yeah my name is R we in Kensington Philadelphia North Philadelphia to be exact somewhat it's known for a lot of drug use crime drug use prostitution what are the most popular drugs here right now the TR the dope and um the fit and no up baby just doing them dirty like bad like my mother is from down here my mother used to do every drug in this book glad to say she uh she's clean off everything but me when I was when I was a child my mother was down here doing dope she did not look like this she had a couple track marks she had a couple little sores and everything but her limbs wasn't falling off it's real bad like you can smell them when they walk past like do you guys believe addiction is a disease yes it is some people want to get off drugs but they so they so deep into it they can't no matter how hard they try they've been doing it for so long it becomes a part of them what do you think's the solution for someone who's that far in the lifestyle of drug addiction well by honest opinion I don't think there's no solution then they going to do it till they die uh there's a fight right behind us all right that's it you got him that's it that's it you stealing you can't steal you can't steal that B that B that no no no no no no more no more get up go this is a typical day in Kensington a neighborhood in Philadelphia 400 to 800 people are on the streets here looking for their next high what's your name bud how long you been out here almost 4 years I think it's crazy for real when do you think you first started doing drugs I tried drugs when I was 18 I used heroin till I was 22 so in that period of time you can kind of see when the writing is on the wall you know it's a spiral downward and eventually it takes you to somewhere like this honestly if I'm being truthful I'm probably going to have to get arrested to stop but when I do when I do get arrested it's at that point you know I'd like to move forward into sobriety I've had 5 years clean two years clean a year and a half clean hi Mom I'm okay love you if you confess with your mouth in Jesus say Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised you from the dead you'll be saved we are all the same we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and like I said before at the foot of the cross there's no racism there's no gender there's no there's no gender there is no let me repeat that there is there is gender but there is no difference in Salvation with respect to gender if you're a man you get saved if you're a woman you get saved let me tell you something a man will not get to heaven if he's a and doesn't repent of his hity do you use any of the harm reduction Services they offer out here um yeah we use the uh needle exchange then with harm reduction they offer uh like wound care what's going on with the wound on your leg man so what it is is a it's a sar that's caused by an abscess how does that happen we're not really sure to be honest honest uh most of us think it's the Tran that does it the dangerous street drug component is officially called xylazine nicknamed Tran as in tranquilizer for people who use illicit drugs it is an X Factor both unseen and possibly fatal City officials and the FED say Tran is being mixed with opioids uh my name is Roslin Pichardo founder of operation save our city I work with families of homicide victims and I'm a harm reductionist so what is xylazine so xylazine is it's like a tranquilizer not made for human consumption It's Made For Animals it's used on mice it's used on on it's like a sedative that's made it into the drug Supply I mean it's been here for 6 years but we're seeing it a lot more now a drug commonly used to sedate horses is now being linked to overdose deaths across the country trank was detected in 34% of all overdose deaths in 2021 it's like a vasil constrictor it constricts your your veins and it just makes it hard to circulate and then next thing you know you got infection you have amputation you have rotting skin they say that like the filler is like really acidic it's like when you get a cut it's like almost like the acid tries to get out of your system like through like the weak point or something in your veins you know so it's like these wounds they don't they don't heal man I've had this on my leg for like over a year over a year same size man and have you attempted to get any like health care for it nothing uh official you know but um I do take care of it crean gauze soap and water um you know uh meta honey so I have a lot of wound care supplies I had a lot of snacks socks it's just not enough we may have like maybe six seven teams I'm out here from different hospitals but it's just more or less the the magnitude of people that are here coming from all over the country to to consume this stuff that's not even not made for human consumption I would say 70% are not from here 70 80% are not from here I'm from Baltimore I went to rehab like a month ago and I end up leaving with a girl that's from here and been here ever since and basically got stuck down here I got a family back home in Baltimore with three kids and this shit's different like totally different we took a trip back one time and got the dope and it does nothing now so basically I'm up here because this [ __ ] is [ __ ] different like they come here because we have that good [ __ ] you know they come here cuz we got that good drug um this is wild bro I've never seen something like this [ __ ] ever ever in my life like like Baltimore's ran by the gangs and [ __ ] like train ain't even hit Baltimore yet like I'm telling you when it hits Baltimore that shit's about to be a war zone because nothing else going to get anybody High what's going on with your right arm here man I and somebody missed and I end up getting a blood infection and I was septic like last week I was in ICU for 4 days do you know what might have caused it uh Tran and a coke what about you man my voice is mangled because when I was getting hit somebody was hitting me to hit my voice box or I think I mean that's what they say but I'm going on like 3 weeks trink is nasty [ __ ] it's an animal tranquilizer that was used on horses you can look look around and see and go o o oh ultimately it's not that person's fault take the [ __ ] Tran away my [ __ ] leg I'm embarrassed by it I wash clean put antibiotic [ __ ] ointment on it wrapp it every day every time I can I'm in that shower this has been here for five [ __ ] months the flesh eating condition caused by Tran is referred to as necrotizing fasciitis this condition was mentioned briefly during my visit to a harm reduction facility in San Francisco necrotizing fasciitis which is flesh eating disease but I wanted to learn more about what's actually going on beneath the skin when you see these types of Legions so I found a dermatologist named Dr cartright to help break it down sure I'm Martina Cartwright I'm the vice president of medical Affairs for a small Dermatology company xylazine is not an opioid It's actually an anesthetic meant for uh horses and other large animals so necrotizing fasciitis is just a name for dead tissue it causes death of the fascia which is right underneath the skin surface and it can even go deeper than that so what you're seeing that blackened tissue again is dead tissue and below that is a harbored infection M now how long after injecting Tran would it take for this condition to sit in it's hard to say but it often times only takes a few days treatment is very complicated you have to get the individual into the hospital right away to receive IV antibiotics they also have to debre that wound which means you take off the dead layers of skin and tissue and sometimes that can go as deep as the bone if they don't get the immediate treatment it will spread and often times cause a systemic infection called sepsis sepsis is a systemic infection that affects uh all the organs so it's characterized by low blood pressure rapid heart rate increased temperature and high white wood cell count and it often uh has a very high