David Kennedy is perhaps the nation’s top academic expert on open-air illegal drug markets and how to shut them down. A professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, he’s visited markets around the world and developed strategies that have been used to combat drug dealing and the gun violence that comes with it.
Yet in the more than 30 years that he’s been advising local governments and police departments, he’s never seen anything quite like Philadelphia’s open-air drug market.
“The Kensington market is the most toxic thing I have seen in my career,” Kennedy told Billy Penn. “The sheer scale of the market, the lethal consequences of relapse and overdose, and the scale of the street population with substance abuse disorder are all new phenomena.”
Kennedy’s drug market intervention strategy uses “focused deterrence,” in which violent drug dealers are arrested, and nonviolent ones are given a choice: accept social services and quit dealing — or be arrested too. Since he helped develop the strategy in 2004, dozens of cities and towns around the country have used it to shut down drug corners and reduce violence.
Kennedy’s organization, the National Network for Safe Communities, is helping Philly implement a broader anti-violence program called Group Violence Intervention, which has shown signs of success. But Kennedy said he wasn’t sure drug market intervention, or DMI, would work in Kensington.
He’s not sure what would.
“The Kensington market is so extreme that any such approach would have to be reinvented,” Kennedy said.
Other experts are somewhat less pessimistic. They say there’s plenty that police and other city agencies can do to reduce the harm the drug market causes to residents, and help restore safety and civility on the streets.
But they echo Kennedy in cautioning officials to keep the community’s expectations in check.
“There’s a role for law enforcement, at least in terms of reducing flagrant drug dealing,” said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica, California. “That’s about getting more dealers off the street, reducing violence, reducing guns on the street, giving the community their neighborhoods back. But that’s not necessarily going to reduce supply or reduce drug use.”
‘Shutting down’ the market could be costly, if even possible
When Mayor Cherelle Parker took office in January, she said one of her priorities was “to permanently shut down open-air drug markets, including in Kensington.”
In May, the city began by clearing a tent encampment of homeless drug users from a stretch of Kensington Avenue, something it’s done in various locations in the past. As part of an initiative called the Kensington Community Revival, the Philadelphia Police Department is boosting its presence in the neighborhood from about 40 to 120 officers, including 75 recruits. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said they will crack down on the open sale and use of drugs, retail theft, and other offenses.
City Council also recently approved Parker’s plan to borrow $100 million to build a city-owned facility in Northeast Philly to provide shelter, drug treatment, and social services like housing assistance to people experiencing homelessness and addiction.
If those kinds of efforts continue for long enough, they could make a real difference in residents’ quality of life, Kilmer and others said.
But for that to work, the city will have to dedicate officers and other city personnel to the effort for years, likely at a substantial cost, they said.
Their recommendations include multiple months-long investigations that take down individual drug-trafficking groups — likely involving state and federal law enforcement — along with intensive engagement with residents, community buy-in, detailed data collection, and easy access to housing, health services and expanded harm reduction programs for drug users, among other elements.
They noted that the Kensington market services customers who travel in from around the Philadelphia region and beyond, not just local residents, and is hugely profitable for traffickers, who move an estimated billion dollars a year or more worth of fentanyl and other drugs.
Given the volume of sales and the market’s wide scope over a few dozen different street corners, each controlled by a different group of drug dealers, the city needs to make very clear what it realistically can and can’t accomplish, said Caterina Roman, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University.
“In this agglomeration economy, like Kensington, these 30, 40, 50 drug corners, there’s always going to be a supply of sellers, and there’s always going to be consumers,” said Roman, who co-authored an evaluation of a previous Kensington drug crackdown and studies of other anti-violence initiatives. “Given the large number of drug markets, if you were to take down half of those corners, you’re still left with the other half, and those potential buyers moving into those other areas.”
The police should create a public dashboard that shows how many people are being arrested, moved into housing, and moved into detox weekly, to keep themselves accountable and maintain public trust, she said.
