South Philly church leader fed up with illegal dumping

SOUTH PHILADELPHIA (FOX 29) - The leader of a South Philly church is fed up with illegal dumping on their property.

"They were just throwing trash in there like it was a junkyard," said Bishop Jimmie Smith. He showed me pictures of what leaders of Refuge Temple of Jesus Christ Church in South Philly call a big problem.

They show bags and bags of bulky trash even furniture dumped on the property.

"They load it up and then right over here in this corner right here they pile it up really good here," said Bishop Smith. He says it's happening nearly every week at the church on South 28th Street and has been going on for years but recently it's gotten worse. He says most of it appears to come from neighbors but other items he believes are being dropped off from other areas.

"Trash that seemed to be of the sort that you would bag up from a construction site and even there was some drywall pieces and it was just terrible."

Bishop Smith says they used to have a deacon who would clean up the trash bags and litter every weekend but after he passed away there was no one else at the church they could get to clean up the trash.

"Plus now, we are being fined for the trash. We have paid now 3 fines for somebody else's trash." He says each citation is $50 and he doesn't know why people won't just put out their own trash.

"There's people with trash cans and recycle bins. Yeah, it seems to me it would be just as easy if not easier to set the trash out and let the collector come and get it. Yeah, but they don't do it," said Bishop Smith.

He says the church has been here for 7 years and they only want to help the neighborhood.

"That's one of the reasons we haven't kicked up a whole lot of noise about this particular thing is because our purpose of being here is not to make enemies but to try and help people in whatever way we can," he said.

The church filed a police report last Tuesday hoping to get some help catching whoever is doing this. Meanwhile, Bishop Smith says they're preparing to have security cameras installed. We've made contact with the city about the fines and are waiting for a response.