Philly police and city workers dismantled a Kensington encampment Wednesday

Philadelphia police and city workers dismantled a homeless encampment in Kensington early Wednesday morning and ordered people living on the street to leave the area, the most visible action that Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s new administration has taken as it seeks to end the open-air drug market in the neighborhood.

While city officials said the clearing of two blocks went off without incident, it drew criticism from advocates and people living on the street, as well as confusion from lawmakers and neighborhood stakeholders. City officials previously said the clearing would be led by outreach teams, but no city social service workers were on scene when police arrived and escorted away people who were living on the streets.

Dozens of people scattered, leaving outreach workers who later arrived to search the neighborhood Wednesday for those who were displaced so they could offer them shelter. Some people ended up on adjacent residential blocks, resting under awnings with their rain-soaked belongings, while others fled farther on foot.

Chief Public Safety Director Adam Geer said officers came to the area first to secure it.

“We all know there’s drug dealers who are operating not far from here who are armed. This is dangerous work,” he said. “We’re still trying to understand how all that played out.”

In previous major Kensington encampment clearings, dating to 2018, police did not lead operations, and city outreach workers instead spent hours on the day of the eviction offering last-minute rides to treatment and shelter and putting residents’ belongings into tubs for storage. Then, sanitation workers moved in to clear what was left behind.

The city estimates that about 675 people are living on the street in Kensington, but fewer than 75 were consistently living in the targeted zone around the 3000 and 3100 blocks of Kensington Avenue before Wednesday. Over the last several weeks, there have been fewer than 10 tents on the street in that area.

» READ MORE: Mayor Parker defends Kensington plan at neighborhood meeting: ‘I’m building the plane while I’m flying it’

Geer said “this was a good day.” Geer said teams would keep trying to locate others who left the immediate area Wednesday.

City officials said in a news release Wednesday evening that its outreach workers had connected 55 people to housing services, including low-barrier shelter beds or recovery-focused shelter beds, in the 30-day period leading up to the encampment resolution. Four people had been connected to drug and alcohol treatment, the city said.

Of the 59 total people connected to housing or recovery services, 19 received such assistance on the day of the encampment clearing, Joe Grace, Parker’s spokesperson, said in a statement. No one was arrested, the city said.

By late afternoon Wednesday, barricades were blocking the sidewalks and a handful of police patrolled. Just off Kensington Avenue, a woman in a wheelchair was injecting.

Amber Schweitzer, who is from Kensington but has been homeless in the neighborhood on and off for the last year, said police officers came through the intersection at Kensington and Allegheny early Wednesday and put up yellow tape.

“They just said, ‘You have to move,’” she said.

Eva Fitch, a harm reduction advocate who came to the scene to offer help to people living there, said there were about 30 unhoused people in the area at about 7 a.m. She said police told people that outreach workers were on their way, but many on the street left on their own as sanitation workers sprayed down the sidewalks.

Fitch said she was encircled by officers as she helped lift a woman who appeared to be suffering from a serious infection into a wheelchair.

“As we were trying to move her, the cops surrounded us in a circle, about 20 cops to seven of us,” she said. “Street cleaners were spraying water next to her as she was trying to get into the chair.”

And Aine Fox, a legal observer with the activist group Up Against the Law Legal Collective, said officers pushed her off Kensington Avenue using bicycles and shoved her in the back. Her account is corroborated by video footage.

“There were people shouting, ‘they’re here to help us move our stuff. Let them help us,’” Fox said. “We didn’t get an opportunity to help them.”

» READ MORE: Ahead of the Kensington crackdown, aggressive policing intensified

Geer said he hadn’t heard reports of “any kind of physical contact” by police.

“These officers have training to deal with folks who are having a rough go at it,” he said. “They’re trained, they’re patient, all of those things.”

City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke was on the scene Wednesday morning and said he was “taken aback” by how the clearing — which the city calls an “encampment resolution” — was handled.

“It seems like the strategy this morning was to preempt any resources actually getting here,” he said.

Councilmember Mark Squilla said that he, too, was under the impression that it would be an outreach-led operation.

“If there were mistakes made, then we have to adjust them and do it properly in the next resolution,” Squilla said.

The city has had a policy on clearing encampments since 2017, which includes giving people at least a 30-day notice. City outreach workers also created a list of everyone sleeping in the camp.

Noelle Foizen, the director of the city’s Overdose Response Unit, said outreach workers offered people spaces in recovery houses, addiction treatment facilities, and shelters — including “low-barrier” ones where those who continue using drugs can stay.

“These are at times really difficult conversations,” she said. “People don’t always want to engage with the teams. But the fact they were able to have that many conversations and placements is a testament to the work of the outreach teams.”

One woman, who said her name is Barb but declined to give her last name because of the stigma surrounding addiction, was standing near the encampment clearing Wednesday and said it’s difficult for many people addicted to consider entering treatment. Painful withdrawal from xylazine, the animal tranquilizer that has contaminated most of the fentanyl distributed in the city, is not often treated properly, she said.

And many people with serious medical conditions — including the wounds caused by xylazine — can go only to facilities that can accommodate their injuries.

Schweitzer said it was hard to find a suitable treatment option Wednesday. She said she and her husband told outreach workers from the Rock Ministries, a Christian group that sent people in jackets reading “community chaplain” to the Avenue on Wednesday, that they were interested in entering treatment together.

But, she said, city workers told them there were no slots for couples available.

“So we left,” Schweitzer said.

Buddy Osborn, a pastor and the founder of Rock Ministries, confirmed his 50-member outreach team — which is not funded by the city — arrived at 7 a.m. and worked the side streets outside the target zone. Nine people agreed to enter detox and three more agreed to go into treatment programs, he said.

Top officials cast the encampment clearing as separate from Parker’s longer-term plan for Kensington — one that includes a significant law enforcement component and arrests for some low-level offenses. That phase is expected to begin within weeks.

For now, Geer said, the city will monitor the area for encampments and continue to offer services to the homeless.

John Cacciola, who lives on Ruth Street near the encampment clearing, said he believed that he’d been sold a false bill of goods. He thought people living at Kensington and Allegheny would be taken to treatment and shelter, but said Wednesday morning’s operation pushed people onto streets such as his.

“[The city] hasn’t done anything today except the cops walking down the Avenue like the Gestapo,” Cacciola said. “I feel bad. These people are already having a rough day, and I’m out here asking them to move. But there are kids on this block. We have to find a middle ground.”

And Eddy Colon, who lives on nearby Clementine Street, was supportive of city officials’ attempts to clean the avenue, but said the plan wasn’t properly executed.

“They’re pushing people in front of people’s houses,” he said. “I don’t disagree with what the mayor’s doing, but I think she’s picking on people at the bottom of the barrel.”

Rosalind Pichardo, founder of the advocacy organization Operation Save Our City, said evicting people from the encampment amounts to “moving people around like cattle.”

“They will come back,” she said. “There’s no real solution.”