death rate what is the death rate it's over 50% is there any type of treatment for sepsis amputation is the only treatment they're not getting enough blood flow and nutrients to the area where the tissue has died and it just keeps spreading you can think of it almost like water spreading in a puddle it goes from one small place and then it spreads throughout the limb and if they don't seek treatment to get that blood flow back in there they're going to lose their limb once symptoms have progressed beyond their initial stage which is marked by dramatic inflammation of the affected limb the skin begins to corrode after that the only real option is amputation which in America cost $445,000 without insurance so it's not uncommon in Kensington for Tran addicts to chop off their own limbs to stop the disease from progressing onto their internal organs now I can genuinely say that in all my years reporting I have never seen something this horrifying and on a human level I was struck with a piercing sense of anger and genuine frustration that there was actually someone out there probably in plain sight making a killing selling Tran in Philadelphia an EV drug slowly killing thousands of people in real time who even if they miraculously get clean will never recover from the damage it does to their body all in the name of profit because I guess fentanyl just wasn't enough to pay the bills still it's my job as a journalist to speak to everyone so I asked around does anybody know where this stuff comes from from I was told that at the top of the supply chain almost all of Philadelphia's Tran is created by a tight-knit pair of two brothers who've achieved a monopoly on the flow of xylazine in and out of Philadelphia after Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro made it temporarily illegal 6 months ago for veterinarians to prescribe or even possess Xing Governor Shapiro is taking aggressive action to stop the spread of zyline also known as Tran directing the State Department of Health the listed as a scheduled three narcotic the Tran Brothers agreed to meet with me but wouldn't give me an exact address they first told me to go to the parking lot of Max's cheese steaks in North Philly from there they gave me walking directions to the stash house where the door was left wide open for me to [Music] enter and there I was with the Walter White and Jesse Pinkman of Tran this is the Kensington finest they love it there's a lot going on a little bit of dope a little bit of TR little B 50 this should be about like 50 Grand right here this is good for about like $2,000 between 2,000 and 4,000 you know it don't cost that much nether man it don't cost that much I'm sure you've seen a lot of people have died from overdoses from this stuff yeah Molly kochenburger was just 30 years old when an overdose claimed her life her aunt says a dangerous Veterinary tranquilizer was to blame lame we saw that she had Fentanyl and xylene in her system do you feel any sense of like responsibility yeah I feel bad they can't spend no more money with me [ __ ] yeah yeah so for those who don't know what is tran tran is a liquid P it's like a shink obviously but it's already put together as we speak out I got to put it into like a blender and already get it down to a powder form so I can get all my work from it get it done get it on the street and do what you got to do I saw online that it kind of originated as like a Veterinary thing right yeah yeah so when you get your hands on it at first it's not really braking invol until you really like put it together is there like a kind of dirty veterinarian involved somewhere along the way yeah yeah plenty of them plenty of them you know it don't cost that much even he's right for a licensed veterinarian a bottle of xylazine capable of doubling the strength of an ounce of fentanyl costs only $33 is there a limit to how much you can get one time uh sometimes yeah sometimes and what is that what is that limit so AR's bottle I say we probably get about like four or five average 4 to5 bottles okay how much is each bottle so average between I say 300 to 700 come to 1,000 if if the person really stings you don't want you to know what's going on and it's typically veterinarians H yeah well no no no he's the first guy but we talked to the 456 guy yeah yeah I don't go right to the farms and get it know I got some people to make runs I don't really make runs myself but I make sure I pay them very well to get what I need we do we got to do but I need y'all to get here I can't go get in myself do you have any of the um bottles with you you see that bottle right there yeah that's that money right there see my guy ain't moving do you kind of moderate like how much you put into the fil packets yes you got you you don't want to kill them you want them to enjoy theirself you want to kill them you think Tran's like a pretty enjoyable experience yeah yeah it causes an anesthetic effect so lower heart rate a sense of calming it almost Rivals that of heroin H interesting and they don't go through harsh withdraws what does Tran feel like Tran makes me feel like I'm asleep honestly it's kind of like a days I'm from like the heroin days you know I'm in it for the rush you know uh the the euphoric Rush from the drugs Tran really doesn't offer that but what it does offer is a a a cheap ND how much is a single dose of uh trink a single dose of trink like like like in a do bag for yeah $10 for to $10 oh $5 for a bag of fentanyl mixture tranquilizer how many do you think you sell a day hundreds of thousands from a distribution standpoint the Tran Brothers Supply between 15 to 20 blocks in Philadelphia every day with their own bundles of Tran they estimate that each block alone sells 10,000 doses so a block do 100 bundles and 14 bags in a bundle that's about 10,000 packets this economy generates $500,000 every day but as we saw cost many customers their lives and limbs have you seen the effects of it on people's body yes I just I did and it's not good normally if you do the right if you do it the right way it won't happen like that but if you miss it will tear your ass out do you feel any sense of like responsibility for that no no responsibility how come because I do not the one who get giv it to them directly so you have other people that work for you yes I do how many people do you think work under you 50 average what's like their average age typically average age teenagers dealers teenagers older people yeah sometimes but they normally the drug addicts I see you have a some protection on you here yeah I got to all the time Glocks sming wons Mo whatever can get our hands on the Glocks is our favorite they are very very reliable there's a lot of robbers everybody can get hands on this stuff why is it so hard to get this stuff why yeah because we stingy we not going to show everybody we don't want everybody gain our money so when you see people that got blocked that's do want real good numbers they like to rob the hustlers and when they rob the hustlers they messing with me and therefore I got to take care of how do you take care of stuff normally die normally die you ever shot anybody before yes sir how was that experience I don't know I don't remember how' you first start doing this friends poverty no cas and seeing that they like it better than dope how would you describe your upbringing like in general um Regular nothing crazy Regular property how about your like home life regular but it wasn't enough how old were you you think when you first started to just like figure you didn't want to work a regular job no J really no not even for like one shift at Starbucks no how long have you been doing this for I say about about 10 years how do you feel about what's going on in k& K uh I'm not ready to far from that area but I know my stuff is over there and they loving it you know some people got dope some people got dope for train some people got D with f all don't know what you need your hands on I forgot to mention Tran prices are kept fixed by the