Danielle Outlaw chose a new job farther from the spotlight after endless challenges as Philly’s police commissioner
Hired to address a series of internal scandals, Outlaw instead faced a diverse and urgent set of challenges almost as soon as she was sworn in.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has never seemed to enjoy the spotlight.
On her first day in Philadelphia, she reported to work before dawn.
She was sworn in during a private ceremony at City Hall.
She rarely revealed much about herself publicly, leading some in the rank and file, city government, and the media to wonder what she was really like.
And this week, when the city announced that Outlaw would be stepping down later this month, she gave interviews to a few reporters to explain her decision, but avoided a newsconference or a public appearance to discuss her reasons for moving on from Philadelphia.
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It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that Outlaw’s next chapter seems a few steps removed from the cauldron of being a big-city police chief. She will become a deputy chief at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, helping oversee emergency management, cybersecurity, and public safety for that region’s bridges, tunnels, ports, and airports.
In an interview this week, Outlaw, 46, alluded to the appeal of a less public-facing position, saying she was looking forward to a new role after nearly 20 years climbing the ladder in municipal policing — first in her hometown of Oakland, Calif., then as chief for two years in Portland, Ore., and most recently in Philadelphia.
“I’ve been a major-city police chief for five and a half years,” Outlaw said. “I’ve been going nonstop for a very long time.”
The wariness for attention sometimes seemed at odds with the unrelenting nature of her job in Philadelphia — particularly as the demands of the position intensified after she took office in February 2020.
Although she was hired to address issues stemming from scandals centered on racism, sexism, and sexual harassment, Outlaw instead found herself quickly facing a diverse and urgent set of challenges, including the pandemic and its impact on policing, an unprecedented gun violence crisis, mass protests, and a staffing exodus.
“It’s been so much that happened simultaneously,” Outlaw said. “I did my absolute best with what I had, [and] tried to be honest, transparent, and make decisions” while balancing trade-offs.
Community members and public officials have expressed mixed opinions about her three-and-a-half-year tenure, questioning decisions including her department’s use of tear gas against protesters — which cost the city $10 million — and asking whether police had acted with sufficient urgency to address a record-setting homicide rate. The police officers’ union has had few positive things to say about her on the way out, describing morale as low and casting her as an absent leader.
Bilal Qayyum, a longtime anti-violence and community activist, said he thought Outlaw “did pretty well” given the array of challenges she faced, which he said also included a police force that appeared skeptical of her — the first Black woman to lead the department — and a mayor who sometimes came across as disengaged.»
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“Could she have done better? We always say yes,” Qayyum said. “But I think she was pretty on top of stuff, and there’s no question in my mind that she cared.”
Here’s how she fared in some other, more tangible aspects of the job:
More money, fewer officers
A key responsibility for any police commissioner is managing the department’s budget. Police receive more city dollars than any other department, and the police budget grew more than 15% during her tenure, reaching $856 million this fiscal year.
Most of that is related to staffing. The largest increase in the department’s budget allocation came in 2022 after the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 negotiated a new contract that included across-the-board pay raises for its members.
The department last year also spent a record amount on overtime — more than $100 million — as officers work longer hours amid a short-staffing problem that began in 2020.
Like many other industries and city agencies, the police department bled officers during the pandemic, losing hundreds to retirement and resignation. A nationwide shortage of recruits and pandemic-related gathering restrictions made it challenging to train cadets and fill open positions.
Outlaw has said struggles with recruiting were a result of the political environment and a perceived lack of support for police after the protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
She said the problem was exacerbated by a 2020 rule that required most municipal workers to live in the city for a year before applying for a job. Proponents, including current Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker, said the requirement was intended to diversify the workforce.
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By early 2021, the police department had more than 250 vacancies. That number has ballooned to more than 400.
In March 2022, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration lifted the residency rule for police recruits, allowing the department to hire from outside the city.
But hiring has only slowly chipped away at the vacancies. During a recruiting drive this summer, the department saw a 42% increase in the number of applicants to the police academy compared to its winter drive, according to police statistics.
Still, that’s far from enough to keep up with attrition. The department has roughly 6,500 employees despite budgeting for 7,400. And more than 800 police officers are enrolled in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), meaning they intend to retire within the next four years.
The staffing challenges may have also impacted the department’s ability to diversify. In testimony to City Council, the police department set goals to increase the number of officers who are women and people of color by 2% each, every year.
But as of December, the department was no more diverse than the year Outlaw was sworn in.
As of late last year, people of color made up 45% of the department’s full-time staff, compared to 46% in 2020, according to Council testimony. And women accounted for 27% of department staff late last year, compared to 30% in 2020.
Did Outlaw’s PPD increase clearance rates?
Less than six months after she was sworn in, Outlaw released a near-40 page plan outlining a broad set of departmental goals. But two numbers stood out: She said she wanted to increase clearance rates in homicides and nonfatal shootings to 65% and 30%, respectively, by the end of 2021.
The department has yet to reach those targets.
The year-to-date clearance rates — the percentage of cases considered solved, typically by arrest — are 57.8% for homicides and 24.1% for nonfatal shootings, the department said.
Both of those rates reflect steady improvement over the last several years. In 2020, for example, the rates were 42.4% for homicides and 19.2% for shootings.
Still, the reality is that hundreds of gun crimes each year remain unsolved — leaving victims or their relatives without closure, and allowing shooters to remain on the street.
Outlaw’s most significant step in this area came in early 2022, when she rolled out a new unit dedicated solely to investigating nonfatal shootings. The shake-up made Philadelphia one of the few big cities in the country to have a group of detectives and supervisors focused solely on investigating that type of crime, as opposed to grouping them with robberies and other assaults.
Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore told City Council during a budget hearing this spring that investigators in the Shooting Investigations Group, as it’s called, often work closely with those in the Homicide unit, since shootings and murders are routinely connected — sometimes due to ongoing feuds, or retaliation, or drug-related issues. And he credited that collaboration with helping detectives in both units solve more cases.
“Now we’ve got a very large group, it’s almost 200 people [between both units] who work really in an intelligence-led, investigative process,” Vanore said. “And that process is helping us not only in homicides but in our nonfatal shootings.”
Increasing investigative capacity
Vanore also said many of those cases are now solved by evidence beyond a traditional witness, such as ballistics tests, surveillance videos, or cell phone records. And police are in the process of expanding that capacity: Late last year, the state said it would award $50 million to the police department, district attorney’s office, and SEPTA to upgrade the city’s forensics crime lab.
Mike Garvey, the department’s director of forensic science, told City Council in April that the city was still determining whether the new lab would be built from scratch or put into an existing building (a police spokesperson said Wednesday that several proposals were still being reviewed). In either case, Garvey said he believed the new facility would allow the department to hire around 100 or 120 new employees to analyze materials including DNA, ballistics, or cell phone data.
That added capacity, Garvey said, would help sharpen investigations earlier — either by giving detectives additional tips and information, or by helping them rule out bad leads.
“Every time we increase the number of cases we’re able to analyze, we increase other things,” Garvey said. “With every productivity we do, the leads increase even more. So this will just keep going as we can work evidence as it comes in.”
It wasn’t until the last few years that Outlaw and the department had even been able to secure long-missing basics for investigators, such as department-issued cell phones. She said this week that she’s hopeful that the department would continue to build on its crime-fighting and investigative plans once she’s gone.
“I believe firmly that the department will continue to move forward,” she said.