Swarms of police officers patrolled Kensington Avenue and Emerald Street from Orleans to Somerset streets Wednesday in what police leaders described as a broader effort to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood but that caused distress for some residents.
Early Wednesday afternoon, police tape surrounded the perimeter to close the area to foot and vehicle traffic. Officers allowed some residents and others working within the area through, sometimes requiring them to show identification to verify their addresses.
“[We’re] just trying to give it some attention, that’s all,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, who was on the scene Wednesday at Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street. “It’s been met with a lot of positive reaction from the community.”
The city towed 40 vehicles from the area, 35 of which were unregistered or deemed “hazardous,” according to Rosario. Two of the vehicles were stolen, and three were abandoned dirt bikes.
Rosario said police also issued a “cease operations order” for three businesses. The businesses were “corner grocery stores” operating without food licenses or working fire alarm systems. The city also sealed one building because it was unsafe to occupy.
The police activity caused fear and confusion among residents, according to Tess Watts, the communications manager for the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC). NKCDC owns an affordable housing unit on Ruth and Somerset streets and did not know about the initiative until Wednesday morning when staff members had trouble getting to work, Watts said.
NKCDC collected complaints from staff and residents, according to Watts. Some complaints concerned basic street access, like police allowing some people to enter the barricaded area on Somerset Street while denying others who live in the affordable housing unit access. Residents also complained that police required some people to show identification, while others were not required.
In one case, a resident with an intellectual disability asked if there was a murder on the block and was too scared to go outside, Watts said. They needed to run an errand but were too nervous to talk with the police. In another case, a resident’s driver was unable to drive up the block to drive her to a medical appointment. She doesn’t walk well enough to walk a block to meet an Uber, according to the complaint records.
Inside the perimeter, the streets were nearly empty. It was a stark contrast to recent weeks in Kensington’s Somerset section, where residential blocks have been flooded with people experiencing homelessness and using drugs since police cleared the encampments on a two-block stretch of Kensington Avenue on May 8.
Kelsey León, an organizer with the Community Action Relief Project (CARP) mutual aid group, was doing outreach on Kensington Avenue on Wednesday afternoon.
“The point of the May 8 sweep was to move everybody off of Kensington Avenue, and everyone went onto the side streets,” León said. “[On Wednesday], they cleared off a lot of the side streets, and everyone is back on the Avenue.”
Rosario said police blocked off streets “so that the officers who were doing the vehicle investigations could walk around in peace.”
“Unfortunately, when we did that, a lot of the unsheltered folks saw us coming down, shutting down traffic, and they got up and left," he said.
But León said that one of the people she engaged Wednesday told her that police approached them and said that “if we didn’t move out of the way, they were going to start shoving us.”
By Wednesday afternoon, Kensington Avenue’s sidewalks bordering the initiative were filled with people and bags carrying their belongings.
Kensington Voice witnessed one arrest.
Around 2 p.m., a group of police officers and supervisors rushed to the corner of Kensington Avenue and D Street, where a man stood on the sidewalk next to a shopping cart packed with clothing, a neck pillow, and other personal belongings.
The activity quickly escalated, and law enforcement officers, outreach workers, and others surrounded the man. Several people recorded the arrest with their phones as police handcuffed and put him in the back of a police van. Over a dozen police officers were on the scene for the arrest.
Rosario said it was a narcotics arrest and “unrelated to our Somerset corridor initiative.”
Stephanie Riddick, who works in the neighborhood and witnessed the arrest, said she has noticed an uptick in arrests since the police department assigned its latest graduating class of 75 rookie police officers to foot beats in the neighborhood.
“They say they’re cleaning,” Riddick said. “They’re literally coming up, lining them up against the walls, throwing them in the paddy wagons, and taking them to jail.”
The rookie police officers began reporting to the 24th District – one of three in the East Division – on June 18, immediately after graduating from the police academy.
Between June 18 and July 8, there was a 123% increase in arrests for drug possession in the 24th District, according to data from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. There has also been a 17% increase in arrests for drug sales (with and without a firearm) and a 63% increase in arrests for uncategorized offenses for the same period in 2023.
The Philadelphia Police Department is about to enter the third phase of Mayor Cherelle Parker's five-phase plan for Kensington, also known as the “securing the neighborhood” phase, according to Rosario. The first phase focused on “warning and opportunity,” and the second phase, which followed the May 8 encampment resolution, focused on enforcement, he said.
“Hopefully, I get to the point where I can hand it back to the community,” Rosario said. “A lot of them are almost prisoners in their own home because of drug use, because of violent crime … if we start making the area more safe for our neighbors and we start taking away the really bad actors from that equation, it will allow the community to come back out.”
The Mayor’s Office directed media requests for this story to the Managing Director’s Office. The Managing Director’s Office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
*Emily Rizzo contributed reporting to this story
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