Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Author: Ximena Conde

  • Philly encouraged neighborhood parties this summer, but is denying permits during key weeks

    Philly encouraged neighborhood parties this summer, but is denying permits during key weeks

    Philadelphia is slated to have an abundance of block parties and street festivals this summer after the city encouraged neighborhoods to join celebrations of the nation’s 250th with their own events, even offering financial support for hosting through various grants.

    But some organizers who responded to the calls are learning there is a limit on so-called festival street closure permits for events between June 11 and July 18: essentially, the duration of World Cup, July Fourth, and MLB All-Star Game events.

    Katie Hanford, executive director of the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District, learned of the change in May. The group submitted three festival street closure applications, two for World Cup watch parties and one for 250th festivities, and the Philadelphia Office of Special Events denied them “due to City resource constraints.”

    “The city government, in this case the Commerce Department, is literally trying to give communities money to host events and yet the city is also, on the other hand, denying the ability to host events,” said Hanford, who applied for the 2026 Neighborhood Celebration Grants Fund, which had $1 million for such events.

    Pride on Passyunk, an event put on by businesses last year, was also denied a “festival street closure” permit for June 14 because it fell during what the special events office called a several-week “blackout” period in an email regarding the application. June 14 is the first World Cup game in Philadelphia, among other high-profile events.

    The city, however, did not publicly announce any limits on event permits, nor did the Philadelphia Office of Special Events address the blackout dates when The Inquirer asked.

    Though these events plan to move forward as “sidewalk activations” that organizers say will be no less fun, frustration remains over an already complicated permitting process, made more difficult by what organizers argue has been confusing messaging from the city.

    First, there is the city’s classification of neighborhood block parties, for which permit applications are submitted to the Philadelphia Streets Department and reviewed by the police department. These permits are filed by residents aiming to throw a birthday party or other small celebration.

    But if the event is hosted by businesses or located in a commercial corridor, even if it spans only a block, organizers must file festival street closure applications, which the Philadelphia Office of Special Events reviews.

    So even though the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District planned to throw block parties, organizers say the city directed them to apply for a festival street closure, only to receive a denial.

    Randi Kampen and Lex Fanelli, organizers of Pride on Passyunk, said their event permit was approved, but they never officially heard back about the separate street closure application. A Philadelphia Office of Special Events email obtained by The Inquirer told the business improvement district the Pride event would be denied because of issues with the date.

    “Please understand, we have denied other events that fall within these blacked out dates too,” the email said, encouraging the group to apply for a date later in the summer or fall.

    The message was of little comfort to Kampen and Fanelli.

    “The blackout dates are because the city is not prepared for the FIFA stuff happening, and that’s not our fault,” Kampen said.

    Just last week, the Philadelphia City Controller’s Office published a report that found that rising police patrol costs and a difficult permitting process have made it hard for organizers to host the more than 1,400 special events the city approves each year. In some cases, as previously reported by The Inquirer, organizers have downsized, canceled, or moved outside the city.

    The 2026 summer festivities have only added another consideration to the process.

    Even so, people like Hanford say if city resources were going to be strained for the several-week span, they wish they had been alerted sooner instead of encouraged to put on events.

    Number of events affected remains unclear

    The city special events office did not immediately say how many festival street closure applications were denied for June 11 through July 18.

    Still, the city is slated to host plenty of block parties during that window.

    The Philadelphia Police Department has received 241 applications for block parties between June 11 and July 20, and recommended approval for 219, according to Sgt. Eric Gripp. The denial recommendations were unrelated to major city events, he said.

    But the police department flagged four dates to the special events office where World Cup games and 250th festivities would create staffing constraints for additional events requiring festival street closure permits — June 19, June 27, July 3, and July 4.

    “As Philadelphia prepares to host several major events this summer, including FIFA World Cup-related activities and other large-scale celebrations, the police department will continue balancing those public safety responsibilities while supporting community events whenever operationally feasible,” Gripp said.

    Separately, the special events office said June 14 was “a heavy commitment of resources” for public safety partners because of a slew of events, including the first World Cup match in Philly, the FIFA fan festival, Odunde Festival, Flag Day, events at Independence National Historical Park, and events at Franklin Square Park. The city said it also has to consider and prepare for any potential protests.

    For now, Pride on Passyunk is moving forward, as are the three events planned by the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District.

    Hanford said the business improvement district has been working with Councilmember Mark Squilla to potentially appeal the permit decisions, but time is running out.

