kensington, philadelphia drugs

We need approaches that focus solely on reducing the suffering we see all around us. During the hunt for the … Despite widespread fears of a drought, trade in illicit drugs in the Kensington neighborhood has so far continued at a steady pace. In addition to any drug supply issues, many of the most marginalized drug users have seen their fragile incomes disappear. kensington, philadelphia drugs. For a reporter who has been on this beat for years, one odd impact of the pandemic has been the instant clarification of who’s buying and who’s selling: The former are usually wearing medical masks, the latter usually not. Kensington is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Its placement within the broader division of sections of Philadelphia is debated, but it is often considered as a dividing line between or belonging to both the Lower Northeast section of Philadelphia and North Philadelphia.It is generally considered part of the Philadelphia River Wards. Kensington and Allegheny—”K&A”—is already a, for people who are homeless and addicted. Click thumbs up. In a show of good faith, most of Philly’s methadone clinics have been giving the maximum allowable number of take-home doses to clients under state law (one week), even those who wouldn’t normally qualify. L ast May, as physicians, drug users and harm reduction workers grappled with a new and perplexing arrival in Philadelphia’s rapidly evolving open-air drug markets—bags of heroin and/or fentanyl contaminated with the powerful synthetic cannabinoid 5F-ADB, known as “K2”—I received an early morning call from a regular source in Kensington’s drug-user community. The Mafia initially helped bring in powder from Southeast Asia, said Bourgois. Maybe he was a regular customer.”. If there is a lesson in the COVID-19 crisis for drug warriors, it’s this: Even adding a deadly pandemic to the existing threats of overdose and law enforcement will not end drug use. In the year that followed, I had a gun pointed at my head by a nervous teen robber, I was arrested twice, and I fought off another drug user who on two separate occasions tried to steal my drugs as I walked to the train. and cocaine have experienced a recent decline in quality. His daughter, Stephanie, 25, died two years ago of a heroin and fentanyl overdose in North Philadelphia. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY) In the latest announcement, officials said they confiscated 23,000 doses of fentanyl, 26,000 doses of cocaine and 174 bottles of the horse tranquilizer, which Shapiro said had been pilfered from veterinarians and sold as a recreational drug. A major cleanup of a drug encampment near Gurney Street has only moved addicts to streets in the rest of the neighborhood, complained activist Charito Morales, a nurse who cleans the wounds of heroin addicts, and who's helped Puerto Rican addicts sent here from the island by officials looking to rid themselves of their drug problem. And by the late 1990s, he added, "super-potent prescription opioids" began flowing through society. By the 1950s and '60s, African Americans migrated from the South into the area, with Puerto Ricans from the island's countryside also moving into now-cheap housing. There is only one time I can remember seeing it this bad—and unlike COVID-19, it was a political creation. Police on the streets in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. Tensions Rise in Kensington, Philadelphia ... Why I Think We Need to Move Beyond “Harm Reduction”, Biden Quietly Announces Harm Reduction Among His Drug Priorities, How Immediate Naloxone Access Is Going 24/7 in Indiana, As Sex Workers, We Know the “Equality Model” Is a Dangerous Mistake, Stimulant Activists to UN: Fund Agonist Research to End AIDS by 2030, Booty-Bumping Meth: Harm Reduction for an Under-Discussed Practice, How Prisons Are Blocking Incarcerated People’s Stimulus Checks, Telehealth Services Are Expanding OUD Medication Access—For Some. “The Authority is in dire financial status, losing employees every day. “The Authority is in dire financial status, losing employees every day. “But not Kensington.”, “Look around you,” he said, gesturing to the crowded street corners. Because of the high number of drugs in Kensington, the neighborhood has a drug crime rate of 3.57, the third-highest rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. “[Kensington residents] are people who are proud to live here, people who have lived here for generations, but it’s also been a community that past administrations have neglected,” Benitez continued, noting that the area includes two of the poorest zip codes in Philadelphia. … On Philadelphia's Kensington Avenue, the desperation is palpable. That same week the attempted robbery of a man selling pills. For residents, the hugely profitable narcotics trade offered employment in a place nearly devoid of it. Many acts of violence seem random. I oblige whenever I can; when I can’t, I feel hollow. Struggling with the growing drug trade, Kensington has became one of the major hubs of drug-related activities of not only Philadelphia, but also the U.S. Watch the video linked below: Bourgois concurred, saying the drug has "led to an overdose rate we never have seen in history.". A note on the place names: To quote a Philadelphia neighborhood guide manual from 1975, Kensington is a "state of mind." PHILADELPHIA – A 44-count Second Superseding Indictment, unsealed today, charges nine people with conspiring to distribute phencyclidine (“PCP”) and cocaine base (“crack”) in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, announced United States Attorney William M. McSwain. But methamphetamine remains abundantly available at pre-pandemic purity levels, my sources say. Lately, the drug scene has morphed into something more terrifying than even Bourgois anticipated. A disagreement over money or drugs may be the spark in some cases, but the general tension that comes from diminished prospects and mounting hopelessness surely contributes. I’ve reported from these streets for years, through every kind of crisis. He awoke, surrounded by paramedics. “I guess they didn’t like that he was passing them and buying from somewhere else.”