Casey O’Donnell’s nonprofit organization, Impact Services, has provided job opportunities and housing services in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood since 1974. Over the past few decades, he’s been witness to sweeping changes across the community, which is now infamous for drug trafficking, homelessness, and the violence that so often breaks out amid the chaos.
In past years, O’Donnell said, security cameras at his organization’s building frequently recorded murders. Last year, though, he noticed yet another change. On the heels of a high-profile effort to revive Kensington, the community has experienced a historic decline in gun violence, outpacing the progress seen across the city. And for the first time in recent memory, O’Donnell said, Impact Services’ cameras captured hardly any shootings.
“I don’t know how many of you knew what this intersection looked like five years ago,” O’Donnell said at a February news conference on the turnaround. “Any given day there were 40, 50 people at this intersection either using or selling, and unfortunately, we turned over murder video pretty regularly to the police. So when you came here, part of the reason you didn’t see any of that … is proof that collaboration works.”
Officials and some residents like O’Donnell say that one year in, the “Kensington Community Revival” plan is showing early signs of progress. While Philadelphia’s homicides and nonfatal shootings were both down 35 percent in 2024, in Kensington, homicides were down 45 percent, nonfatal shootings were down 57 percent, and all violent crimes were down 17 percent.
“Although these reductions are promising, we are not satisfied until no Philadelphian’s life is cut short by a needle or a gun,” said Adam Geer, the city’s first-ever chief public safety director.
Still, law enforcement officials feel so strongly about the turnaround’s early success that, last month, they published a glossy booklet touting their claims and launched a dashboard the public can use to track conditions in Kensington.
But it took decades for Kensington, once a hub for factory workers, to fall into disrepair — and, residents and officials say, it will take more than a year to restore it.
Decades of disinvestment
Before its economic collapse, Kensington was home to European immigrants and their descendents, primarily blue-collar workers.
In his book, “Whitetown, U.S.A.,” author Peter Benzin includes a description of the Kensington community from an 1891 pamphlet bearing its name: “A city within a city, nestling upon the bosom of the placid Delaware, filled to the brim with enterprise, dotted with factories so numerous that the rising smoke obscures the sky, the hum of industry is heard in every corner of its broad expanse.”
During the Great Migration, in the 1920s and 1930s, Black people drawn to factory jobs began moving there. Puerto Rican people followed.
The community slowed during the Great Depression, but World War II breathed new life into Kensington, wrote Benzin, a longtime reporter for the old Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper. The shipyard expanded, and factories operated at all hours. “Its biggest and most famous firm, the Stetson Hat Company, employed almost five thousand men and women and maintained a hospital for them,” wrote Benzin.
After the war, however, as employers began moving into the suburbs and overseas, the impact of deindustrialization rapidly eroded Philadelphia’s manufacturing industry. In 1950, Philly was home to 365,500 manufacturing jobs; by 1975, fewer than 170,000 remained.
By the early 1970s, press reports began documenting Kensington’s job losses, gang crime, and its burgeoning drug trade, aided by the proliferation of abandoned buildings. Stetson left Kensington in 1971, dealing yet another harsh blow to a place that was already suffering.
It’s been a struggle ever since, and over the last few decades, Kensington gained the moniker of the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast.
‘A sense of futility’
This March in Kensington started with a few flashes of gunfire. In the first week alone, two men were shot after an argument erupted about loud music coming from two parked cars after midnight. Hours later, two more men were shot and wounded nearby, an incident police say may have been retaliation for the earlier shooting.
The previous day, police barricaded a building after a man in a wheelchair armed himself with a shotgun. In those incidents, no one died, but the day before, on North 2nd Street, a bar fight that spilled outside ended with a man being fatally shot in the head.
Even weeks like that mark an improvement over previous years. Through March 11, there had been five homicides this month in the 24th and 25th police districts that serve the community, a decline from the eight slayings that occurred at the same time last year.
Last year, on her first day in office, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker signed an executive order calling on her top public-safety officials to devise a plan to address Kensington’s downturn. The Kensington Community Revival would ultimately combine increased policing and violence prevention work with a mix of community cleanups and drug rehabilitation efforts.
But as with any reform in progress, the effort has both its fans and detractors. Some are worried that the intervention, which narrowly targets a small neighborhood, is causing problems to spill onto nearby blocks.