    A June 19 event aimed to air the Brazil-Haiti match on the Juneteenth holiday and a June 27 block party was to show Croatia vs. Ghana. Those events call for screen setups and barricades that require coordination with third parties.

    Squilla’s office brokered a meeting between the business improvement district and the special events office on Wednesday, and is optimistic a compromise would lead to at least some permits being approved, according to Squilla’s chief of staff, Anne Kelly King.

    “Hopefully we’ll come to a resolution that’ll work for everybody. We don’t want to compromise safety, and that’s really center to it,” she said.

    Hanford said regardless of the outcome, East Passyunk would still host World Cup block parties.

    “The sidewalks will be lined with activations, food and drink specials, and places to watch the game,” she said. “We will be out here celebrating how South Philly always does — with joy in the streets, supporting small businesses, and going hard for sports.”

  • A Philly grandmother says $600 of EBT benefits were stolen in a skimming scheme. A solution for Pa. might be on the horizon.

    A Philly grandmother says $600 of EBT benefits were stolen in a skimming scheme. A solution for Pa. might be on the horizon.

    Keenya Banks lives in Philadelphia with her husband and the two grandchildren they care for. She has never been to Fishkill in New York’s Hudson Valley.

    Yet, that’s where someone spent more than $650 in food assistance benefits for her family at a Sam’s Club in April in an alleged case of EBT skimming, just one of the more than 5,100 cases reported in Pennsylvania between the start of the year and May. This year’s skimming incidents account for approximately $2.5 million in stolen benefits, according to the Pennsylvania Office of State Inspector General, which investigates the reports and seizes the skimming devices.

    It’s likely Banks used her EBT card in a point-of-sale machine rigged with a device designed to copy her card information and pin number. Someone then applied her EBT information to a different physical card and drained her monthly benefits the next day.

    “I was too numb to cry because I just couldn’t believe it,” said Banks, 56, who was alerted to the fraud as she tried to purchase food days after she had gotten her month’s benefits. “They said, ‘Ma’am, this is declined.’ I said, ‘No, no, I have at least 600-something dollars.’”

    Even more devastating to Banks: For a brief stretch of time, benefits were being reimbursed through a federal program, but that ended December 2024 because Congress did not extend funding. The most that the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services can do is direct victims to food banks and other food assistance programs. The end of the federal reimbursement program also means the skimming incident data Pennsylvania has on hand are likely an undercount: Victim advocates say people may simply skip reporting if they believe nothing can be done.

    Pennsylvania is looking at a possible solution, but without one immediately available, Banks spent a month scrambling to put food on the table with the help of food pantries and what she had on hand.

    “We had been storing up, like a lot of canned goods and water, and we had a deep freezer, and thank God we were able to really kind of make ends meet.”

    Victim advocates argue EBT skimming has risen to a nationwide crisis because the federal government has failed to invest in more secure card technology. Between October 2022 and the end of the reimbursement program in 2024, states reported $320 million in stolen Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, according to the Government Accountability Office.

    EBT cards: From cutting-edge technology to scammers’ favorite

    The idea that someone’s food benefits could be loaded digitally onto something that worked like a debit card was once revolutionary.

    Before federal supplemental food assistance could be loaded onto a card, it used to come by way of coupon books or mailed checks, depending on the program. These methods not only came with high administrative costs but in the case of the coupons, also known as “food stamps,” there was an element of stigma and a risk of forgery.

    The federal government launched its first “electronic benefit transfer” pilot in Reading in 1984, yet it was not until 2002 that all states were required to make the switch.

    By then, scammers had already learned how to exploit the magnetic stripe technology used in debit, credit, and EBT cards. While banks have made cards more secure by adopting chip technology, the federal government has stuck with the magnetic stripes for EBT cards.

    In the absence of chip adoption, states have resorted to other added security measures. Last May, Pennsylvania launched ConnectEBT, an app that allows people to lock their cards until they are at the checkout line, ready to use them.

    Mackenzie Libbey, staff attorney in the health and independence unit at Community Legal Services, noted the current system places the onus on families, which are required to lock and unlock their cards, monitor their spending, and change their PIN regularly to stay ahead of fraudsters.

    “It’s just not something that anyone would expect of a middle-class consumer using a credit or debit card,” Libbey said. “It’s a lot of extra effort to protect benefits that they have shown they’re entitled and eligible to receive.”

    CLS has advocated for the federal government to reimburse victims of skimming again and for Pennsylvania to adopt chip cards.

    Pennsylvania eyes chip EBT cards

    The federal government did not approve the use of chip and tap-enabled EBT cards until 2024, largely due to concerns over the costs of upgrading the aging technological infrastructure in use.

