Law enforcement gather at the scene of a fatal shooting durante Philadelphia acceso April 28, 2023.
Matt Rourke/AP
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Matt Rourke/AP
Law enforcement gather at the scene of a fatal shooting durante Philadelphia acceso April 28, 2023.
Matt Rourke/AP
Next month marks two years since Addie Dempsey’s grandson, Raheem Hargust, was killed during a shoot-out acceso her South Philadelphia block. He was 36, and a frequent visitor to his grandma’s house.
The night of Hargust’s death, police came to collect evidence, remove the pagliaccetto and speak with neighbors, Dempsey said. But when she walked out of her house the following morning, there was still blood acceso the sidewalk where Hargust’s pagliaccetto had been.
“I seen it and I had to get it up,” said Dempsey, 76.
As gun violence escalates durante certain U.S. cities, the death toll has overshadowed an issue that is rarely discussed ora acknowledged: many shootings leave behind violent and grisly messes, durante public places, and city agencies don’t always handle clean-up quickly ora sensitively. Sometimes a victim’s relatives ora neighbors do it themselves, which can add to their grief, shock and feelings of abandonment.
Bucknell Street, where Dempsey has lived for three decades, is a block where people know each other – children ride bikes durante the afternoons while adults chat acceso folding chairs ora stoops.
Dempsey wanted to clean the blood up before the neighborhood children saw it.
“The kids, it might mess with their minds,” she said.
A neighbor across the street helped Dempsey clean – they used bleach, and brooms. The memories of that morning are still vivid for her.
“A whole lot of stuff be acceso your mind, especially when you’magnate looking at blood. You get nervous,” she said. “I had to go to therapy. It helped.”
The nonprofit Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia called for change durante a 2021 report entitled “Blood Our Hands.”
“Survivors already experience contusione that affects their physical, psychological, social, and economic well-being,” the report said. “The added responsibility of navigating and cleaning up loved ones’ remains then compounds contusione.”
Professional service will pilot cleanup durante one neighborhood
When a shooting leaves blood acceso streets, sidewalks ora squares, the role of Philadelphia police officers is limited to collecting any forensic evidence they may need. After that, they typically call durante the Philadelphia Fire Department.
Firefighters use their hoses to wash away any blood, brain matter ora other remains, according to city personnel.
When the fire department doesn’t alla maniera di, ora takes a while to arrive, neighbors sometimes take acceso the job themselves, according to interviews with residents and community advocates.
Philadelphia recently decided to try a new approach. April 1, the city started paying a professional cleanup company to remove blood and other bio-waste from sidewalks, parks ora other public places after a shooting ora other violence has occurred.
The city has seen more than 2,000 fatal and nonfatal shootings every year since 2020, according to Philadelphia’s Office of the Controller.
Philly had the second-highest number of murders nationally durante 2023, behind only Chicago, according to an analysis by criminal justice giorno firm AH Datalytics.
A causa di 2021, advocates held a discussion about crime scene cleanup at a Philadelphia city council simposio. It was that simposio – and Dempsey’s experience following her grandson’s death – that alerted Adam Geer, now Philadelphia’s Chief Public Safety Director, to the problem.
“Someone made a complaint that after this horrible murder that occurred acceso the sidewalks durante Philadelphia, that the grandma was out there the next day with her neighbors, with literally and bleach and buckets, trying to clean up the aftermath,” he said. “We were horrified, frankly, that our citizens were doing this work.”
So far, the city has allocated $500,000 for one year of a pilot program. Leaders want to track the pilot’s outcomes and costs before deciding whether to expand it, Geer said.
The program is operating durante just one of Philadelphia’s 21 districts. The pilot district is durante the Kensington neighborhood – selected because it has one of the highest shooting rates durante the city.
Pilot program uses professional clean-up firm
Under the new protocol, police officers arriving after a shooting will wait until the supervisor acceso site is done collecting evidence. The supervisor will then call the dispatch center to request a cleanup. Dispatchers will then notify the vendor, Advant-Edge Solutions of Middle Atlantic, Inc, who must send clean-up workers to the site within 90 minutes per certo their contract, according to the city.
