Things are getting better on the 4700 block of Griscom Street say the residents and they expressed their thanks to Lt. Wood for his help over the past few months. No, it has not turned into heaven but it is not the living hell that it has been for the last year.
Other issues that came up at the meeting attended by about 15 residents:
- 4524 Penn Street is being demolished. That is the house opposite Friends School.
- Nobody attended from Foulkrod and Frankford, so it must be fairly quiet in that area.
- L&I has a great new web site that, amazingly, gives some useful information in map form. You can try it out here.
- 4834 Penn Street is becoming a drug magnet after dark now that most of the former residents have been forced to move by the new owners. Police will put it on the radar for monitoring.
- 4200 block of Griscom Street is over run with drug dealing. It has gone so far that the play street is used as a device to keep the police from effectively patrolling the block between Adams and Womrath. Lt. Wood will see to it that the bike patrols and maybe even the mounted police go down there. Yes the mounted police are back and they make quite an impression coming down Frankford Avenue.
- Drug dealing at the corner of Frankford and Church is ongoing and under investigation.
- Illegal truck parking in Northwood continues. The Northwood Town Watch is working to have no parking signs restored so the enforcement action can be taken against the violators.
- Illegal parking at Frankford and Margaret is a daily occurrence. The problem is that intersection has a lot of bus traffic making the turn and when vehicles are parked illegally outside of the pawn shop the bus cannot finish the turns and not traffic gets by. This will be referred to the Philadelphia Parking Authority who will cite the violators.
- While the 4700 block of Griscom has improved, there has been some increase in problems around the corner on Oxford Avenue.
It was a good meeting with some new faces and the dedicated old hands giving advice.
My final thought on this is that I have been attending these meetings for about three years now. Not once in those years has a representative of the major drug rehab centers (NET and Wedge) attended a PSA meeting. You might think that as professionals in the drug recovery field that would be interested in curtailing drug dealing in the neighborhood where they do their work. Many of their clients live here. Some of them may even cause problems here. Yet nobody from NET or Wedge cares that there is drug dealing only steps from their doors. It almost makes it sound like they have an interest in seeing that continue.
I’ll post the date for the next PSA meeting when it becomes available.
