PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The night shift begins for Officers Mike Wagner and Gage Wright one block from the Kensington Police District at Allegheny and Emerald streets. A woman is passed out on the sidewalk, her posture and general appearance indicating she may need medical attention.
This is not an uncommon sight in Kensington. Several people walk past without seeming to notice her. Wagner, 25, and Wright, 23, are charged with making sure she’s not dying. In a city with more than 1,000 overdoses a year, it is not a duty to be taken lightly.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” Wright asks while putting on latex gloves. “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
She’s stirring but not responding.
“Ma’am, you have to stand up so we know you’re OK,” Wagner says. Still no response. Wright has an idea.
“Ma’am, are you hungry?” he asks. “Let’s go to the store and get something to eat.”
She’s not interested in food, but apparently understands they won’t leave her alone until she demonstrates some degree of health, so she sits up with difficulty.
“OK, ma’am, we just wanted to make sure you’re OK,” Wright says.
She flops back over.
The Kensington Community Revival Plan
This is a routine Wagner and Wright will repeat at least a dozen times before the night is over. They are part of the community policing surge that started last summer, one element of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Kensington Community Revival Plan (KCR). She calls it a “PIE” strategy — prevention, intervention and enforcement — and, for that last piece, she nearly doubled the number of officers in the district by assigning an entire police academy graduating class there. Wagner and Wright are in the second wave, the graduating class that started in February.
The approach has critics who argue that harm reduction — providing services such as clean needles and wound care — is more effective at solving the neighborhood’s woes than enforcement. Data, though, shows the results Parker is looking for: a 45% decrease in homicides, a 44% decrease in shootings, and overdoses down by a third.
Still, there is no shortage of open drug use, discarded syringes, abandoned food, shuttered stores, and people sprawled on the sidewalk or sometimes standing but drooping like a thirsty plant.
“It was shocking,” Wagner recalls of his first tour of the neighborhood with veteran officers, “just seeing exactly what was going on and all these people that need help but don’t yet want the help.”
He and Wright have gotten used to it now: the distress, the misery, the collateral damage. They see it every shift, and every shift, they try to put a little bit of a dent in it. It is slow, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding work because they do see subtle progress.
“I feel as though in a small way, we are helping the community,” Wright says. “I feel like small things matter and small things add up to bigger things. A couple years ago, you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street. It’s a big difference.”
Wagner finds validation in the number of kids who played outside this summer, unworried by the kind of encampments and blatant criminality that long troubled the area. He also has faith in the PIE strategy.
“One day we were walking down Kensington and Somerset and Officer Wright was flagged down by one of the addicted population, saying that because of an arrest he made, her friend is clean now and no longer in Kensington,” he says.
And so, on they go, after that first encounter, ready for whatever comes at them.
Speed is coming
The officers are scanning the street to see where they’re needed, but they’re also listening to radios clipped to their shoulders. There’s a report of shots fired. Police cars go whizzing past, sirens blaring. The radio bleats out an address for a man seen running and throwing something under a parked car. Bicycle cops speed past. A passerby tells Wright and Wagner that someone is getting beaten up in a corner store. They rush there, but it’s a false alarm. Their boss, Inspector LaVerne Vann, has tagged along. She calls these false reports “diversionary tactics.” There’s still a criminal element here, and they don’t want the cops to stumble onto them, so they misdirect them. Or they call out warnings as the officers approach: “Uber.” “Hondo.” Or the reliable, “Yo!”
On this particular night, on top of the normal chaos, the officers are distracted by a YouTuber named Speed. He is live-streaming his one-day visit to Philly and has told his 43 million followers that he will be going to Kensington. He’s been attracting crowds all over town, and the officers keep checking his progress. They see him at the stadiums, then at LOVE Park. They’re not sure what will happen when he gets to K&A, the notorious corner of Kensington and Allegheny.
For now, though, they continue their mission of interacting with the community. The principle of community policing is to build trust, to create allies in the quest for public safety.
