PHILADELPHIA — Mayor Cherelle L. Parker's administration is developing what it is calling a "neighborhood wellness court" in Kensington — an initiative in which police would conduct sweeps to arrest people who are using drugs on the street, give them summary citations, offer them treatment and diversion programs, and bring them before a judge that same day.

A police captain told community members about plans for the court at a recent meeting in Harrowgate, and the city said it could begin operating in Kensington as soon as October, according to a document seeking lawyers to work in the system.

But a city spokesperson said it was "premature" to comment on the plan. And other agencies that could play key roles in it — including the District Attorney's Office and the First Judicial District, which operates Philadelphia's court system — also declined to comment.

Advocates are concerned that many people picked up might have open warrants or be on probation — which could then land them in jail after an arrest — and they question the ability of the understaffed city jails to absorb an influx of medically fragile people in addiction.

Last week, 31-year-old Amanda Cahill — one of more than three dozen people arrested during a sweep near G Street — died in custody, likely due to complications from withdrawal or drug intoxication, her family said authorities told them.

Two other people arrested in the neighborhood on the same day were also hospitalized, according to incident reports reviewed by The Inquirer. One of them was a woman who was eight months pregnant and who began suffering from withdrawal symptoms after being jailed for two outstanding warrants, according to the report.

Keisha Hudson, chief of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said the neighborhood wellness court proposal would only cause more such harms.

"We're going to have to detain people who come with these complicated criminal justice histories, like Amanda did, and the jails just are not staffed and equipped to handle this population," she said. "People will continue to die if we are going to be taking this approach."

Cleaning up the neighborhood

Parker has said the goal of the overall enforcement push in Kensington is to shut down the neighborhood's long-standing open-air drug market, get users connected with treatment, and return a sense of stability and safety to an area that experiences some of the highest rates of violence in the country.

Many residents of Kensington have been pleading for change for years, begging the city to invest resources and stop the widespread open drug use and sales in the neighborhood.

Capt. Christopher Bullick of the 24th Police District told residents at the Sept. 5 civic meeting that the goal of the neighborhood court would be to provide accountability and treatment as officers continue working to address the area's challenges.

"When we do start enforcing more laws, that shows accountability," Bullick said. "Hopefully deter some people and get people into rehabilitation."

The idea, according to the captain and the documents, would be to provide an alternative to incarceration for some of those who are taken into custody during sweeps in which dozens of patrol officers target certain blocks or intersections in Kensington and arrest people using or selling drugs, or those who have outstanding warrants.

Eligible defendants would be charged with a summary offense, a low-level offense akin to a traffic ticket. Many can be resolved by paying a fine, while the maximum penalty is 90 days in jail. The defendants would also see a judge that day, rather than waiting weeks or months for a case to proceed, and be offered diversion and potential health treatments.

But as residents pushed for clarity, Marnie Aument-Loughrey, the Parker administration's community coordinator for Kensington, acknowledged a "frustrating" lack of details.

"They don't have everything worked out yet, so we really can't talk until all the lawyers say it's OK," Aument-Loughrey said. "It has to go in front of the mayor, it has to go in front of Council, it has to go in front of the police. Everybody has to agree on it before we can actually tell everybody what it is."

District Attorney Larry Krasner declined to comment on the wellness court plan but said Cahill's death in custody raised troubling concerns.

Cahill's preliminary arraignment report, obtained by The Inquirer, showed that she was not present for the hearing when bail was set. "Officer said unsafe to bring out [of her cell]," a note on the report reads.

"We cannot recklessly put people into a dysfunctional county correctional system when we have so little resources and so little information to prevent severe withdrawal, fatal overdose, victimization by assault, and other extreme dangers," Krasner said.

Still, after police arrested 35 people in a sweep last Wednesday, Krasner's office approved charges for 33 of them — 22 for possessing drug paraphernalia and six for possession of drugs for personal use.

Krasner declined to comment on the charges, or whether they aligned with his office's reform philosophy.

Bringing back 'community court'

From 2002 through 2011, Philadelphia had a community court where people charged with misdemeanors or given summary citations for crimes like drug possession, prostitution, or theft could be brought before a judge, receive services, and be handed punishments including community service.

"The primary goal was community service and connection to treatment without the threat of incarceration," said Andrew Pappas, pretrial managing director of the Defender Association.

After the court lost funding and shut down, the model became what is now known as the Accelerated Misdemeanor Program, or AMP, said Pappas. AMP was shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, and after reopening in mid-2022, it is now a shell of what it once was, he said — going from running five days a week to just two.

Pappas said the defenders have been "completely excluded from the conversation" about the neighborhood court. Through talks with personal contacts in the city, he said, they have come to understand that officials are considering conducting sweeps of Kensington every Wednesday morning, then transporting some of those who are arrested for drug offenses to the 24th District. Court would take place there a few hours later.

While most people would prefer summary citations to a criminal misdemeanor or felony charge, Pappas said, those who are issued citations do not typically have access to a public defender or the right to review evidence against them.

(The city document seeking lawyers said it was looking for part-time employees who could counsel defendants on diversion, handle status listings, or offer representation at summary trials.)

Most troubling, Pappas said, is that defendants could be making decisions about their cases or care while going through withdrawal.

"People are not going to be in the right frame of mind," he said.

Some harm-reduction providers view the new court plan as only the latest phase of over-policing in Kensington, where hundreds of people, many with significant health complications, live on the streets.

Kelsey León, who works with the harm-reduction group Community Action Relief Project, said more police sweeps would put drug users at heightened risk of dying in jail or from an overdose when they are released with diminished tolerance.

"If [Cahill's] case is any indication, it means that no matter what the prison system says ... they're not ready," León said, citing the challenges of managing withdrawal symptoms amid an increasingly toxic and unpredictable drug supply. "They don't know the full complexity of what it takes to manage this care."

Residents at the civic meeting weren't satisfied with the hazy answers about plans for the community, including neighborhood court. Harrowgate Civic Association president Shannon Farrell-Paktis said city leaders come to meetings with the same vague responses to their questions.

"We're watching you make mistakes. 'Building an airplane while you're flying it' — that sounds crazy to me. Don't tell me that quote," said resident Sonja Bingham, referencing a quote from Parker earlier this year. "We hired you to do a job. We expect you to have better answers in this."

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