“It will behoove the police department and the city to explain the depths and the complexity of the problem,” Roman said. “In my mind, that’s never really been done.”
A high-profit market fuels a neighborhood collapse
Philadelphia isn’t the only place in the U.S. with an extensive, tenacious open-air drug market. Kensington is often compared to San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, and other cities also have embedded trafficking networks and high numbers of overdose deaths.
But it nonetheless stands apart, due to a confluence of historical and policy developments.
Deindustrialization and suburbanization in the 1960s left Kensington with abandoned homes where dealers could sell and users could shoot up. The neighborhood became a narcotics hub — first for heroin, then cocaine, and later crack — and dealers seemed to have moved more fully into the open air in the late 1980s. It’s one of the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest big city in the country, leaving residents vulnerable to drug addiction and related challenges, and reducing their access to government services, experts say.
Police launched a series of crackdowns and “flood-the-zone” efforts over the years, such as Operation Sunrise in 1998, but none of those resource-intensive initiatives were large or sustained enough to have a lasting impact.
“We made consistent investments in Band-Aid approaches to something that has been systemically occurring year and year after year,” Mayor Parker said at a town hall in May, per the Inquirer.
Along the way, the Kensington market developed an agglomeration economy, according to Roman. That means high-profit opportunities drive different drug organizations to cluster tightly together, even on the same blocks, while buyers know they are sure to find the product they want without having to worry much about being arrested.
Several factors have further intensified the market in recent years, in particular the introduction of fentanyl about a decade ago.
It’s so potent and cheap, Kilmer said, that police can’t suppress its use through the traditional strategy of arresting dealers, limiting supply, and forcing up prices. The drug has a short high, so users buy doses several times a day to stave off withdrawal symptoms. They also try to extend the high by adding in xylazine, an animal sedative that causes slow-healing wounds, worsening their misery and the challenges for health providers.
“I was talking to a guy who’s actually a cop in Kensington, and he said there are people there who are [using fentanyl] up to 30 times a day,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor who served as a top drug policy adviser in the Obama administration.
“Unless that person is affluent, which is unlikely, that’s going to involve a lot more purchases,” he said. “Every one of those is a visible sign of a neighborhood collapsing.”
Among residents, a sense of abandonment
With successive police crackdowns failing to significantly dent drug markets, officials in Philadelphia and other cities seemed to abandon the idea of trying to shut them down.
They were influenced in part by the harm reduction movement, which works to lessen the negative consequences of drugs rather than getting users to quit. After Mayor Jim Kenney took office in 2016, he tried to reduce opioid epidemic overdose deaths through education and drug treatment rather than arrests, and he proposed allowing safe-consumption sites, where people can inject drugs while under medical supervision.
Philadelphia police pulled back even further during the pandemic, temporarily halting arrests for narcotics offenses. Critics of District Attorney Larry Krasner contend that his policy of not prosecuting some nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession, also exacerbated lawlessness in Kensington, although he has contested that claim. Krasner’s office did not make him available for an interview for this article.
Some Kensington residents argue that, rather than trying to combat the drug market, city officials effectively decided to contain it to an economically deprived neighborhood that didn’t have the clout or resources to resist.
“The laws that govern drug sales, use, and acceptable behaviors on streets, in park spaces, and even on private property in the rest of Philadelphia very purposefully do not apply here,” wrote Eduardo Esquivel, former president of the Kensington Neighborhood Association, in 2021. “What such a wholesale suspension of norms and protections can do to a poor, majority Black and brown community is on full display.”
In addition, during the peak of the Defund the Police movement in 2020 and 2021, a national debate over the role of law enforcement may have reduced officers’ morale and accelerated a wave of retirements in Philadelphia and other cities, which are still struggling to fill large numbers of police vacancies, Humphreys said.
In general, law enforcement agencies stopped using Kennedy’s drug market intervention and other strategies that had proved successful over the previous three decades, he said. It no longer seemed relevant — the crack era had ended, DMI wasn’t useful in addressing legally prescribed opioids, and the new generation of heroin dealers avoided open-air sales.
