I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.
The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.
I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:
Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site
By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT
SEPTA station on Kensington Avenue, in the background, with homeless tents on the sidewalk. Photo from Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.
KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.
“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years.“You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.
He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.
“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.
Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.
At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.
“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.
“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.
Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.
It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.
“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”
But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.
Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.
Have they not noticed the problem until now?
The Inquirer was all #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?
The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again.
Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.
If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.
References
| ↑1 | From Wikipedia:
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid. |
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First I’d like to point out that sympathy has no place in either crime or punishment. Severity is the only action that matters. Make the punishment too dear to commit the act and these a-holes won’t commit the act.
I’d also like to note that David Adcox is a damn liar. If he’s lived in K & A for 45 years then his neighborhood has never been “fine”. 45 years ago would place him around 1980 and in 1980 the area was predominantly black and Hispanic and even then it was a pile of crime and drugs. When I was a kid in the sixties it was black and white and still not a good neighborhood.
There is now no area in Philly including the “good neighborhoods” worth living in and none where I would allow a female to travel after dark. And you can take that to the bank. And I know Philly inside out from the small alleys of center city to the little streams of Pennypack park.
Hoagie wrote:
You’d think that would be true, but apparently it isn’t. Murder in Pennsylvania, while it could draw a death sentence, we know that sentence won’t be carried out. However, it can land you in prison for the rest of your miserable life, sometimes life without the possibility of parole, yet these idiots keep trying to kill people.
What is really needed is to increase the probabilities of getting caught. Right now, way fewer than 50% of homicides in the city are solved. The size of the police force needs to be significantly increased and strong protection provided for witnesses. so they aren’t all scared fecesless to come forward.
Dana, you’re not getting my point. The death penalty for murder 1 is not dear enough so we have to make the method of death dear. Or we can let the evil prevail.
What, hanging? Burning at the stake?
Since hanging was the common method of execution when the Eighth Amendment, banning cruel or unusual punishments, was ratified, I believe we can assume that hanging would be constitutional. Hanging results in death in less than a minute, through a broken neck; we haven’t used hanging via the hoist in the US, so that would probably be ruled unconstitutional.
To me, the idea of life without parole is far, far worse. Never to be free again? That ought to terrify the gang-bangers as well, but they don’t seem particularly deterred. The problem is that they don’t think they’ll ever get caught, which ought to be stupid, but with Philly’s actual record of catching the bad guys, could be considered a reasonable calculation.
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