cartel the original crooked veterinarian at the top of the supply chain doesn't sell to the Tran brothers or anyone directly they sell wholesale to a broker who works for a Mexican drug cartel what are those guys like sturdy very sturdy they wouldn't do what I'm doing do they kind of control things on like a high level yes they do prices people lives for my own safety I don't want to say which one but the cartel sets a fixed price for xylazine bottles and closely monitors Tran as it travels down the supply chain particularly as it moves from the Tran Brothers onto the blocks like Kensington if any blocks are found to be cutting and weakening Tran to maximize profit or getting xylazine from outside veterinarians they would almost instantly be killed and the cartel doesn't have to do it themselves they can get you touched without even being here really yes sir they'll drop the price just like a bag on somebody's head yeah no problem and that word just kind of circulates around in the past year though this Market has become increasingly difficult to regulate due to an overseas manufacturer called hanhong Pharmaceuticals which is an unregulated company based in Wuhan China this company which should be a household name is funded directly by the infamous Wuhan Institute of virology but I like having a YouTube channel so I'm going to save my cross analysis for a later date anyways handh Pharmaceuticals was recently revealed to be the company solely responsible for selling fentol precursors to the Mexican drug cartels who then bake these chemicals in the laboratory into pills and powder to import into the United States because of the success of the Open Air Tran Market in Philadelphia this company recently figured out about xylazine and so about a year ago hanhong began selling their own variant of xylazine but instead of liquid in a powder form for only $20 a kilo which they've been attempting to sell to drug dealers in Philadelphia on platforms like and WhatsApp unlike the trade of fentol which requires the cartel as a middleman to bake the precursors hanh Hong's invention of powdered xylazine allows them to cut out the cartel as a middleman and sell directly to dealers for a period of time this was a real GameChanger for Tran dealers they can get it off the internet they can order it from anywhere and what's sad is you don't even have to be in the veterinarian field to receive it through the mail from Chinese dealers however this majorly weakened the control of the cartel who had already set a fixed price for liquid xylazine bottles leading them to impose a death sentence on anyone caught receiving or trading powdered Chinese xylazine this green light on someone's life however is imposed remotely because Philadelphia is so poor all the cartel has to do is contact the city's gang leaders through private channels with someone's picture their name and a price in the following days a Feeding Frenzy for that person's life will ensue three gunmen firing dozens of shots in broad daylight killing a 19-year-old man who was sitting on some steps from an outside perspective it may look like gang Warfare or just simply black-on-black crime but it's actually a proxy war between Chinese corporations and Mexican drug cartels for this reason the Advent of Tran in Philadelphia has led to a major spike in homicides and almost nobody has a bigger Target on their head than the Tran Brothers what are your aspirations like for your whole life I get in and get out I've been in for quite a while but since the shink and the F know I've been here profit has been very very very Skyrocket so ium Haven been doing this too long but until then I got to do what I got to do so you do think you'll get out of the dub game eventually yes I will what do you want to do when you're out get a business I like cars I like fancy cars what's your favorite kind of car dodge charger Hellcat Grand Cherokee I like money I like money what's your favorite way to spend money like after you get it oh my [ __ ] [ __ ] food fancy cars jewelry like taking girls out to restaurants yes hell yeah what kind of do you like I like pastas I like pizza I like steak most important L I'm a lamb type guy oh nice what do you think's the best place in Philly to get lamb lamb here like dark skinned woman yeah yeah attitude or more calm both nice only they do know how to [ __ ] listen have you ever tried this stuff before [ __ ] no well never you think drugs are harmful yes it is harmful how come we don't like it why look you see what it's doing it's killing everybody do you feel any sense of like responsibility no they going to [ __ ] buy it off of me you want to sell drugs tomorrow guess what they going to buy it off of you too man all kids stay away from drugs all kids stay away from drugs all right guys appreciate it thanks for your time after leaving the Tran brother's house I felt conflicted on one hand you could say that they're evil I do think it's evil they're taking advantage of people that have addiction problems mental illness they're producing a drug that destroys people's lives and bodies but on the other hand even they have caveats that protect them from responsibility and give them an ethical High Ground no matter what for example they say Tran users don't go through harsh withdrawals and they don't go through harsh withdrawals meaning they're providing a less painful experience than a typical fentol dealer however we learned from Dr cartright this is not true the come down from that drug is so horrific and painful for them they'll check themselves out of the hospital and start all over again they also claim that necrotizing fasciitis only sets in if you miss a vein if you do it the right way it won't happen like that but if you miss it will tell your meaning it's all the fault of the user for not doing it right this is also false it's more likely to happen if you miss a vein but regardless it it will occur and most interestingly they say that if they don't do it someone else will framing themselves as powerless cogs in the drug machine they going to [ __ ] buy it off me you want to sell drugs tomorrow guess what they're going to buy it off of you I believe that at one point probably early on they realized that making Tran was wrong but after seeing such astronomical profits come in their brains constructed protective Pathways to Shield their souls from guilt and flood their conscience with the same affirmation yes what I'm selling is harmful but if I stop somebody will take my position therefore it is not wrong for me to profit from this because even if I abstain from selling it the market will continue it all reflects a deeply antisocial alienated nihilistic worldview in which the individual has absolutely no power in influencing or changing the trajectory of a doomed Society recognizing the spiritual sickness that runs through the veins of this collapsing country greed death and Decay become seen as absolutes and so the alienated individual figures they're just temporary placeholders for an omnipresent evil an evil that will exist with or without them I began to wonder if this Psychology was shared by even more heinous criminals like child traffickers or elephant post does anybody actually accept Embrace and consciously spread evil or do they all construct Frameworks to avoid moral responsibility and speaking of moral responsibility what are the ethics behind what I'm doing is my coverage of places like Kensington unethical and kind of [ __ ] up since making my last video in San Francisco I've become aware of an entire side of the internet particularly YouTube that films homeless people under the guise of humanization and does huge numbers and understandably so poverty is pornographic the difference is you don't generally jerk off to homeless content or Hood Vlogs but it tantalizes a similarly curious part of the brain that gets excited by The Forbidden and dangerous for that reason Kensington is pretty much the number one homeless YouTube content Zone in the country in fact there's