Philadelphia ushered in a brand new period Tuesday with the election of its first feminine mayor, Cherelle Parker, who vowed to take robust legislation enforcement motion, together with calling within the Nationwide Guard, to crack down on town’s rampant open-air drug markets.
Throughout a city corridor in current weeks, Parker responded to a resident’s plea to scrub up Kensington, the nerve heart of the nation’s opioid disaster, residence to a big inhabitants of drug addicts and notorious for its open-air drug market, Fox Information reported.
“Shall I enchantment to them to assist us, for instance in closing the open-air drug market in Kensington, which is allowed to take over?” Parker echoed the voter’s query and unequivocally affirmed that the Nationwide Guard will play an essential position in her technique.
Chatting with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Parker defined her plan to implement a strong intergovernmental strategy to orchestrate the cleanup of Kensington and finish the open-air drug market, an space the place addicts inject medicine brazenly and infrequently on sidewalks or into one another to fail. streets. It is a spot the place customers are exhibiting a variety of curiosity in fentanyl and xylazine, an affordable however lethal veterinary tranquilizer discovered in additional than 90% of drug samples examined in Philadelphia, primarily based on 2021 metropolis information.
Parker, who beforehand served on the Pennsylvania Metropolis Council and within the Pennsylvania Home of Representatives, will grow to be Philadelphia’s a centesimal mayor and its first feminine mayor. Democrats have held the mayoral seat in Philadelphia since 1952. Because of this they’ve held this place for 71 years.
Parker guarantees to rework Philadelphia into the “most secure, cleanest and greenest” metropolis within the US
“I’m uniquely ready to make town the most secure, cleanest and greenest main metropolis within the nation, with entry to financial alternative for all,” mentioned Parker. “I made it clear to those who in the event that they gave me the chance, I might not be afraid to make troublesome selections, implement the imaginative and prescient I share with them and stay my genuine self.”
