Philadelphia’s historic Kensington neighborhood is known as one of the city’s most dangerous areas. It’s become infamous for drug use and violence. But it wasn’t always this way: Kensington was once a thriving working-class community, home to the Stetson hat company, and factory and shipyard workers.  

As The Trace’s Mensah M. Dean recently reported, Mayor Cherelle Parker made it a priority to bring Kensington back. Last year, on her first day in office, she signed an executive order calling on her top public-safety officials to devise a plan to address the neighborhood’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. It would return the neighborhood to its blue-collar roots, but one year on, it’s still too soon to tell if that success will be long lived. 

Kensington started out as a home to factory workers, primarily European immigrants and their descendants. The community then bustled with new faces during the Great Migration of the 1920s and 30s, when Black and Puerto Rican people moved there for factory jobs. Throughout World War II, industry continued to expand, but by its end, manufacturers moved to the suburbs and overseas, sparking the deindustrialization of Philadelphia. 

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 burgeoning drug trade, aided by the proliferation of abandoned buildings. Now, poverty and crime are ubiquitous. 

The Parker administration’s plan for Kensington took effect last year. There are early signs of progress: In 2024, homicides in the area declined by 45 percent, nonfatal shootings dipped by 57 percent, and all violent crimes decreased by 17 percent. The numbers show improvement, and residents are seeing a change, but there’s still much they want to improve.  

“Although these reductions are promising,” said Adam Geer, the city’s first-ever chief public safety director, “we are not satisfied until no Philadelphian’s life is cut short by a needle or a gun.”

Learn more about the initiative and its progress here.

From The Trace

This Lawmaker Wants to Give Illinois Homicide Victims a Way to Reopen Cold Cases: After four years of rejection, Kam Buckner is advancing legislation that would help survivors of gun violence get information about their loved ones’ cases and work toward closure.

What Questions Do You Have About Guns in America?: After a yearlong hiatus, we’re soliciting new questions for Ask The Trace, our reader-driven series about guns, gun violence, and the industry at large.

It’s One of Philly’s Hardest Hit Neighborhoods, But a Plan to Fight Gun Violence Is Showing Promise: Once a thriving working-class community, Kensington has become infamous for drug use and violence. Now, after a year of intervention, homicides and shootings have dropped.

What to Know Today 

The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting launched a service to give survivors of gun violence a voice by connecting them to journalists to tell their stories. Through Survivor Connection, journalists can access a directory of local gun survivors who want to share their personal experiences. The program also makes it mandatory for survivors to take a workshop on trauma, media literacy, and public health responses to gun violence. [WHYY]

FBI and interim ATF Director Kash Patel reportedly proposed moving at least 1,000 ATF agents to the FBI, cutting about a third of the ATF’s agents, according to three sources who spoke to CNN. The shift would begin with a couple of hundred agents being moved to border-related criminal enforcement. Though the idea of merging both bureaus has been considered in the past by previous U.S. administrations, including during the Obama administration, this merger would be the first of its kind. Patel denied CNN’s report, calling it “entirely false” in an internal memo. [CNN/The Washington Examiner]

Since 2020, more than 300 Mississippians have died from domestic violence homicide, according to an analysis by Mississippi Today. A proposed law, the Mississippi Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team Law, would review fatal and near-fatal incidents of domestic abuse and suicides to learn how to prevent domestic violence through early intervention. Mississippi advocates and survivors who are backing the bill say that studying patterns of abuse is crucial to intervening before it’s too late. The final proposal will be decided on at the end of the month. [Mississippi Today]

Grassroots nonprofits We Can Now, Urban Alchemy, Hungry Hill Foundation, and faculty from Huston-Tillotson University, in Austin, Texas, held a workshop to educate adolescents on gun violence. The seminar was designed as a gun violence prevention effort: Organizers used the event to discern how young people feel about safety, teach attendees the basics of firearm safety, and discuss how group social dynamics play into gun violence. [KXAN]

Data Point

50 percent — the increase in youth gun deaths in the U.S. since 2019 [Stateline]

Non Sequitur

Could We Store Our Data in DNA?
Experts believe there are multiple advantages to storing data in DNA. [The New Yorker]