like 50 YouTube documentaries up right now just like this [Music] one which all follow pretty much the same marketing strategy city of zombes further dehumanizing Americans suffering from necrotizing fasciitis and purposely using salacious language to collect ad revenue from views which because of our declining attention span which also comes as a result of a Chinese scop called Tik Tok are best driven by clickbait titles and shocking key frames upon further investigation it would appear that kensington's largest export besides Tran is definitely content a two- syllable term that represents the transformation of art into a flat commodity of which value is determined solely by engagement not quality meaning a content creator could realize that the product he's selling is bad for society but so long as the market demand is there he will continue you see where I'm going with this the Tran Brothers aren't the only ones profiting from Human suffering in Kensington and many locals feel that much of the content filmed here does much more harm than it does good for the neighborhood well everybody I see on YouTube that come down here and get some content I feel as though it's not for the right intentions right for they don't ask the right questions they just record they try to get the best video they try go viral they try to get attention to their Channel but the message ain't what it's supposed to be you understand what I'm saying meet there a lot of Originals right here everybody that walked up is literally from down here like literally 20 plus years yeah I live down here all my life type [ __ ] [ __ ] up now I'm having motion BL F that baby I'm [Music] a about see my man hot he don't even right but for the camera though it was nice hey that was fire yeah definitely was man so growing up here what was it like man if I can describe one word hell in what sense [ __ ] mom's dying [ __ ] dying for to be honest um before the you know early '90s this used to be a Caucasian neighborhood and there was my story yes it was a Caucasian neighborhood this was Kensington in 1982 you're probably asking yourself what the hell happened it's a long story but let's get into it as a Philadelphia native myself who grew up in a neighborhood called Fairmount just a 15-minute drive from Kensington I've always been aware of the chaotic corrupt and confusing history of Philadelphia and at some point while discussing the history of Kensington with locals I realized that was the true story that needed coverage it's obvious to the naked eye that Kensington is horrifying but few ask the question how did it get like this unlike San Francisco's tenderloin which is mainly a result of neglect in Progressive policy Kenington is a story of police corruption Dee rooted segregation and now is the face of a blatant scheme by property developers associated with Temple University who've laid out a 5-year plan to revitalize the Kensington Corridor six blocks down the street from the open air drug market across Lehigh Avenue developers have already began mass buyouts of property both residential and Commercial and the police in turn are helping them to displace homeless people and push them further up the street toward the open air drug Market with this in mind it's quite obvious that the city is allowing the open air drug Market to flourish in order to lower property values and drive out local residents in businesses that way way they can buy it up at a low cost then begin enforcing drug laws push addicts further away and turn Kensington into a full-blown gentrified Corridor complete with juice bars yoga studios and so forth sounds crazy but as you'll learn for Philadelphia this is regular let's go back to the year 1900 back then Philadelphia was a cesspool of rough and tumble European immigrants from countries like Ireland Italy Germany and Beyond at this time Philadelphia was 94.5% white and 72% foreign born imag imagine that one of these immigrants was my great great-grandfather Jeremiah Callahan a poor Irish Catholic Farm Boy from Cork Ireland after the Potato Famine Jeremiah hatched a plan to catch a boat to the new world and ended up settling in West Philadelphia in a row home with seven children and one bathroom despite overcrowding Philadelphia became known as The Paradise of the skilled worker wages were high and Philadelphia emerged as the center of manufacturing for many Industries but most notably Kensington was the center of the textile industry with the Bey Factory which employed over a 100,000 people in 1915 but after World War I kicked off and the Great Depression followed in 1928 Philadelphia experienced what is called deindustrialization as factories shut down and for whatever reason the textile industry moved to the American South by 1935 Philadelphia lost 2third of all manufacturing jobs leading to mass unemployment and significant Urban Decay many of these European immigrants who believe that America would be paraded I found themselves jobless and pissed off now simultaneously 6 million African-Americans were leaving the South heading north to cities like Chicago Detroit and of course Philadelphia this was called The Great Migration this migration drastically changed the demographics of Philadelphia now it's important to remember that before this 91% of African-Americans lived in the South and while slavery was technically abolished in 1865 after the collapse of the Confederacy the following decades proved to be no less difficult for southern blacks the white formerly slaveholding majority in the South fought viciously against black integration During the Reconstruction Era they formed organizations like the K clu Clan a vigilante group of terrorists whose foundational goal was to prevent black Americans from voting or achieving political power and almost all of the initial KKK members were former Confederate soldiers and in just two decades they assassinated hundreds of politicians and lynched 4600 civilians sharecropping also was running rampant and Jim Crow laws were militantly enforced by the police Clan and just ordinary White Citizens anyways black Southerners had a million reasons to leave the South so they did however when they arrived to Philadelphia they were not in Paradise they found themselves in a very different but still quite hostile environment which makes sense given the fact that they immigrated in the midst of an economic Decline and were seen as a threat to job security in 1939 World War II begins just as black population in Philadelphia hits 11% millions of men both black and white go to war then then in 1945 the war ends and all the troops come home President Roosevelt signed something into law called the GI Bill aka the serviceman's Readjustment Act which provides a wide range of benefits for returning veterans most importantly the GI Bill provided lowcost mortgages and generous financial aid that made it possible for almost every returning veteran to afford a nice new family home and so the idea for Suburbia was hatched it's important to remember that at this point in 1944 Suburbia as we know it today did not exist there was no cacs strip malls or sprawling subdivisions surrounding every major US city there was only really two types of areas urban and rural centers and as we know the urban centers were in very bad shape so a real estate developer named William J levit and his company levit and Sons had an idea use the military method to mass-produce homes on Old Farmland that way he can create new communities overnight the mass construction of lowcost low density residential developments in the rural areas surrounding the cities particularly Philadelphia New York and Boston these were called levit towns and were built very quickly to accommodate veterans returning home from World War II which was nearly half of All American males in fact Lev and Sons worked directly with the Veterans Administration to subsidize these mortgage payments within the first week 67,000 veterans both black and white applied to live in levit towns this