    Some states were eager to become early adopters and tackle the skimming issue.

    In February 2025, California became the first state to begin replacing the magnetic stripe cards, with a handful of states following suit because of their own issues with skimming. Oklahoma launched a two-month pilot this March, and in April, Massachusetts announced its plan for a pilot later this year. New Jersey also has plans for a chip card rollout.

    But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved only two vendors for the new cards, and users in early adopter states have complained about issues with the chips and difficulties getting the cards to process.

    Those issues gave Pennsylvania Secretary of Human Services Val Arkoosh pause. She has previously said the technology was not quite ready.

    In a May hearing with the House Democratic Policy Committee, however, Arkoosh said Pennsylvania’s vendor had promising data. After Alabama adopted chip cards, the state saw an 83% reduction in theft in 60 days among the people using the chip, she said.

    “I do think I can now sit here and say to you, I believe that the technical issues have largely been solved,” she said at the hearing. “I didn’t want us to embark on this before we were confident that it would work, but I think we’re there now.”

    And there appears to be interest in Harrisburg to go after EBT skimming.

    A bipartisan bill that would require Pennsylvania to transition to chip-enabled EBT cards by 2028 moved out of committee Wednesday to the full House.

    A recent cost estimate puts the overhaul at about $14 million, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. It would take six to eight months to roll out chip cards after approval, barring any significant challenges, according to a December report by the department.

    Should legislators in Harrisburg choose to fund the transition, they would have an incentive to move fast. While the federal government used to split SNAP administrative costs evenly with states, come Oct. 1, states will be on the hook for 75% of these expenses because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

    For now, the Pennsylvania Office of State Inspector General’s skimming response teams continue to search for these devices and prosecute fraudsters. Between April 2025 and March of this year, the agency said, it had prevented $8.3 million in potential losses.

    The USDA, meanwhile, said it is not stopping at card locking and chip adoption. It is combating skimming and other SNAP fraud with mobile payment pilots and encouraging states to block out-of-state and online SNAP transactions by default.

    These efforts, while welcome, cannot undo what Banks and her family went through the month after the theft they experienced. She hopes her story can alert other families to scammers targeting EBT users.

    Until chip cards come, even Banks’ 10-year-old grandson is on the lookout, monitoring their card benefits and inspecting point-of-sale machines at the grocery stores.

    “He’s so tech savvy and he’s very, very wary,” she said. “So he’s like, ‘Grandma, did you check and see if there’s a skimmer on there?’”

  • 2 fatal shootings reported in Chester, the latest in a spate of violence

    2 fatal shootings reported in Chester, the latest in a spate of violence

    Two fatal shooting marked a particularly violent Tuesday in Chester, roughly a year after the city celebrated a steep decline in homicides involving firearms in the first half of 2025.

    The fatalities were from separate shootings, one of which left a third person in critical condition, according to the city’s mayor. No arrests were made and officials did not have descriptions of any suspects.

    “These acts of violence are heartbreaking and serve as another painful reminder of the ongoing challenges facing our community and the devastating consequences violence continues to ave on individuals, families, and neighborhoods,” said Chester Mayor Stefan Roots in a statement Wednesday.

    Roots lamented a third incident, in which a police officer was assaulted Tuesday and suffered lacerations during a domestic dispute call. The officer was treated at a hospital and released as the incident remains under investigation.

    While year-to-date nonfatal and fatal shooting statistics were not immediately available, Tuesday’s deaths mark the latest in a spate of shootings.

    Though zero shootings were reported in March, The Delaware County Daily Times reports there have been 10 since April.

    Last summer, the Chester police reported 15 nonfatal shootings just over the midway mark of the year. That translated to a 16% decrease in nonfatal shootings compared to 2024. Homicides in the first half of 2025 had also dropped 41% compared to the same time in the year prior, according to the Chester police midyear report.

    The summer would go on to be one of the safest the Chester ever had, largely credited to national trends in declining violence and the yearslong collaboration among community advocates, police, and the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office.

    Chester saw one of its safest summers ever in 2025. No one died from gun violence.

    Though Tuesday’s violence was alarming enough to warrant a news conference with both Roots and Chester Police Commissioner Katrina Blackwell, the mayor emphasized the continued violence prevention work across stakeholders and law enforcement.

    Chester’s Safe Summer Initiative will continue to provide resources to youth and families, as well as positive opportunities in the city, said Roots.

    “But public safety cannot rest solely on the shoulders of law enforcement,” he said in a statement, adding that people who “know something” should “say something.”