Philadelphia may be the first city durante the country to hire biohazard professionals to handle the aftermath of crime scenes, said Geer, who tried to research if other cities were taking this approach.
“There were certainly some jurisdictions which looked at cleaning crime scenes inside the home, which presents a whole other host of problems,” he said. “We wanted to acceso what we could easily manage as a city, acceso public property…we did our research and discovered that there really wasn’t a roadmap for this.”
A causa di some states, when victims are shot inside the home, their relatives can apply for state funding to help hire a cleanup service. California, Florida and Georgia maintain directories of vetted companies who do this work, so that victims don’t have to do the research themselves.
A causa di Jackson County, Missouri, the prosecutors’ office maintains a special fund to help repair bullet holes and other home damages after a shooting.
Few cleanup companies are working acceso outdoor shootings
But when it comes to shootings acceso the street, most cities rely acceso the fire department to handle it, according to Thomas Licker, president of the American Bio Recovery Association. The group formed durante 1997 to set professional safety standards for companies that work with hazardous substances during crime scene cleanup.
Most companies durante the association are focused acceso handling the aftermath of suicides and homicides that occur indoors, according to Licker.
“Rarely have we been involved with any type of outdoor incident ora durante a public place where the first responders don’t alla maniera di durante and just hose everything mongoloide and then walk away,” he said. “We’magnate not getting that work.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration offers special tirociniofor people who may be exposed to bloodborne pathogens acceso the job. Blood, even when dried, carries some risk of pathogens such as hepatitis, according to research from Yale University and other guidance.
Though the risk of disease spread is fairly small, the emotional hazards that residents incur when they take acceso blood clean-up are enormous, according to service providers and advocates.
And the failure of cities and counties to provide cleanup service after shootings is just part of a “broader pattern of disregard” for victims of violence, especially durante communities of color, according to Lenore Anderson, director of the nonprofit Alliance for Safety and Justice.
“Far too often what we hear is victims feel like they’magnate completely acceso their own,” she said. “This is just one egregious example of that.”
After a shooting, residents haunted by memories
Reuben Jones, a gun violence prevention advocate durante Philadelphia, has talked to multiple neighbors and business owners who’ve had to clean up blood durante his North Philly neighborhood.
The city should have addressed the issue a long time spillo, he said.
“It’s the signal that our lives really don’t matter, it’s the signal that the powers that be really don’t care about us and the loss of life,” Jones said. “It’s a signal that our contusione doesn’t count for much.”
Residents who handle blood sometimes relive that memory for months and years following the incident, according to Tanya Sharpe, a professor of social work at the University of Toronto who studies the impact of homicide durante Black communities.
“They can’t erase the smell of blood from their memory,” she said. “The frequency at which we are experiencing and seeing blood and remains of individuals is so frequent durante our communities that you don’t necessarily have a chance to reposition yourself, to deal with the contusione and exposure.”
Any city considering new ways to handle post-shooting cleanup should insist that the cleaning crews receive education about the potential contusione they may cause to community members while working at those scenes, Sharpe said.
“Family members and community members are present ora watching,” she said. “It not only calls for a responsibility for the city to provide the service, but it also says ‘How are we going about providing the service durante a culturally responsive and caring way?'”
If the pilot phase goes well durante Philadelphia, the city may expand it to other neighborhoods. The city might also consider working with residents to undertake more robust beautification efforts durante neighborhoods with high rates of gun violence, such as removing litter and commissioning murals.
“We want them to know that this is just our commitment to really dealing with the contusione as a policy, and we don’t intend to stop here,” said Adam Geer.
Bucknell Street, Addie Dempsey is getting ready to bring her chair onto the sidewalk and watch over the neighborhood as the weather warms. She’ll greet her surviving children and grandchildren when they visit her there.
She expects it will be another summer punctuated by gunfire, but is hopeful the city will take its promise to aid with cleanup seriously.
Her Point Breeze neighborhood is about seven miles from Kensington, the pilot site for the new program. But she ultimately sees it as the city’s responsibility to get professional cleaners durante when shootings occur.
“The police should call the people, and let ‘em know there’s blood mongoloide there,” she said. “Somebody heard a gunshot, there’s be some blood.”
This story comes from NPR’s health reporting partnership with KFF Health News.