is levit toown Pennsylvania a new suburban community of 60,000 people midway between between Philadelphia and Trenton New Jersey yet 99% of black applicants were denied why it seems pretty unconstitutional especially given the fact that levit towns were partnered directly with the VA but there was nothing the VA could do here was the typical experience of a black veteran attempting to apply for a home in Lev toown I walked up to the uh salesperson and I said to him We're very interested in your house and we'd like an application and I remember what he said to me he looked at me he said it's not me but the management has not as yet decided whether he's going to sell these houses to Negroes or not the management he's referring to was the HC or the homeowners loan corporation who had a plan to dramatically segregate Philadelphia through a practice known as redlining now the HC made it imperative that these newly built suburbs in Lev towns were to be whites only new middle class families of Lev toown had one other thing in common they were all white and we understood that it was going to be all white and we were very happy to buy a home here in fact they carved out the entire metro area to confine black people to the North Inner West and southeast of the city which were the most neglected parts of Philadelphia and so white Suburbia was born my great-grandparents picked up and left West Philadelphia in the early 1950s and never returned back to the big city as did 150,000 other white philadelphians over the course of the next two decades between between 1945 and 1970 Philadelphia's white population decreased from 87% to 62% this Mass migration was known as white flight in an ideal world it would have just been called flight but the hc's dramatic racial restrictions made this impossible anyways by 1970 Philadelphia was the most predominantly black City on the east coast and fell into deep poverty as the suburbs expanded but Kensington in this context was a true anomaly because it was one of the few non-segregated neighborhoods in Philadelphia so the HC who wrote the blueprint for redlining and segregation designated Kensington in 1945 as a concentration of undesirables including low-class whites and Negroes Kensington whites really didn't leave until the 1990s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s Kensington was the center of the Irish American criminal underworld specifically a gang called The k&a Gang a group of Irish burglars and methamphetamine traffickers who decided to set up shop on the corner of Kensington and elany does that bring a bell it's the street corner where we filmed the first half of this video for several decades this corner flourished as an Irish controlled meth market and even back then police looked the other way but in the late ' 80s crack cocaine was introduced to the inner city this form of cocaine comes concentrated it is smoked rather than sniffed it produces an intense high within 5 to 10 seconds that last only 5 to 10 minutes leading to a spike in homicides an open air gang Warfare that ravaged Philadelphia as a result Philadelphia experienced a second white flight between 1990 and 2010 white population in Philadelphia decreased from 57% down to 33% of the city and for the first time Suburban population actually exceeded Urban population in Philadelphia the Kensington whites including the k& gang were among those whites who left the city in the 90s this left their open air drug Market pretty much unattended so crack and heroin traffickers who were mainly Black and Latino decided to set up shop on the corner once used and occupied by the Irish when the '90s h a lot of Hispanics and blacks moved into the neighborhood that's when the drug trafficking got real heavy did a lot of the Hispanics and blacks who moved here were they coming from other parts of Philly or they're migrating from different states and cities other parts of Philadelphia it ain't to it ain't too many Outsiders over here shockingly Philadelphia police continue their look the other way policy but locals say that was only for the sale of drugs not public consumption what you see today has only been allowed for the past few years when I was young they used to get high in the band of houses they used to hide they used to hide from people to do this they used to keep it more consed they used to be more more you know what I'm saying but you know what they told me though when I told them like what is y'all doing go in aband the houses and get high why yall doing this [ __ ] out here you know what they told me they said if I go in aband the houses and get high and I ow dat ain't nobody going to find me so they really feel comfortable getting high outside so cuz when they o somebody walk past somebody see them and they give them CPR and I have gave him CPR plenty of times and gave him n plenty of time but like back in the day like I said they used to go B the house they used to hide from this this always been a problem it's just now it's outside for everybody to see now so in terms of legality is it legal to use and sell drugs in this particular radi if you don't get locked up what you call it say if a cop walk past you right and you getting high outside and you don't get locked up you get no cations no nothing what you call it it's legal almost but what about actually selling drugs that's still illegal right uh it's definitely still illegal definitely can't sell drugs definitely drugs yeah this is a very important distinction to make while in recent years Philadelphia police have turned an extreme Blind Eye to public drug consumption in Kensington the same does not apply to drug dealing like it once did during the days of the Irish mob a major drug bust in Kensington this morning Philadelphia district attorney Larry crer announced the arrest of more than 57 suspects for allegedly selling fentanyl heroin cocaine and Other Drugs many locals feel like this sort of selective enforcement is essentially trapment that's how they that now that's how they get black you know that's how they get us they give it to us what do you mean they give it to you the government bring it into the United States they don't tax it so they lock us up for it if the government could tax it they we wouldn't go to jail for all right so this I want to do a side note all right let me do a side note side note my goal is to have a dog show in Philadelphia so for everybody watching this my Instagram is Bully love kennel 27 I breed offs for living I do it for a hobby if anybody want a free dog they not they they expensive but there is some dogs I Will Bless some families with you just got to give me a good enough reason why you need it for free feel like Michael Vick gave dog owners and Philly a bad reputation yes he did [ __ ] [ __ ] you talking about hell did but you know he came back from here apologized yes I bre dogs I do not fight I do not fights Michael Vic does have a fascinating story of redemption and rebirth but anyways that's the story for a different day as I mentioned earlier kn& is on the frontier of an ongoing class war which right now has an obvious dividing line Lehi Avenue Lehi right there where the bridge at let me take you on a brief drive here from the open air drug Market six blocks south to give you an idea of just how dramatic a contrast there is We Begin our drive on the corner of kn& at the gates of Hill and drive south on Kensington Avenue as we saw there are thousands of people here shooting up and smoking Tran fentol meth and heroin almost every business aside from a select few is permanently closed as you continue to drive a few blocks there's still Decay adult video stores cops standing around strange pedestrians staring at you ice cream trucks driving around looking for opiate addicts on the cown and more abandoned commercial property you finally approach the bridge which marks Lehi Avenue as soon as you cross almost every property is for sale or undergoing active construction we're told this entire neighborhood has been torn down in