Philadelphia businesses are being forced to set up booby traps such as hidden sprinkler systems to fend off drug users.
Local activist Frank Rodriguez has revealed that business owners in the Kensington area of the city are having to devise tricks to keep addicts off their doorsteps.
The neighborhood has become the center for the city’s drug epidemic and is often littered with trash and addicts injecting drugs in the open.
Speak against Fox newsRodriguez said, “Companies throw soapy water on the floor so it gets wet and it’s not a comfortable place to sit.
“There are companies that put up sprinkler systems. They have to put up these crazy little hacks and booby traps to keep people off their doorsteps.”
Local activist Frank Rodriguez has said Philadelphia businesses are resorting to booby traps to keep drug addicts away from their storefronts
Drug users inject or smoke xylazine mixed with fentanyl and other drugs
Rodriguez continued, “The companies don’t last long. If they are placed in the community, the community tends to tear them down. It’s not a place where anything thrives.’
Outside Cantina La Martina, a James Beard Award-nominated Mexican restaurant in Kensington, Rodriguez said workers had come out to clean up “needles, vomit, feces and bodies.”
He continued, “I couldn’t imagine my company’s customers going through all this chaos to support my business.”
‘Who wants to come to this neighborhood… to shop here? Who wants to do that? No one.’
The disaster in the neighborhood has been fueled by the rise of the drug Xylazine, known as ‘tranq’ – a deadly sedative used to enhance the effects of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine.
Philadelphia has become overwhelmed with drug crime under Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner, a self-described “progressive prosecutor.”
His failure to act harshly led to his impeachment in 2022 for “dereliction of duty,” but he remains in office after his trial was postponed indefinitely.
‘Tranq’ users experience debilitating highs that leave them in a zombie-like stupor
The shocking footage exposed how ‘tranq’ has turned Philadelphia’s Kensington district into a drug-ridden hell
Crime is up a fifth in Philadelphia from last year, with robbery among the lawbreakers causing the problem to persist.
The homeless and drug addicts are often driven to petty theft as a way to make a living or scrape together enough money to support their addictions.
Images from Dailymail.com in May revealed the extent of Philadelphia’s untamed “tranq” epidemic, which has turned the city’s streets into a drug-infested hell.
GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who visited the area as part of his campaign, said earlier this year that the streets of Philly had turned into an “open-air drug market.”
In a video of him walking through the city, he said, “Look, there are needles to the left and right, I just saw two rats running past. It’s not just driven by poverty.
“Here it’s actually caused by drug users literally crossing our southern border,” he claimed. “It’s like an open-air drug market.”
The inner city has long been a magnet for drug users looking for their next high, but the scale of the problems caused by xylazine is shocking even to locals
A person is depicted who has been rendered unconscious by the drug. Xylazine is now in 90 percent of all heroin in Philadelphia
One person previously gave DailyMail.com a glimpse into the dire situation, explaining “people are starving, people are overdosing.”
“I had to resuscitate five people here. We found three dead bodies, people just stepping over bodies lying there. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve had to do Narcan, uh, in front of people,’ the person said.
The person added that the addicts are flocking from California and New York and other parts of the United States.
“You know, when we come from Virginia, when people say, why are you going to Philly? It’s a Philadelphia problem.
“Like, this is an American problem and it’s coming to a city near you if we don’t do something about it because, uh, people literally come from all over the East Coast because they know they can come here and use it and they don’t , they won’t get in trouble for it.’