As he looks out over the chaos at the corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues — the sprawling homeless encampments, the people injecting heroin and nodding off in the street, the dealers, the trash, the suffering — this is what Flac sees: Money.
Flac says he is only following the riches. Since the temporary closure of the Somerset El stop two months ago, the growing crowds of people who use drugs and live on the street have been moving up Kensington Avenue. There are more customers at Allegheny now, more money to be made, and Flac and his supplier want to plant their flag.
In a 1.9-mile stretch covering the narrow streets along Kensington Avenue, near McPherson — an area smaller than Old City — police have identified 80 corners with open-air drug markets. On a weekday afternoon in late April, as Morales plastered a kitchen wall, a gunman from another block opened fire on the Hart Lane dealers, spraying the street with bullets. No one was hit, but the gunfire sounded so close, Morales said he could almost feel the pressure of the firing gun from his kitchen floor.Outside, the dealers weren’t so shaken.
In the heroin trade, the count — the money — is king. And by 2019, the count from the 600 block of Clementine was staggering. Investigators believe the drug ring there was selling $400,000 worth a week.And there are streets that make even more: Small, unassuming corners like Weymouth, Custer, and Reach operate like the Main Streets of the neighborhood’s drug trade, with dealers competing for prime commercial real estate.
And he notes that, despite decades of police responses, investigators rarely bother to study whether the community’s quality of life improves after a series of drug busts.Temple criminal justice researchers But the dealing continues on the surrounding blocks. The Clementine Street bust shows the reality of Kensington — that even when law enforcement officials arrest the big dealers in a neighborhood where there are millions to be made, someone else can step in before the next sales shift begins.
When the state swept onto Clementine, the street was quiet for less than a day. Then a new crew moved in. And it was back to the calls of dealers through the night:Investigators say heroin sales have fallen on the block, with some operations pushed west. Kids still don’t ride their bikes down the street. They sit, with their mothers close by on the steps, and watch the new dealers work.
Flac is upper management. According to his crew, he’s running the operation for a drug supplier with access to heroin sold on the best corners in the neighborhood. Flac, who says he’s out on bail for a gun charge, will oversee the squad of shift managers, dealers, runners, and lookouts. Eventually, the aim is to match sales on some of the other “gold standard” blocks — many millions a year.
As business gets going, G gets $10 on every bundle. That can earn him between $180 to $250 in an eight-hour Guys like Douglas Gonzalez, now serving a 9½-to-20-year prison sentence, who ruled Potter Street by the point of an AK-47 he hid under a mattress where an infant slept. “That’s just the way the food chain works around here,” he said. “The ones you don’t see — they are the ones making $50 to $60 a bundle. The person who is actually risking their lives every day is making crumbs.”Near Hart Lane, the dealers have returned to their steps after the shooting.
Still, Bebo needs money. Money for rent. Money for his pill habit. Money for an attorney. Money for a headstone, if the next bullet that finds him does more than leave a cigar-sized scar on his elbow.A strategy beyond policing
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