How crime closed a community staple in South Philadelphia
Alma Del Mar, of ‘Queer Eye’ fame, was closed after its owners were victims of a series of crimes in the last year.
By Nigel Thompson. November 11, 2024.
Alma del mar restaurant’s sign.
Alma Romero remembers the day of her assault clearly, including the insult she felt at the Philadelphia police officer’s first question when he came to interview her in the hospital.
Alma Romero had to give up on her dream business of four years along Ninth Street in South Philadelphia’s Italian Market, and is looking for a new beginning. Photo: Inti Media.
“How many times were you hit?” the officer asked.
“I was full of so much sadness and rage, what am I supposed to tell you? I was attacked,” Alma can remember thinking, but that’s not what she said in the moment of overwhelming emotion.
“I don’t know, five?” she told the officer at the time, not knowing that what she said would determine whether or not she would see some form of justice on her behalf against her attacker.
Instead of finding closure and a chance to heal, Alma has been left feeling confused and hurt, left to wonder whether the police department she’s supposed to trust truly has her best interests at heart. Now, she’s had to give up on her dream business of four years along Ninth Street in South Philadelphia’s Italian Market, and is looking for a new beginning.
“What attacks aren’t aggravated?”
The day was Sunday, April 14, 2024, and it started like any other for Alma and her husband, Marcos Tlacopilco. Both run businesses a few doors down from each other on Ninth Street before its intersection with Washington Avenue.
Alma and her husband, Marcos Tlacopilco. Both run businesses a few doors down from each other on Ninth Street before its intersection with Washington Avenue. Photo: Inti Media.
For Alma, it was a quiet morning at the restaurant Marcos had named after her, Alma del Mar. Meanwhile, he was busy, at his fish market, splitting his time between carving salmon fillets in the basement and coming up to hawk at potential customers on the street.
From the restaurant, Alma kept her eye on the market whenever Marcos was away, and that’s when she saw her – A woman who, to Alma, appeared to be struggling with addiction or mental illness, stealing from the stalls outside.
Alma watched as the woman tried to steal some salmon from an ice chest outside of Marcos’ fish market, before taking some vegetables from a neighboring stall and moving on to steal mannequin wigs outside a neighboring business.
Alma called the police the moment she realized what the woman was doing, but they didn’t initially respond.
“If the person isn’t armed, they’re not coming,” Alma said in retrospect.
Ninth Street intersection with Washington Avenue. Photo: Inti Media.
Instead, after seeing the woman stealing the wigs, Alma built up enough courage to confront her on her own. That’s when the woman got violent, hitting Alma an undetermined amount of times on the head before scoffing and walking away, leaving Alma bleeding on the street and later sent to the hospital.
“My head felt like a balloon,” Alma said.
To this day, she doesn’t know who her attacker was, and her first contact with police came while she was recovering in the hospital, as they interviewed her about what happened.
After Alma told the officer she thought she was hit five times, he didn’t describe the assault as “aggravated,” meaning her whole ordeal would be classified as a simple assault. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to two years in jail, depending on its level, and a $5,000 fine.
That’s a far cry from the punishment for aggravated assault, a second-degree felony that has perpetrators face up to 10 years in jail and up to $25,000 in fines.
Because her assault wasn’t classified as “aggravated,” Alma feels she hasn’t received the justice she deserves.
“What attacks aren’t aggravated?” she wonders to this day. “Do I have to die for there to be a reaction? Someone has to kill me? It’s not just.”
When asked about Alma’s case, Captain Louis Higginson with the 3rd Police District in South Philadelphia said surveillance video was obtained of the attack and he believed a woman was eventually arrested in connection to Alma’s assault.
However, as for how it was classified, he said several factors come into play for police. For simple assault, which he said means there was no serious bodily injury — “no stitches required, no broken bones, things like that” — and it didn’t happen in front of an officer to witness, the victim would be referred to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Private Criminal Complaint Unit at 1425 Arch Street to file a private criminal complaint. Those complaints are then passed on to detectives to investigate.
“When we’re dealing with anything above that simple assault, it’s always going to be something that we press charges,” said Higginson.
Avoiding intervention
Further complicating Alma’s case, he said, was the fact that she intervened after the theft of someone else’s business. If it was her wig store, and Alma intervened while the theft was happening, Higginson said police may have had a reason to elevate it to a robbery, bringing more consequences. However, because it wasn’t her store, she could only legally act on the simple assault charges.
