accepted as another part of Democrat city reality.
Neutral observers, Republicans and Democrat partisans are all curious to see how far Mayor Parker will go in her rush to play this game of catch up after so many years of Democrat mismanagement.
The most extreme form of this, of course, could be the military equivalent of the covid lockdown—curfews, more ODSS machines with blinking lights; in short, the Philadelphia equivalent of a South American socialist regime gone beserk.
Various measures have been tried before.
In 2020, Philadelphia officials estimated the number of homeless people in the city at 300 while Philadelphia Police put that number at 650.
According to Axios Philadelphia, Homelessness in Philadelphia jumped up 5.2% in 2023 compared to 2022, with a total of 4,725 people experiencing homelessness.
Experts attribute the jump to the city’s lack of affordable housing as well as the termination of pandemic-era assistance programs.
These rapidly changing statistics also has to do with new homeless moving into the city because it’s the place to go for affordable drugs.
‘Affordable drug’ areas include the neighborhoods near the Frankford-Market El stations from Somerset to Allegheny, with Allegheny being the nerve center for drug activity.
In 2021, a large homeless encampment at Kensington’s Allegheny Avenue was cleared out by the city. Residents of the growing encampment were given a month’s notice that the city was coming in to “clean up” in 30 days.
The city’s quick action in the Allegheny case suggests that it wanted to avoid a repeat of the tent encampment standoff that occurred on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2020, when left wing activists took control of the camp.
These left wing groups later issued ultimatums to the city and the police that they would not leave until certain demands were met.
The Parkway encampment, known as the James Dean Talib Camp, drew the ire of neighbors in the Logan Square neighborhood, many of whom complained that they felt threatened by a reported stabbing there and by aggressive panhandling.
The camp was eventually disbanded in October 2020 after a lot of ‘velvet glove’ politicking and pandering.
Disbanding an encampment without a viable housing alternative just means that you’re chasing people to another area of the city. The most glaring example of this was the city’s 2017 razing of the mammoth homeless camp known as El Campamento, which was hidden from public view behind the Conrail railroad tracks in Kensington.
The cleanup at El Campamento, however, was a disaster, with residents being dispersed throughout the city, especially to various parts of Kensington and Port Richmond where they set up multiple but smaller tent cities under bridges and overpasses.
Philadelphia’s history of ‘cleaning up’ homeless encampments began in 1993, under former Mayor Ed Rendell, when 300 people were evicted from the Market Street subway concourse.
In 1995, more than 100 homeless were evicted from Logan Square near the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, and in 1997 a large camp was disbanded near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
In 2012, then Mayor Michael Nutter instituted a ban on handing out free food to the homeless, the idea being that catering to those who refused shelter but wanted to live on the streets where they would have easy access to drugs, was a foolish kind of pandering.
The food ban was rescinded under Mayor Kenney.
During the 2021 Allegheny encampment cleanup, evictees were given the option by outreach workers and police to agree to services (including rehab) rather than moving out but most rejected the offer.
Philadelphia reported that only 20 people from the Allegheny camp agreed to connect with social services. The rest wanted to do drugs and live on the street. (When you connect with social services, your drug intake is monitored.)
The city’s current “El Campamento” camp is Mc Pherson Square, not far from Kensington and Allegheny, and home to over 100 homeless people on most nights. This once beautiful city park, formerly a Lenape Indian hunting ground, is the site of a library donated by Andrew Carnegie in 1917.
Today, the area is known as Needle Park because the only visitors you’re likely to find there are addicts buying and selling or shooting up on benches.
All of which reminds me of the 2021 $42 million grant from the Biden administration to the city in order to fund services for the homeless.
City officials at that time stated that those funds would be used to create single room occupancy units or shared housing for 3 adults.
If $42 million won’t help a besieged city, and if multiple tent encampment removals have left little improvement, exactly how will Mayor Parker do the job she wants to do?
