Mayor Cherelle Parker unveiled a new public safety strategy Thursday to mark her 100th day in office.
Why it matters: Improving public safety and ending the open-air drug markets in Kensington are among the mayor's top priorities.
Driving the news: A 53-page report lays out enforcement strategies, tech upgrades, and program changes for the police department.
- Plus: The blueprint for shuttering Kensington's drug markets includes offering services and housing — and applying heavy-handed enforcement tactics.
The big picture: The much-anticipated policing plan was part of the mayor's 100-day update detailing her core policies, which include increasing affordable housing and improving the city's cleanliness.
- Parker and her leadership team revealed the details to elected officials, police and community members inside Russell Conwell Middle School's auditorium in Kensington.
What they're saying: Parker intends to overhaul how the city delivers services.
- "Change is difficult and whenever you're trying to change culture — culture's difficult," she said.
- "You can't have healthy communities without having safe communities," managing director Adam Thiel said.
Highlights include:
- Tech upgrades: The police department wants to install sensors on handguns to activate officers' body-worn cameras when fired and expand license plate reader systems.
- Bolster ranks: Improving the department's onboarding process to attract and hire officers amid a staffing shortage .
- Reworking programs: The police department will redesign Group Violence Intervention, a strategy focused on high-risk groups to reduce gun violence and explore expanding it to include juveniles.
Plus: Police will add more walking beats in communities and business corridors, and explore redrawing its 21 districts , which hasn't been done since the 1970s.
Zoom in: Parker's five-phase plan for Kensington, the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, gives people living on the streets a "final opportunity" to access shelter and recovery services before the city begins "focused and intense" policing.
- The crackdown will include warrant sweeps and a multi-day arrest operation, per the report.
- The city and department will secure the area, using barricades to block off sidewalks if needed, to restore and sustain public spaces and businesses.
Meanwhile, Parker has proposed creating city-funded triage and wellness facilities across the city as part of her effort to shut down the open-air drug markets.
At-large Councilmember Jim Harrity, who lives in Kensington, tells Axios the neighborhood has already seen improvements.
- "The dealers know a change is coming and they are scared," he said. "Neighbors have hope."
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