Crime intervention is something Higginson said he stresses to business owners especially to avoid whenever he meets with community members.
“I understand a lot of these cases, small businesses, it's your livelihood,” said Higginson. “You can't afford to have that thing walking out the door and you want to try to stop the person, but we see a lot of what would be retail thefts turn into assaults, robberies because the person tries to intervene and they end up getting hurt.”
Instead, Higginson tells community members to get a good description of the perpetrator that they can pass along to the police.
“In most cases, we can I.D. that person after the fact and get in a warrant for them and just go arrest them after the fact,” he said.
Higginson said there are also usually security cameras to help identify a suspect, but in Alma’s experience that too is an imperfect solution.
The ATM outside Alma del Mar was robbed, and a refrigerated truck used to transport fish for Marcos’ fish market was stolen. Photo: Inti Media.
A series of crimes
Before her assault, earlier in the year, the ATM outside Alma del Mar was robbed, and a refrigerated truck used to transport fish for Marcos’ fish market was stolen. The perpetrators of both crimes were never caught, and in the case of the truck, it was never found, even after police obtained footage from nearby security cameras. She also said that the footage was never shared with her or Marcos.
“It was a challenge to have this barrier and be unable to advance anything,” said Alma. “I believe they haven’t done anything. It’s not important to them, it’s just a ‘normal crime,’ but we needed that truck a lot.”
Eventually, with the help of the community, she and Marcos were able to replace the truck with a smaller one that still works for the fish market, but the pain of not knowing who stole the first and the fear that comes with it potentially happening again hangs over Alma like a dark cloud.
“I don’t understand how we’re here always working, putting our hearts into everything we do. We’re small business owners, we want to be bigger, it’s worth dreaming, but we feel like we can’t with things that have happened,” she said.
A few months after the assault, Alma and Marcos decided to close Alma Del Mar. Its last day of operation was Oct. 31.
The importance of community
Juan Carlos Romero runs Philly Tacos on 20th and Reed in South Philly. He saw a struggle to unify, organize, and lead action towards change on community issues. “Before, crimes would happen and nothing would happen,” said Romero. “They listen to us now because we’re not two or three, we’re 40, we’re 50.” Photo: Inti Media.
It’s why fellow small business owner Juan Carlos Romero said the community is vital. He runs Philly Tacos on 20th and Reed in South Philly, but before that, ran the first Taquitos de Puebla on Ninth Street.
“I saw the necessity of community,” he said of his 22 years in Philadelphia. “We all come from our countries and leave everything — our customs, our friends, our family — and it's returning to starting over.”
He saw a struggle to unify, organize, and lead action towards change on community issues. But that’s taken a new powerful form in the last five years since COVID.
Today, Romero also runs the Association of Mexican Business Owners of Philadelphia. Founded in 2022 to help business owners, predominantly in South Philadelphia, navigate the many negative side effects of the pandemic.
Some members of Association of Mexican Business Owners of Philadelphia. Founded in 2022 to help business owners, predominantly in South Philadelphia, navigate the many negative side effects of the pandemic. Photo: Courtesy of Association of Mexican Business Owners of Philadelphia.
Crime is one side effect that’s been at the top of the issue list since the association’s founding, as the pandemic drove crime to unprecedented levels in the city.
“We’re victims of crime all the time,” Romero said of the experience of many of the association’s members. “We’re all vulnerable.”
But having those numbers, he said, has brought some long-awaited attention from police to the issues facing the community.
“Before, crimes would happen and nothing would happen,” said Romero. “They listen to us now because we’re not two or three, we’re 40, we’re 50.”
Improvement, but still shortcomings
In the aftermath of the robberies at Alma’s and other businesses along Ninth Street, police leadership held a meeting to hear issues and make assurances.
That was before Higginson took the leadership role at the 3rd District, but he said he’s tried to continue the community outreach. Every month, he said he holds a community town hall for residents to come and share their issues, and he also meets monthly with certain community stakeholders in a similar format allowing them to share what they see.
“This is all based on partnerships,” said Higginson. “It should be benefiting both of us. We benefit by, they can give us information, they are our eyes and ears, they can tell us what's going on, and then we should be providing that support to make them feel safe.”
Romero said that while that partnership has gotten better, there are still several shortcomings.