There used to be laws against vagrancy and loitering – as well as LITTERING – oh, and let’s throw in THEFT!! The DEMOcrats (HYPOCRITES) have an insane way of supporting businesses by making shopping so easy for those who DON’T PAY – NO WAITING IN LINE AT THE CHECKOUTS!
Hello, my name is John, and I’ll be your shoplifter for today!
Interesting story, I have watched a couple of hours of Kensington videos, on YouTube. I read somewhere that our overlords, seeing how most of them hate God and stuff, have adopted Karma as their philosophy. I don’t know or care to know much about Karma, but the article I read said that Karma allows our leaders to ignore suffering, because of predeterminism or something. Karma sounds almost as bad as Calvinism.
karma is the stoner’s cop-out. Do whatever feels good and if things don’t “go well with you” it no fault of yours, its that nasty ol Karma. Well, my dogma ate your karma. Deal……
There is a pair of immutable laws that help govern the universe: sowing and reaping, and it carries two parts. Part one, the Law of Kind: you always get the same thing you sow.. sow wheat you will always get wheat. Sow weeds, you will always get weeds. The second part is the Law of Increase: whatever you sow, you will always get more of it.
Clvinism has its flaws, but it supports these basic principles. so its far better than karma.
…more like your dogma was run over by their karma.
The Democrats should do the labor themselves their wrecking the City where America was Founded and wrecking America to
The Left only ruins. The only thing it builds is misery.
I was just thinking something similar a few minutes ago.
If the US continues to create generations of children who never learn to work, or worse, are taught to despise physical labor and the very nation they live in, the system will cave-in on itself.”
It truly is a type of computer sabotage or hacking, or “re-programming… but with children.
Millions are always spent to cure these problems, but not only does nothing change, there is never an accounting as to where the money was spent, or should I say, was actually spent.
The only ones “helped’ are the administrators and the vendors they are in bed with. “Temporary” government hires become permanent employees after the program runs out of money or is terminated. The new employees get put in “make work” jobs, the vendors overcharge for inferior services and the problem just changes locations. This is how Democrats solve problems. They grow the govt then go searching for more problems to solve.
The drug problem in this country (at least) is going to come down to something along the line of ”drug prisons”.
These people are ruining life for so many others, they have to go. We and they can no longer exist in the same communities
work camps. Far away from cities. If anyone refuss to work, neither shall they eat. Get up when the bell rings iin the morning, do menial tasks like sweeping the dirt courtyards, make a few useful items. help with the cooking, laundry, etc. and NOT ONE NANOGRAMME OF ANY DRUGS ALLOWED. Divide into sections, each group having been there a month linger than the previous one. As individuals come out of their lazy drug induced stupour, begin work training in a real job or skill. Make them employable.
For added amusement and penance, form up crews that will then, after being drug free for two or more months, load them up ito busses and bring them into areas like this Kensington where THEY will serve as the clean up crew to restore trashed former homeless camps.
No one has the guts to go forward with a plan like that. Civil rights activists would have them in court in a heartbeat. They shut down the mental institutions that now feed this problem. No way would they allow this sort of rehab to exist regardless of how effective it may be.
If Frank Rizzo were still living, he would have a solution of which the DA and the criminal population would not be happy. Philly would be cleaned up whithin six months. The city needs another Frank Rizzo.
When I see pictures like this, I immediately think – democrat.
Philadelphia, my former home town, is corrupt. It has been going down the drain for decades. My mother in the early 70’s would go to the local bus stop in SW Philly hold her hat pin. If anyone would try to grab her purse, she was determined to stab him with the hat pin. Fortunately, there was no such attempt. Sadly, she has passed away of natural causes. Larry Krasner has some kind of ideological obsession. I knew guys like him when I was in college — the guys who were pro-Mao Tse-Tung and were the first cadre of students to wear blue jeans to class to suggest identity with the working class. Now, 90% wear blue jeans. Now everyone dresses down in order not to appear “elitist.” All the cities are sliding into oblivion. In 50 years America will be a wasteland.