Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration is developing a “neighborhood wellness court” in the city's Kensington neighborhood, 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. The court could begin operating as soon as October, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. 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 understaffed city jails to absorb an influx of medically fragile people in addiction. Parker's goal is to shut down the neighborhood’s long-standing open-air drug market, get users connected with treatment, and return a sense of safety to an area that experiences some of the nation's highest rates of violence. Residents have been pleading for change for years, begging the city to invest resources and stop the widespread open drug use and sales. The idea is 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.
This month, 31-year-old Amanda Cahill — one of more than three dozen people arrested during a sweep --died in custody, likely due to complications from withdrawal or drug intoxication, her family said authorities told them. Two other people arrested on the same day were also hospitalized. 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. Keisha Hudson, chief of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said the 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.”
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