A woman has fallen asleep in the sun and seems to be in distress. They rouse her with much effort. She says she’s just thirsty. Wright gets her a Gatorade. She is clearly touched and asks for their names. Vann writes them down, with their phone numbers, and tucks the paper into the woman’s pocket.
“You call them when you want to go get help,” she says. “Now you don’t have any excuse.”
As they round the corner, a young girl in a school uniform stops Vann to tell her someone tried to steal her headphones. Her ride home from the bus stop is late, so she’s waiting alone. Vann says they’re going to keep an eye on her. Her ride comes a minute later.
“She’s a sweet little girl,” Vann says as she walks away. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
Children are a great motivator for the KCR. The plan envisions reclaiming McPherson Square — a park with a library and playground — for families in the area. It has long been a popular hangout for drug use, but Wright and Wagner are working on imposing limits. Rows of people still sit on the library steps and the low wall around the park, but sleeping in the grass will not be tolerated.
“You can’t be sleeping here, man. It’s for the kids,” Wagner says as he rousts a few people, who move along without arguing. One man even embraces the effort.
“These kids should not be seeing this at all,” he says. “I mean, I’m an addict, but they should not be seeing this. This neighborhood was so great back in the day.”
Wagner is incredulous.
“That’s the problem right there,” he says. “He acknowledges that it’s a problem that he’s in the park, but he’s here.”
A pretext for gentrification?
The interactions are polite and respectful, but there is an underlying tension. The enhanced police presence inhibits the freedom with which drug use occurred here for many years, but even some drug users admit they feel safer.
Dominic Rodriquez, 46, embodies those mixed emotions. He was born and raised here and likes having the cops around, but he is highly suspicious that there is an ulterior motive.
“Gentrification,” he says in an ominous tone. “They’re cleaning up vagrancy in the guise of helping people out, but it’s really for gentrification. Why would you care about an impoverished area with the have-nots of society? They never cared about it before. But now there’s money. That’s the interest. Follow the money. See what ghost organizations are buying up property around here.”
The fear that the area would gentrify if it reaches some minimal level of normality is not at all unreasonable. But Wright and Wagner have no stake in such an outcome. Their interest is purely public safety. In that, they are no different than the service providers and ad hoc volunteers who are drawn to Kensington by the desire to help.
When Wright and Wagner approach the most desperate situation they have seen so far this shift, there are a couple standing by, also trying to assist. A man is passed out on the sidewalk, barefoot, blood on his limbs, but no obvious source of the bleeding. A pair of crutches is next to him.
The couple explains they put him into the rescue breathing position, on his side, but say he doesn’t need an ambulance or Narcan.
“Do you want to go to the hospital?” Wright asks. The response is garbled but definitely negative.
“We can’t force you to go, but you need help,” Wright says, at which point the man begins to cry, a guttural howl of anguish.
“If you would have seen me a year and a half ago, I was worse than that,” the helper, a redhead with a bushy beard, says.
“I’m glad you got better,” Wright says.
“I never thought I would,” the redhead says. “I wanted to die so bad. I know what he’s feeling like right now, bro, and you know what? There’s hope for him.”
“There is hope,” Wright agrees.
Wright hands him some Narcan. “If anything happens, will you give us a call?”
“Absolutely.”
'I didn’t know it was like that'
Speed does eventually show up. It’s about 9 p.m. A crowd of perhaps 50 or 60 fans has gathered at K&A. The cops stand watchfully nearby, but Speed has his own security. They surround him as he exits his limousine, looking decidedly uncomfortable, and almost immediately begins saying he has to get back to his tour bus.
The fans are cheering as he waves and smiles. One insistent young woman gets an autograph. Then he is off. The entire visit lasts about two minutes.
On his livestream, back in the car, driving away, he looks relieved. “That was crazy,” he says. “That was insane. I didn’t know it was like that. I did not know it was like that. I thought it was just called Zombie-land because…” He trails off. The show is over.
Wagner and Wright are there for the rest of the night, of course, and back the next day. And every workday since. They are assigned indefinitely to Kensington. And that is fine with them.