the past 5 years after developer staged a complete bulldoze of South Kensington to make room for new luxury apartment buildings and Artisan commercial storefronts aside from the loud construction noise things are pretty chill here there are no drug addicts or police inide you begin to spot well-off white people like myself you see dyed hair and cold brew Ukraine flags and BLM related art people are in the streets actively revitalizing do you know what this used to be used to be a factory a factory yeah you see Amazon delivery boxes Porsches with New Jersey plates and people that you can almost guarantee are not from North Philadelphia no disrespect it's like stepping into a different world you almost can't believe that the corner of kn& is just 10 blocks away from here but you're quickly reminded when you see an advertisement for the Abode at Oxford in Kensington a newly built luxury apartment building oh I guess nobody actually lives here yet this whole shit's like an empty construction site yeah nobody lives here yet if you walk around this neighborhood which which I guess is like the north central Philadelphia area like straight up every single Street has probably two to three active construction sites and they're all building [ __ ] like those apartments right there which kind of have like a Philly R home Vibe but if as you can see like they all have the exact same uh like house number font the Abode at Oxford in Kensington which offers a 10-year tax abatement I don't know what [ __ ] type of Ponzi scheme is happening here but moving somewhere for a phase 2 tax abatement in North Philly it's kind of weird but it looks kind of nice I've seen a lot of things but this dramatic contrast between Kensington North and Kensington South was something I've never seen in my life it was as if Lehi Avenue was an imaginary force field that blocked all the problems of North Kensington from seeping into the South but according to locals the South part of Kensington going all the way down to Fishtown which now is the center of gentrification in Philadelphia used to more or less resemble a just a decade ago listen I'm from Dolphin your dolphin station it used to be just like this they gening us because all the Caucasians used to live all way out the boulevards and yeah and have to commute to downtown now they want to ride their bicycles or they want to hop on the L without getting their car now if you go down dolphin I got shot 15 times on Dolphin this was eight years ago you go down there those houses back then were worth 15,000 they're worth 700,000 right now yeah they know what they doing so what they doing is they're letting all the addicts be out here so the homeowners sell and get the hell out of here and next thing you know what happens all the contractors swoop in buy that [ __ ] at the low and sell it at the top yes sir and who going to buy at the top there ain't too many blacks and colors that's really like really spending millions and hundreds of thousands on their properties and stuff like that think that we not stupid I got a college degree he got a college degree like yeah but but it's the color of our skin no disrespect the color of our skin n they make the case that the city of Philadelphia is essentially playing inside baseball with developers and contractors by allowing k& to flourish in its current form that way property values will dramatically decrease allowing for a full-scale revitalization at a much lower cost this may sound like a conspiracy theory but consider that a year ago Philadelphia simultaneously evacuated its two largest underground homeless encampments forcing homeless people above ground and sending them directly to the corner of K officials today cleared out several homeless encampments in that neighborhood it was all part of an effort to tackle the city's growing opioid crisis one of these encampments was called Conrail which ran along the train tracks in South Kensington for multiple decades I don't know if you're familiar with gurnie Street Conrail um growing up I just remember people living um where Conrail is well it's a train track that is like their City they would come up here they would buy their drugs they would go back into the train track so so clean up here you what I'm saying like when I say they had a city down there they probably had 100,000 people down there yeah and then next thing you know now they're up on the surface like you know with everyone else and with nowhere to go now it's our turn and then the the the F up part is right the the it's a law where a guy can have 10 bundles of dope in front of the cops shooting up nothing nothing's done to them nothing said to them but let another person sell one bag of weed in front of him he's locked the [ __ ] up what you what you going to in his pocket for my dude what you going in his pocket for because he's sleeping and I'm about to leave but why you why you going in his pocket though [ __ ] his money in his pocket he's okay he's okay nobody know nobody know but you nobody know but you it's okay he's okay how do you know first off he's asking why you going to a pocket she's having a million in one excuses say oh it's cuz he's not going to get robbed just leave him alone he's all right you about to Rob him be careful Frank be careful Frank all right Frank make sure you got everything in your pocket Frank all right I know you don't give a [ __ ] Frank but we care she's going in your pocket come on whether it's true or not that k& is just a product of one big development scheme is to be determined however one thing is for sure Philadelphia is gentrifying at a more rapid Pace than almost anywhere else in America right now and obviously while it's better to live next to a yoga studio than it is to an open Air Tran Market simply revitalizing one area and just pushing the problem further away doesn't actually solve anything it's only a temporary Band-Aid for problems like drugs and crime which are endemic in our our society eventually like we see in San Francisco the criminal element of every city which is only repressed by gentrification will grow to reclaim the city it was pushed out of this kind of Rapid development has proved to be totally unsustainable and results in the emboldening of a hyper localized Criminal underclass Who spends their entire free time preying on transplants in a recent episode we covered a burglar named Jack the bipper in San Francisco here is how he justifies his motivation for stealing this [ __ ] honestly it became a of mine because the Google techies that started coming by they were so [ __ ] dumb so stupid they' pull up in their [ __ ] new Tesla jump out the car doors [ __ ] wide like [ __ ] left open with hell of [ __ ] in there dude greed could only hit you so much dude and it's also it's like dude I feel like it was more so we had to teach them guys a lesson you know it's like come on dude you're just going to leave all your [ __ ] there every day of the week like no matter what I'm talking about like when they go to work like you know they'll leave their doors unlocked no matter what like as you can see much of his desire to do crime is a reaction to San Francisco's gentrification which rapidly disrupted the economy and cultural identity of the city cultural capital actually matters and Kensington is home to many local artists who aren't homeless and don't approve of what the city has allowed their neighborhood to turn into this is my homie right here at Big Banks Kenzo he been holding K down for a long time I S a bag for real stash that boy going to be mad that [ __ ] going to be bad for real hey bro you already know I used to all the work in my sock still on the I can't go to the spot [ __ ] on the face of my hood if you with me you good baby I got he says that since cops began turning a Blind Eye in Kensington it's become a magnet for drug users all around the country some people come down here I talked to this one boy he said he was from Memphis he came down here 8 years ago and got stuck and just been