For one, he said a language barrier still exists between the predominantly Spanish-speaking community in South Philly and the predominantly English-speaking police force.
Higginson said a small cohort of officers at the 3rd District are Spanish-speaking, including the lone community relations officer, Juan ‘Ace’ Delgado, but most of the time, he said officers are still relying on the department’s mobile translation service, which connects officers in the field with translators over the phone. Those translators then speak to victims or witnesses at crime scenes and relay information to officers.
“Sometimes, it seemed they didn’t understand me,” Alma said of her experience speaking to a translator over the phone following the theft of Marcos’ truck.
She also said another Spanish-speaking officer advised that her English-speaking kids would play a key role in any interaction with police.
“Not a lot of officers here speak Spanish. Your kids have to be the police,” she remembered him saying. “It’s true.”
That sentiment was echoed by Higginson, who, before leading the 3rd District in South Philly, began his career in the predominantly Spanish-speaking 25th District, which encompasses parts of Kensington, Fairhill, Hunting Park, and other surrounding neighborhoods.
“You always ran into those issues where you needed somebody to come help translate when you’re dealing with a victim, or somebody who’s just trying to make a report about something as simple as a stolen auto,” he said.
In cases where a violent crime happened and information was needed quickly, Higginson said getting a relative or neighbor who knew English to translate was always preferred to over-the-phone translation when a Spanish-speaking officer wasn’t present.
Beyond the language barrier, Romero also said he’s experienced what felt like prejudice when dealing with police or the city because he’s not American.
“There’s not the same attention,” said Romero. “Someone who’s white, who speaks English, the experience is completely different.”
But he also understands the police and city also have been hurting for resources ever since the pandemic.
A police staffing crisis
For Higginson, that’s most glaring in the lack of manpower he has at his disposal to put out in communities every day.
“We can have some really rough days,” he said.
Although Higginson said the outlook for police staffing is trending upwards over the next five years, a City Controller’s report put out over the summer found that staffing is still down in the department by almost 20% compared to pre-pandemic numbers. That equates to still more than 1,000 vacancies in the police department.
Most days, Higginson said he’s just happy to be able to staff all the assigned patrols for officers in the 3rd District. He said priority is also given to those patrols that keep an eye on identified hot spots for gang activity. In the 3rd District, those are along a part of Seventh Street and Fifth Street around Washington Avenue.
Further complicating things in 2024 is the Election campaign, which sometimes forces Higginson to put together details of officers to protect routes traveled by high-profile politicians or other public figures coming to the city or protect the events hosting them.
He said it all takes away time from officers being able to put in the work in communities.
On an average shift, Higginson ballparked that an officer would handle roughly 15 calls. Busy days could mean as much or more than 20.
“Most of the officers you see out are going from call to call,” Higginson said. “There aren't very many days where it's like we're comfortable, and we can actually be proactive.”
One of the areas where Higginson said he would like to be more proactive is along the Ninth Street business corridor, where he said there was once an assigned beat.
“That's where those businesses, they would see an officer all the time, and that hasn't been there for as long as I've been here,” said Higginson. “And I'd probably say it's probably going back a few years since they've had that steady officer watching, walking the beat.”
He went on to say that if that officer or patrol was there, the crimes that happened to Alma and Marcos could have been avoided.
A beat officer and more patrols were something police, according to Alma, promised back at its initial community meeting with business owners.
“This is what they promoted, but we still haven’t seen results,” she said.
As a replacement, some businesses have hired private security, but she said it’s “too expensive” for most, so they’re left relying on the police.
“We want safety, please,” Alma said. “We’re just starting, please look at where they are doing it.”
Higginson said his door is always open to the community.
“I would hope they know that we're always here to bring your issues to us. I want to hear them all, and that's what I say at every town hall meeting I have. You're not bothering me. Some people are afraid to say or speak about their issues. I want to hear them,” he said.
The captain is also hopeful with numbers continuing to rise again in the police ranks, more proactive work can be done in the coming years.
“The outlook is good,” said Higginson. “The optimistic goal is that by 2028 we should be able to, if things keep going the way they are, get to a point where we're back to fully staffed.”
In the meantime, they’ll take opportunities like the first-ever Dia de Los Muertos Parade and Festival on Ninth Street — organized by the community — as a chance to keep building those much-needed relationships.
“We're working now with them to staff it, as far as officers go, to make sure that there's safety,” he said.
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