How an ‘Old Lady Gang’ restored order and cleared drug users from Philly park

PHILADELPHIA — Each morning, as the first rays of light rise over Kensington’s rowhouses, the women of Harrowgate Park head outside to begin their first patrol.

In rain or shine, scorching heat or icy cold, the women, walkie-talkies in hand, walk through their neighborhood park, ready and willing to approach anyone loitering, sleeping, smoking, or using drugs, and politely ask them to leave.

For the last five years, a trio of fiery, longtime Harrowgate residents have taken on the role of maintaining and protecting the serenity of Harrowgate Park, working to keep it clear of the homeless encampments and open drug use that have plagued many public spaces in Kensington.

They call themselves the “Old Lady Gang,” and they are fighting for what they say every Philadelphian deserves: a clean, safe, peaceful neighborhood park.

Rotating shifts throughout the day, Darlene Abner-Burton, Sandy Wells, and Sonja Bingham stroll through the park, approaching people who appear to be sleeping, using or selling drugs, or engaging in other nuisance behavior. Calmly and respectfully, they tell the folks their behavior is not welcome at the park and ask them to leave.

“A lot of people see Kensington and Harrowgate as overrun with the unhoused. But we are a community of families that raise their children, whose children play in the park, who work hard,” said Abner-Burton, 53, the founding member of the Old Lady Gang. “This community deserves a safe park.”

The result is that the park, in just a few years, has transformed from a space some residents feared into a thriving community hub where neighbors gather, children play, and area workers rest on their lunch breaks.

Their relentless guard has earned the Old Lady Gang a reputation in Kensington — both police and those engaged in criminal behavior warn their peers not to mess with the “OLG.”

“They’re my secret weapon,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, who oversees the city’s renewed enforcement plans for Kensington. “They’re the role models you’d like to see in all of our communities.”

Their work is not without risk — the women have been threatened, spit on, called racial slurs, and doused with water. But the work, they said, is necessary in a community that, after being neglected by the city for decades, was forced to take matters into their own hands.

“We had no choice,” said Sandy Wells, 70.

A park in crisis

Harrowgate is a small, tight-knit neighborhood just north of Kensington. While the specific boundaries vary depending on whom you ask, it stretches roughly from Westmoreland and Emerald Streets, to G Street and Erie Avenue.

Wells has lived in Harrowgate, along Wesley Street, for 50 years, she said, and saw Kensington Avenue transform from a stable business corridor, where city services, transportation, and jobs were reliable, to a chaotic strip strewn with trash, lined with smoke shops and hundreds of people using and selling drugs.

Harrowgate Park, Abner-Burton said, suffered the same transformation, from a place where her grandmother used to feed the birds each morning, to one where she was afraid to walk — even during the day — as sex workers, drug users, and dealers gathered.

After the encampments along the Conrail tracks were cleared in 2017, more people in addiction gathered in Harrowgate Park, Rosario said, seeking a quiet escape from the dangers and crowds of McPherson Square and Kensington Avenue. But by 2019, Wells and Abner-Burton said, neighbors had reached a breaking point. At one point, the city had to pull out the park’s nearly 20 wooden benches after they became infested with bed bugs. Neighbors, they said, were spending hours picking up used syringes each week.

That spring, Abner-Burton met with Rosario and Shannon Farrell-Paktis, longtime president of the Harrowgate Civic Association, to discuss the park’s future, and how neighbors could help police stabilize it. Amid a stretched-thin police force and escalating gun violence, the police department didn’t have the resources or time to clear every person using drugs in the park, Rosario said.

Abner-Burton volunteered to do it herself.

“I got this,” she told them. She later connected with Wells and Bingham and they created a patrol plan.

“One of us said, ‘It’s three old ladies, what could we do?’” Wells recalled. “Darlene said, ‘OK, then ‘I’ll just call us the Old Lady Gang.’”

The rest was history.

A transformation

Wells and Bingham head out together first thing in the morning, usually by 6 a.m. Abner-Burton takes afternoons and evenings.

Initially, Wells said, city outreach workers joined them, offering resources to people sleeping in the park while asking them to leave. Wells and Bingham used to approach more than a dozen people each morning, she said. Now, there’s maybe one or two. Crowds have dwindled, they said, as word has spread that nuisance behavior isn’t tolerated there.

“The word got out about this park, that there’s an Old Lady Gang that patrols,” Abner-Burton said.

The women treat people with respect, they said. If Abner-Burton sees someone using drugs, she said, she tells them: “I see you have drugs out. We don’t do that in this park. There are children here and we’d like to keep that away from them, so I’m respectfully asking you to leave.”

The vast majority apologize and leave without incident. Many, she said, are women who say they have children of their own and understand.

But, at times, the work has been difficult. Abner-Burton said she has been spit on and called racial slurs. A woman once threw water in her face. Wells said she has been charged at and threatened with a needle.

Rosario, the deputy police commissioner, said he worries about the women, and encourages them to call for help anytime. They aren’t shy, and regularly use their walkie-talkies to request back-up. Because of the work they put in, Rosario said, officers in the neighborhood feel more motivated to respond and provide support.

“It’s a mutually dependent relationship, and I respect the hell out of them,” Rosario said. “They are an ally.”

Abner-Burton said it’s a community-wide effort: “This is not just an Old Lady Gang thing. People lift us up. Without them, I could never do this.”

And the threats and roadblocks, she said, only strengthen her resolve in protecting the park.

Abner-Burton empathizes with her struggling neighbors and understands the cycle of poverty many are trapped in. She had her first baby at 15, she said, and by 19, she was a mother of four in North Philly with no high school degree. With the support of her mother and community, she ultimately earned her diploma at 31, and is now married, owns her home on Jasper Street, and works as a care navigator for people with diabetes and colorectal cancer.

That personal journey informs her community work, she said. She encourages the young dealers on her block to get jobs, but understands why many don’t. She keeps pamphlets for recovery programs in her house and shares resources with people she meets on patrol. She once bought a bus pass for a man stranded in the park who couldn’t get home.

“I’m not just here to tell people to leave,” she said.

She is here, she said, to ensure the neighborhood children can gather in the park without the risk of seeing open drug use.

The result is that, in the last four years, Harrowgate Park has again become a community hub — a place where neighbors gather for movie nights, summer luau parties, and festivals. The trees are decorated with homemade lanterns and lights. Art and mural installations are common. New benches will soon be added, and the Old Lady Gang is hosting its annual community water gun fight in the park on Aug. 17.

On a recent afternoon, Abner-Burton smiled as she watched a young woman read a book against a tree, and children chased each other through the grass.

“My hope,” she said, “is that my grandkids can come to his park and say, ‘My grandmom made a difference.’”