“It wasn’t until fentanyl comes in, which, depending on where you are, brings in a lot more disorder. And then the pandemic, of course, and the de-policing allows [markets] to really expand. That’s why [DMI] is just sort of a forgotten technology,” Humphreys said.
“My impression is police are not doing much about open-air drug markets in the United States,” he said. “I’m not aware of anyone who has done these kinds of models since 2020. A lot of it has just been tolerance.”
‘Please understand that you are next’
Now the tide seems to be turning again — back toward a more aggressive law enforcement approach to dismantling drug markets.
In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed launched a Drug Market Agency Coordination Center last year, and recently announced that police have made more than 3,000 arrests and seized nearly 200 kilos of narcotics. In Philadelphia, Parker is pulling city funding for needle exchange programs, and Bethel promised there will be arrests as his Kensington Community Revival initiative ramps up.
At the same time, the mayor has signaled that she recognizes the city is in uncharted territory. The administration is trying “to do what this city of Philadelphia has never done before,” she said at the town hall — without knowing exactly how to do it. She compared the effort to “building the plane while I’m flying it.”
The Police Department declined to describe its plans in detail, saying it “does not publicly confirm specific deployment and staffing plans, for tactical purposes.”
Publicly, department leaders have focused on their efforts to end visible drug dealing and drug use by having a new influx of officers on constant patrol.
“We’re going to be pushing the crowds,” Inspector Anthony Luca told a community group in early June, per the Kensington Voice. “The more you move them, the more they get frustrated, and maybe they’ll say, ‘Oh, I gotta get help.’”
“Our comprehensive deployment plan will continue to reduce violence and effectively manage any potential issues,” spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp told Billy Penn. “One of Mayor Parker’s primary goals in Kensington is for PPD to address the rampant drug sales that have created an environment conducive to an open-air drug market. We are sending a clear message that such operations are unacceptable in Philadelphia.”
The police appear to have also quietly ramped up less-visible drug enforcement activity. In a report released in May, PPD said its Narcotics Strike Force was already both arresting people who are selling and buying drugs out in the open and conducting long-term investigations “to identify drug trade organizations, as well as the sources and suppliers of illegal narcotics.”
The department has said its efforts are supported by the FBI, ATF, DEA, and the state Attorney General’s office. In mid-June the U.S. Attorney’s office, ATF and the police announced charges against 12 people from a drug and gun trafficking group in the Kensington-Fairhill area and the seizure of enough fentanyl for 50,000 doses, as well as cocaine and weapons. The arrests followed an 18-month investigation called Operation Black Diamond.
“If you’re engaging in this type of activity, please understand that you are next,” First Deputy Commissioner John Stanford said at a news conference. “Because this is the type of behavior that we can no longer stand for, and that we cannot have happening in our city.”
The city’s plans align with expert opinions on the need for a “sustained law enforcement presence paired with social/health services,” Adam Geer, the city’s Chief Public Safety Inspector, said in a statement.
“This situation in Kensington is unprecedented, but Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has been crystal clear in her message: a seemingly insurmountable challenge is not an excuse for us to sit on our hands and do nothing,” Geer said. “The mayor does not apologize for taking bold steps to end the open air drug market in Kensington and restore normalcy to this community and our city as a whole.”
A crackdown “on steroids”
To Roman, the Temple University professor, it sounds like police are doing more multi-agency investigations like those conducted during a previous effort called the Kensington Initiative.
While it may not have amounted to an attempt to “shut down” the market, the initiative comprised eight drug investigations in Kensington between 2018 and 2022, six of which Roman and her colleagues subsequently evaluated. Each investigation took an average of six months and had a staff of 10 investigators from different law enforcement agencies. They involved camera surveillance, undercover drug buys, and often wiretaps, and concluded with “takedowns” of leaders of a drug-trafficking organization.
The investigations had a lasting, if not permanent, impact, the evaluation found.