Al Klosterman, a member of the Harrowgate Civic Association, complained at a February City Council hearing that the increased policing and dismantling of two homeless encampments in the heart of Kensington pushed drug users and dealers into different areas, including where he lives.
“Yesterday’s nice weather doubled the number of users passing my house to score Fentanyl. … It appears there’s not much the police can do with the users and dealers, when we call,” he said. “They come to a troubled corner, chase the dealers and users away, who come right back when the police are gone. We just get a sense of futility.”
Geer acknowledged as much. “We are doing everything we can to think about how we’re going to address the way that it looks now — where folks might have gone to some of the blocks,” he said. “We want to urge the community to continue to call in when you see anything untoward.”
A new policing strategy
In late February, Geer, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, and Deputy Commissioner Pedro Rosario gathered with other leaders to discuss their work in Kensington so far.
“We started our work in Kensington with a core conviction that the status quo is unacceptable,” Geer said. “We’ve come a long way this year, but we have (a long) road to go.”
The city has nearly tripled the number of police officers dispatched to Kensington to staff new foot and bike beats, and to check in on businesses more regularly. That boost includes the class of 73 officers who graduated from the police academy in June, marking the first time an entire officer class was dispatched to the same place, said Rosario, who was recently promoted to lead the department’s Kensington presence.
“It allowed us to provide seven days a week, 365 days, around the clock coverage,” he said. “Understanding that footbeats — walking, meeting, speaking with the business owners, speaking with the community residents — was one of our best assets.”
Police are also seizing more firearms, Rosario said. They recovered more than 330 guns, and took $40.7 million in narcotics off the streets.
Amid the Kensington plan, the Police Department suffered a loss of its own. Officer Jaime Roman, 31, died in September, three months after he was shot in the neck while conducting a routine traffic stop. The husband and father of two died two weeks shy of his seventh anniversary with the department.
Three violence intervention initiatives and grassroots community groups are also at work, Geer said. Group Violence Intervention counseled 146 people deemed to have the highest risk of becoming involved with gun violence; the Community Crisis Intervention Program, conducted more than 1,500 home visits in response to shooting incidents; and the Violence Prevention Partnership worked with probation officers to manage the cases of 35 high-risk youth and young adults under court supervision. At the same time, he said, the city gave $8.6 million in anti-violence grants to 19 Kensington-based community organizations.
‘Fair but firm’
The revival plan also seeks to spruce up the community. Last year, the city’s Office of Clean and Green removed 450 abandoned cars from Kensington’s streets, cleaned graffiti on more than 17,000 properties and street fixtures, collected more than 8,200 syringes, and participated in 810 property and block cleanups, according to city data. Two encampments were shuttered.
In February, the city opened Kensington’s Neighborhood Wellness Court, which provides medical and mental health treatment and alternatives to prosecution and incarceration for those arrested for drug-related offenses, and the Riverview Wellness Village opened in nearby Northeast Philadelphia. The 366-bed facility provides comprehensive treatment for those addicted to drugs.
Guillermo Garcia, a 30-year Kensington resident, has been so active in homegrown community cleanup and improvement efforts, he said, that some had taken to calling him the Mayor of Indiana Avenue.
The city’s revival efforts are a welcome addition, Garcia said. “I see children riding their bikes, families barbequing, and old-timers playing dominoes. Knowing that I played a little role in all this makes me feel good,” he said.
“We want to thank Mayor Parker for her love and support. For being fair but firm,” he added. “Her love and support is something that we haven’t seen in this area in 30 years.”
But some remain concerned about spillover. “Many drug users migrated to our area above Alleghany Avenue,” Klosterman said at the City Council meeting. “Most of the [reform] actions are happening below Alleghany and most of us above are being neglected.”
Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose district includes part of Kensington, commiserated with Klosterman, and told him that officials intend to address his concerns — but said it will take more than a year.
“This situation has been brewing in the Kensington and Harrowgate community for many, many years. I understand your frustration,” she told him. “Yes, it is slow, right? I would have liked to have seen it resolved in 12 months, but that’s not a realistic ask.”
And there are still daily reminders of just how relentless this work can be. On March 19, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that a woman and man were shot; the woman was wounded, and the man was in critical condition. The shooting took place on Indiana Avenue, one block over from O’Donnell’s Impact Services.
The Trace’s reporting in Philadelphia is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.