comfortable down here how you do that I I make clothes like bro said I give clothes out to these people for free I gave one guy clothes he found my Instagram when he moved to California got on his feet he got his life together and then I just found out he ODed out there all fting off and it's like Dam you left down here to get on your feet and you still went to wherever you went to thinking you found peace and still got caught up in there so it's really a mindset it don't matter where you at bro some of these people really had mental problems schizophrenia like they be having serious issues going on with them something that we can't help them like but then it's like if they know they can come here and not do it elsewhere it makes hair even worse you got remember it's little kids down here just like it is out and Seattle and all that bro that's walking the school that got walk pastes we just talking about the library I got a 10-year-old son he know that the library is called nid Park he never knew it as the library I knew it as yeah and I just moved out the neighborhood I ain't going to lie bro I I have moved out the neighborhood if the real estate conspiracy is true the plan is working big Banks Kenzo a member of the creative class whose entire identity is based around the neighborhood is leaving after 27 years out of concerns for the safety of his son Developers obviously don't care but tearing down old school neighborhoods to build homogenized hipster zones like you see in Williamsburg Brooklyn or Silver Lake Los Angeles is a very short-sighted decision because it ultimately erases the culture and history of the neighborhood which are the very factors that made it attractive to transplants in the first place yet this is all justified in the name of safety a strange and politicized term that leads to many questions safety from who and safety from what who is the unsafe person and who are we keeping them away from does this mean keeping drug itics away from children what about the 10,000 children living in Kensington or does it mean keeping gang members away from grandmothers which is impossible because they typically live together in my opinion what safety means in this context without question is keeping Temple University students away from Philadelphia locals let me explain Temple University is a predominantly white relatively expensive University in the middle of North Philly when I say the middle it's in the middle of North Philly it's only about 3 mil from k&a and for for many decades Temple has had a reputation as a very dangerous place to go to school two students were robbed on 16th Street both inside of Temple's Patrol Zone however in the past decade Temple has gone above and beyond to rehabilitate its image and increase enrollment and it's definitely worked they've expanded their police force to include safety initiatives like the walking escort program and expanded their patrol boundaries to include a 50 block radius that just barely borders the Kensington neighborhood to the east now this Temple Patrol bound has gradually expanded as Temple University has systematically purchased blocks upon blocks of North Philadelphia row homes to convert into student hous to clarify Temple hasn't done this directly but through their shell companies Temple Nest departments Temple Villas and Temple Town realy it should come as no surprise that many of the properties in South Kensington past Lehi Avenue are being developed specifically by these companies I know this might sound crazy but hear me out I think that Temple University president J Jason winguard Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenny police chief Kevin bethl and the Tran brothers are all Partners in a four-way real estate scam to build an Equinox Gym in Stumptown Coffee Roasters on the corner of Kensington and alany in 5 years I'm obviously joking but the point I'm making is that speculating over who's doing what and why this is happening is kind of futile at this point there's no real possible way to actually resist gentrification and no amount of awareness in the world could possibly disrupt these Market forces the reality is that everyday life for people doing drugs on the corner of K is absolute hell but there's one perspective we haven't heard from the female perspective women make up less than 28% of homeless people but their experience on the streets is often times even more rough than it is for males what you're about to see is an interview with two homeless women who are currently living on the streets of Kensington I should warn you before proceeding many of the subjects discussed in this interview involve childhood sexual abuse and maybe very disturbing to some viewers um I'm Jessica I've been out here for 10 10 years 12 years it's a long time yeah about you uh my name's Melissa I've been out here on and off for the past 3 years um I was living out of my car when I got evicted from my apartment now I'm officially on the street cuz cops took my car a month ago I lost my full-time job I was a functioning addict so I was still working full-time um when I lost my job uh during Co I kind of push me back with all my rent bills what was the job you had prior to co um I'm a medical biller I'm certified we were working from home for a while and then they kind of did the layoffs um about seven eight months home that's part why I relapsed too I had four years clean and during Co I was just having a lot of things coming at me all at once and that's how I relapsed and plus me stuck in and not being able to go anywhere to keep busy I I like to keep busy to keep me so and I wasn't able to do that cuz everything was shut down so that's part of the reason why I relapsed so where do you sleep now wherever I can find it safe where I'm not going to get robbed or you know a lot of people are going to come at me so um usually I try to park that are close by um they're usually pretty safe at night right so um but yeah anywhere around here I could find are there any particular challenges you guys feel like you face out here as women um yeah definitely we're definitely uh targeted over men um as far as robberies um sexual assaults I had um it was like 2: in the morning and this car kept driving by and there were two people in it and there and I was walking and there was no one around and the one got out and tried to pull me in and luckily a car that was passing got out and said I got your plates if you don't let her go but I mean there have been times where that hasn't happened and you know what I mean it it is what it is I would like to get clean I've been getting high I mean since 11 11 years old yeah how did you first get introduced to drugs um my mom my mom what drug did she first introduce you to uh coladapin when I was 11 so Pharmaceuticals is where it began for you yeah um but she smoked crack I never smoked crack and then when I was 15 she got clean off crack and uh developed a dope habit and we was getting high one day and I thought she not at off and she wound up dying so she died when I was 16 D you were there yeah I was with her I thought she just not at all I mean like it hurt me but my mom did a lot of [ __ ] up [ __ ] yeah to me you know was your dad in the picture uh no not really after my mom left him for a drug dealer he just you know and then she was with him for like 2 years he caught a case and went to jail and he didn't snitch so like the guy he was getting qu quantity off of the guy he was getting quantity off of had a thing for little girls so instead of my mom tricking them she would send them to my room and it started when I was 9 and from 9 to 11: um she would you know pimp me out home I didn't find that out till I was 15 that she was pimping me out home that's [ __ ] horrible I'm sorry to hear that like and then and then and then like she wanted the pity like oh well Jess how do you think I felt like I would hear my daughter screaming in pain and my high would get [ __ ] up and DHS got involved but they didn't do [ __ ] like I went to the