“Some of the stakeholders who are often on the blocks in Kensington noted that there are some blocks that are still quiet after takedowns that occurred over a year ago,” the report said. “One individual commented, ‘Visually you can just see the difference. You basically don’t have people congregating and loitering and doing illegal activities. It’s great for the people living on the street, and also for the people using.’”
Roman said investigators should now pursue another Kensington Initiative “on steroids,” despite the substantial cost and organizational work that would be needed to expand the approach from eight locations to perhaps 50 around Kensington.
Police would also have to do follow-up monitoring when drug selling is inevitably displaced to other nearby areas, and engage with residents afterward.
She described the potential initiative as an ongoing process of continuous data collection and new investigations that clear blocks of drug organizations one at a time, “make residents happier” on those blocks and then move on to the next set. She also said more work would be needed on long-term planning around such a program.
“How do you do all of this in a concerted fashion?” Roman mused. “And then if you take down that drug corner, are you sort of maintaining? The local government then is supposed to do the follow-up and do the maintenance. As you’re taking down those corners, are you paying attention to who the consumers are? Who’s hanging out and buying from those markets? Where are they going now?”
Establishing a new equilibrium
Roman was skeptical about using focused deterrence in Kensington. The strategy has mostly worked in areas with just three or four drug corners; across Philadelphia’s much larger and more profitable drug market, threatening street-level dealers with arrest is unlikely to accomplish much, she argued.
“How are you going to threaten these high-level runners of the organizations? They’re not the ones on the street corner,” she said. “Maybe some smart drug trafficking organization is then going to move somewhere else. They’re going to take their $5 million weekly profits to another place.”
Yet others question the feasibility of the kind of constant police enforcement Roman favors, whether via high-level investigations or on-the-ground confrontations with dealers and users.
Luca, the police inspector, said the entire narcotics division has been working in Kensington for weeks, and officials have emphasized their intent to keep officers on the ground for an extended period.
It’s hard to see that kind of approach working for long, Humphreys said.
“If you frame it as ‘we just need to have a cop on every street corner forever,’ that is just not sustainable. It’s just not possible,” he said.
That’s why cities in the U.S. and Europe use some form of focused deterrence, he said. Rather than conducting investigations and then pouncing on dealers, police bring the information directly to criminal groups and use threats of arrest, social pressure, and offers of services to dissuade them from operating on the streets.
The goal is to eventually establish a new norm or equilibrium where dealing does not happen openly outdoors. Dealers start to think, “let’s not bring the cops down,” Humphreys said. “We can still deal drugs, we just can’t stand on a street corner. We’re still going to make money.”
It still takes a lot of work for police and other government agencies, but only for a finite period.
“Flipping equilibria is labor intensive. All the people who are coming to Kensington, it’s going to take them a while to get the message that, I can’t just walk through and get my drugs. It does take a major commitment,” he said. “The upside of that, if you look at cities in Europe who have succeeded in shutting down markets, is then you only need to have a cop stroll through once a week.”
Whatever strategy the police use, it’s important to acknowledge that, in some form, Philadelphia’s drug market will continue to operate, Humphreys said.
“When I talk about these kinds of strategies, a well-meaning person will say, ‘But there will still be drugs and drug dealing in Kensington.’ Yes, there will, but you know, there’s drug dealing and use in Palo Alto” — the affluent Silicon Valley city where Humphreys lives — “but I can walk down the street,” he said.
“It may seem a strange thing to say, but it’s really harm reduction applied at the market level,” he said. “Yes, we know people are still using drugs. But if you’re raising a family in Kensington, your life will be dramatically better.”
That kind of visible normalcy seems to align with the city’s stated goals.
In addition to “dismantling” the open-air drug market and providing treatment and social services to vulnerable individuals, “success will also look like clean streets, lined with vibrant and bustling businesses and a neighborhood where children can walk to school safely without stepping over needles, trash and waste,” Geer said. “And the residents in our city can achieve a quality of life they can look forward to and be proud of every day.”