. But the decline in potency hasn’t come without consequences. Samantha, a homeless heroin addict, pauses under a bridge where she lives with other addicts in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, on July 31, 2017. About two-thirds were Philadelphia natives. Somerset, in particular, has been a de facto safe zone for transient drug users, and a conduit to numerous drug corners within a two-block radius of the station. Jul 13, 2019 - Explore Iamjamesnewsuan's board "Kensington philadelphia" on Pinterest. Kensington Blues: Philadelphia’s Opioid Crisis in a Decade of Photographs . On the corner of Somerset St. and Kensington Ave. in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, a few miles north of center city, activity swirls on the bird dropping covered street. Addiction battle unabated in Kensington during virus lockdown. On a single day just over a week ago, I was offered disposable razors of every brand imaginable, USB chargers and bags of candy—all at cut-rate prices. It was in 1998, when I was a young heroin user myself, and then-Mayor John Street launched Operation Sunrise. But one clinic doctor, who asked that he not be identified due to his employer’s restrictions on talking to the media, told. DISPATCHES is Christopher Moraff’s weekly column for Filter, featuring analysis and beat reporting. After Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, announced in mid-March that her officers would no longer bring in nonviolent offenders for booking, but rather issue a summons to appear in court, the subways and trains became moving bazaars for stolen goods. PHILADELPHIA — Three alleged drug trafficking rings with footprints stretching as far as Virginia were busted in Philadelphia leading to the arrest of dozens of people and seizure of fentanyl, nearly half a million dollars in cash and firearms, authorities say. “Drug-Free Communities” Got $90 million from Trump. when they are free to operate organically. In an unending irony, the empty factories created "a complete ideal place to be an open-air drug market," Bourgois said. In recent times, overdose incidents on SEPTA’s train, trolley or bus lines have occurred daily. PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Authorities showed off Tuesday the results of a massive drug bust in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. I’ve seen people punched and knocked to the ground for no apparent reason along the main strip of Kensington Avenue, and witnessed cellphones ripped from owners’ hands just as the subway door opens. “If you got garbage on the street, no one is gonna buy your stamp; we have to make our money stretch as much as possible,” this source told me. Crack hit the scene in the late 1980s, and murderous fights over controlling corners to sell it accelerated, said Daley. [Update, April 15: A few hours after this article was published, a man called Mike, who has been a source or fixer of mine in Kensington since 2017, was attacked at Philadelphia’s City Hall station—apparently for money, although he had none. Why Didn’t Rochester’s New Mental Health Crisis Team Prevent Latest Police Brutality? His work has appeared in publications including the Daily Beast, the Washington Post and Al Jazeera America. Under the pressure of uncertainty, fear or desperation, the cracks in Kensington’s already-troubled community are showing. Kensington is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Its placement within the broader division of sections of Philadelphia is debated, but it is often considered as a dividing line between or belonging to both the Lower Northeast section of Philadelphia and North Philadelphia.It is generally considered part of the Philadelphia River Wards. “I guess they didn’t like that he was passing them and buying from somewhere else. In one way, it’s a good thing: Fatal overdoses in the city have declined from an average in the region of three or four per day to something more like three or four per week, according to daily tallies released by police, EMTs and Prevention Point Philadelphia, a needle exchange program. Clientele for casual work, like window washing, have dried up. separate occasions tried to steal my drugs as I walked to the train. Kensington-area firms started to lose their markets, and industry began to disintegrate. But the decline in potency hasn’t come without consequences. The price was that young people got arrested, with a felony conviction hung around their necks, making legitimate employment difficult if not impossible. Charges Filed Against Nine Members of Kensington Area “TRUHITTAZ” Drug Trafficking Group. Scott Stewart, a cartels expert with the geopolitical intelligence publisher Stratfor, told Filter that the flow of illicit drugs across the border has not visibly slowed. A recent story published in The New