hospital and they examined me and they were like she's got scar tissue damage down there she's got like and DHS never followed up or nothing and I had to stay there so but when she died it still hurt like that's still my mom when your mom passed away was that kind of a wakeup call for you where you feel like you wanted to get clean yeah yeah I did get clean I moved to J I moved to um Jersey for a little bit but um then I just came back to Philly and then uh I just couldn't couldn't like handle you know what I mean and one thing you mentioned is that you started doing konop pin when you were 11 years old how many people out here do you think like began their spiral into addiction via pharmaceutical drugs oh everybody because um I would say like 90% 90% at least because after she died I stayed away from the heroin and then when I was like 19 I started doing perks which led to oxies which led to and I I was working I was an office manager at an MRI office so like I had a job in an apartment and then I left that job to work for the city and you know it was just it was just all too much s that's how I actually um got introduced with opiates and heroin cuz I was in pain management I was in a really bad car accident so I was in pain management on the pain medication oxy and then when the DEA started tighten up the rules having doctors cut the medication um I got cut off it and I couldn't afford buying the pills off the street it was just way too expensive but physical symptoms it's hard to just stop and um the heroin and dope was cheaper so that's how I got it and I didn't even get introduce to that until my 30s I was shocked it seemed that from coast to coast the vast majority of homeless addicts that I talked to began their spiral downward as a result of being prescribed opiates by a doctor after sustaining a serious personal injury gradually their tolerance to prescribe drugs like oxycotton and Percocet would build this would lead to financial hardship which would in turn prompt them to turn to stronger and cheaper Street opiates like fentel heroin and Tran it's clear that without question our society has completely failed these people it's almost inp comprehensible that our government is using our tax dollars to send billions to military aid to fight proxy wars in countries like Ukraine and Israel while major American cities like Philadelphia Los Angeles Portland Seattle and Beyond host actual portals of death like KN Anda no matter where you stand on the political Spectrum it's clear that something needs to be done immediately and no one feels this way more than the drug users who were living in this hell out here do you think this is a good thing that the city is allowing this absolutely not no I think it's awful that the city allows it that the cops just sit there and some of the insane things I've seen out here you can't make it up and like what just a lot of craziness that happens with the people make you do dates for free and they say if you don't yeah if you don't you you'll get arrested like they want sexual favors or they'll arrest you even though you committed no crime I was I used to live at front and Burks and I went down to front and ceil beore to sell my stamps and I bought some food and I'm walking home and this cop circled me like two or three times and I had grocery bags and by the time I got to CE will be more he was parked there he left my groceries and he's like if you don't give me a price I'm putting you in handcuffs I'm like I'm not [ __ ] I ain't giving you a price that's like incriminating myself so he put me in pubs put me in the back I'm like where's the [ __ ] body cam like where but this was like 6 seven years ago like where's the body cam where's the [ __ ] car cam and he got in the back seat we parked somewhere he got in the back seat and then and then he left me there and then and then he would have the balls when he would pass me to be like oh are you good are you all right you need you know is anybody bothering you yeah you you you're bothering me yeah like you're bothering me like you just made me [ __ ] I've heard similar um stories like none of that's ever happened to me personally but I've heard similar stories from other people um other females down here um but I just think it's terrible something does need to be done I people down here need help they don't need to be treated like trash and not like somebody's brother sister mother daughter they're somebody's family member and it's just terrible how people are treat yeah there's even cops that there's my ex his F his um Godfather is a was a cop and he used to take the dope off the dealers and bring it home to him you know what I mean like the the cops a out here like ain't no good like they'll watch you a lot of corruption yeah it's like a lot of corruption you know I mean a lot of people would say that these kind of zones are necessary because if you don't contain the problem it it'll spread like wildfire to the rest of the city do you guys agree with that narrative I I understand um their thought process in that I I I understand that but at the same time people need legitimate help down here not just throwing noran or like you know like yeah like or putting people in jail things like that like the way they're taking the approach to offer assistance and help it it's just not working they need to come up with a better plan is that an ice cream truck huh yes that's constant do they sell a lot of ice cream around here yes they do and water ice yes uh so the addicts let me ask you a question why is the ice cream popularized in the addict Community like a lot of addicts buy a lot of ice cream I always L ice cream and when I with myter all buys I love ice cream anyway addicts we especially when we're coming when we're coming off of it sweets say and ice cream is the best option especially person you guys want to get some ice cream right now I would love some ice [Music] h [Music] this is [Music] [Music] specializ [Music] hello I hope you found this documentary to be eye openening as you know for the past couple episodes we've been covering drugs and homelessness particularly focused on providing a historical analysis of how many of America's current openair drug markets came to be but what about the flip side of the coin what doesn't get much coverage is places where all drugs or even the consumption of alcohol are outlawed and prohibition is milit ly enforced by a standing army of beach cups many of you especially philadelphians of Irish and Italian descent may be aware of the gorgeous Beach Town of Ocean City New Jersey an All-American summer vacation town which sports the number one lowest crime rate in America and it's been this way for over a hundred years founded by Methodist women associated with the temperance movement in the late 1800s who wanted to create a strict moral environment as opposed to nearby Atlantic City Ocean City is the only town on the Jersey Shore that's refused to lift the ban on alcohol even after prohibition ended in 1933 so directly after filming in Philadelphia we decided to drive to Ocean City AKA reverse Kensington to do some interviews and go undercover to see how dry this town really is my name is Andrew Callahan and you're watching party pooper what are you doing are you drinking beer oh [ __ ] we got one right here we got a life teenager right here he's coming down here to drink beer he's got lemonade vodka in there take that [ __ ] out of town you guys [ __ ] with King Von F if you'd like to see our new episode Ocean City Streets go to our patreon www.patreon.com channel5 as many of you know patreon supports our entire independent production budget as well as gives you access to exclusive cuts of uncensored extended and unreleased content that we can't show anywhere else if you enjoy our journalism and want to support it would mean a lot if you could sign up take care Channel 5 live worldwide Hollywood and Vine [ __ ] the authority Channel 5 News Channel 55 we don't [ __ ] with custers and five is the best number