York Times Magazine goes inside Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood, which has one of the highest rates of heroin overdose in the nation. If you're looking for help with addiction, contact RehabInfo.com at 1-800-492-7848 Some of my regular sources have recently phoned me in tears, begging for any small financial help I can offer. With so many streets in the wider city empty, panhandling has become fruitless. (My guess would be xylazine, a large-animal tranquilizer that is present in most of Kensington’s dope supply.). “The potential for a ‘super spreader’ coronavirus event at K&A would be deadly,” Moffett said, “especially to folks who can’t shelter in place, as they have nowhere safe to shelter.”, “The downsizing decisions were really tough,” Thomas Nestel, chief of the SEPTA Transit Police, told, . Cleaning up drug encampments in Kensington requires enforcing the law, just like we do in wealthier neighborhoods: No open drug use, no prostitution, and no drug dealing on the street. He speculated that local drug supply issues may be produced by the, of a shortage, rather than a shortage in absolute terms. This past week, filmmaker Seth Dalton and I were forced to take an indefinite hiatus from filming a documentary we’ve been making about addiction, failed drug policy and the fight for safe consumption spaces in Philadelphia. "The first heroin addicts, like me, shot up in an alley behind the Top Cat Bar in 1969 at 11th and Wallace" Streets, said John Machen, 64, who now works in the drug-recovery industry. A couple of days after we spoke, he injected himself in a public bathroom in Kensington, and subsequently collapsed in the parking lot outside. Kensington and Allegheny—”K&A”—is already a primary gathering spot for people who are homeless and addicted. The vast majority were caused by opioids. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed over the last two decades in the United States and Philadelphia is no exception. Cohen says nothing compares to the time she spent homeless on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia. Its so-called golden years stretched from the mid-1800s through the late 1950s, historians say. Drug addicts … Located west of Kensington and along Glenwood Avenue, this part of town is known for its expanse of row houses, where only 20% of homes are owner occupied. Life along Kensington AvenueThe Kensington section of Philadelphia was formerly the manufacturing hub of a city built on industry. PHILADELPHIA - Anthony walks the streets of Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood looking for two competing things: His next heroin fix – and help in what he says is his struggle to end addiction. "There's trash everywhere, there's people everywhere, like, I … nearby encampments. But aggressive drug policy, by targeting and removing gang leadership, erodes the structures that support such codes of conduct. There were 1217 overdose deaths in Philadelphia last year. On Philadelphia's Kensington Avenue, the desperation is palpable. Safe injection sites, presented as a panacea by some, are meant to prevent overdoses by allowing addicts to shoot illegal drugs under the watchful eye of medical personnel. Drugs in Kensington: An Inside Peak at a Dangerous Philly Neighborhood Drugs in Kensington have been a big problem, but officials are now targeting this Philadelphia neighborhood in order … "I'm not aware of any other place in the city where drugs are as readily available, and have become as much a part of the economy, as in Kensington," Daley said. My name is and I'm tuning out have a good day guys. Drawn to the area to get high, they somehow forget to go home, and wind up living in the area, homeless. Inter-neighborhood boundaries are disputed among residents. After Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, announced in mid-March that her officers would. On March 30, Nicholas Troxell, a heroin user well known by many in the Kensington community, was shot and killed on an El train passing through North Philly. Nothing will. He speculated that local drug supply issues may be produced by the fear of a shortage, rather than a shortage in absolute terms. He failed, but the man who broke my jaw with one punch later that year didn’t. “The potential for a ‘super spreader’ coronavirus event at K&A would be deadly,” Moffett said, “especially to folks who can’t shelter in place, as they have nowhere safe to shelter.”, “The downsizing decisions were really tough,” Thomas Nestel, chief of the SEPTA Transit Police, told Filter. Partner city-owned health clinics with major teaching hospitals to provide free and intensive drug treatment. The buildings became "un-policeable" spots where drugs could be stored, sold, and abused, he said. Along with having a high rate of drug overdose … Sex work has been curtailed. His daughter, Stephanie, 25, died two years ago of a heroin and fentanyl overdose in North Philadelphia. Scott Stewart, a cartels expert with the geopolitical intelligence publisher Stratfor, told. It has been distressing to witness the additional strife within the community I cover, the most vulnerable of Philadelphia’s populations of people who use drugs. The Fairhill neighborhood of Philadelphia is abundantly bad for crime, poverty and drugs. and I were forced to take an indefinite hiatus from filming a documentary we’ve been making about addiction, failed drug policy and the fight for safe consumption spaces in Philadelphia.

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