Incoming commissioner Kevin Bethel vows a balanced approach to policing in Philly: ‘We’re not your enemy’

Incoming Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel on Wednesday vowed a balanced approach to fighting crime in the city, saying public safety issues and challenges within the department are “significant, but they are solvable.”

“I’m proud to be a cop. But we’re not your enemy,” he said in an energetic speech Wednesday at City Hall. “We’re here to serve. And I ask you to give us the opportunity to do that.”

Flanked by more than a dozen elected officials, Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker officially announced Bethel as her pick to lead the 5,500-member department, elevating a Philadelphia native to lead the force he spent three decades in. It represents a marquee hire for Parker, who was elected on Nov. 7 after running for mayor on a platform to end “lawlessness” in the city.

Parker, who will take office in January, said she considered a handful of candidates but that Bethel, most recently the chief of school safety at the School District of Philadelphia, had the best understanding of her vision to improve safety.

Bethel is stepping into a role in which he’ll be expected to address record-breaking rates of shootings and homicides that left more than 1,000 people dead over two years. While gun violence rates have improved markedly this year, the stakes of the appointment remain stark. Parker made her announcement less than 24 hours after seven people were shot, two of them fatally, in a North Philadelphia gun battle Tuesday.

Bethel also inherits a department with a well-documented morale problem, a staffing crisis that’s left the force short nearly 1,000 officers, and an at-times fractious relationship with the district attorney and the courts.

During his speech that oscillated between rousing and solemn, Bethel lamented that his own mother-in-law is sometimes fearful to leave her home, and he said the department under his leadership would seek to build relationships with the communities it serves to both prevent crime and enforce the law.

“Our charge and our responsibility comes from the community,” he said. “Our power comes from the community.”

Bethel, 60, lives in North Wales, Montgomery County, and plans to move to the city before he takes over in January.

Supporters across the political spectrum and those in policing cheered the announcement.

“He’s a good bridge between community and law enforcement,” said Keir Bradford-Grey, the former chief public defender who is now running for attorney general. “He knows that having a police presence is great, but having a police presence that can actually get to more strategic ways of interrupting crime — that is true public safety.”

Bethel for eight years led patrol operations across the entire city and was a right hand to former Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, who stood alongside him Wednesday.

Ramsey said that Parker tapped him and former Commissioner Richard Ross to interview each of the top candidates. Ross resigned in 2019 a day after a former officer claimed in a lawsuit that he ignored her claim of sexual harassment by another officer because she broke off an affair with him. After a weeklong trial last year, a jury ordered the city to pay the woman and another plaintiff $1 million in damages.

» READ MORE: How Bethel’s ‘strong and direct’ persona and focus on kids made him Philly’s next police commissioner

In her search for her top cop, Parker emphasized that she wanted someone with experience in Philadelphia. Former Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who resigned in September, came to Philadelphia after working in Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif.

Ramsey on Wednesday noted that a strong resume is not enough to succeed in Philadelphia without prior knowledge of the city, a comment that drove home the shift from Outlaw to Bethel.

”I can tell you from experience Philly is not easy, and not everyone can handle Philly,” Ramsey said. “And you can look good on paper. That doesn’t always translate into your ability to operationalize concepts.”

Several other contenders attended the announcement news conference Wednesday, including Interim Police Commissioner John M. Stanford, whom Bethel specifically thanked during his speech. Stanford said he spoke to Bethel on Wednesday morning and congratulated him.

”It’s not about who is at the helm, it’s about the mission,” Stanford said. “And the mission is about reducing gun violence in the city, making people feel safe. I am extremely happy for, I’ll say, Commissioner Bethel.”

After Bethel left the Police Department in 2016, he became a fellow at the Stoneleigh Foundation, where he worked to expand a diversion program for young people who commit low-level offenses at school. He then worked as the top security official at the School District of Philadelphia, where he revamped the school police force.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said in a statement that Bethel is “an exemplary leader and colleague” with a strong work ethic and people skills. He said Deputy School Safety Chief Craig Johnson will take over as interim head of the department while a search for Bethel’s replacement is conducted.

Philadelphia’s school board said in a statement that Bethel’s move is a “significant loss” for the district, but “we are confident that Commissioner Bethel will bring his unwavering dedication and exceptional leadership to the broader realm of public safety in our city.”

» READ MORE: Kevin Bethel reshaped Philly’s school safety. Here’s a look at his time in the district.

Now Bethel will need to navigate the fierce debate in Philadelphia around criminal justice, especially amid law enforcement partners who have not always seen eye to eye.

Outlaw and Mayor Jim Kenney publicly contradicted progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner at times, saying in 2021 that they had fundamental disagreements with him about which crimes police should prioritize.

Krasner, a former civil rights attorney, has been critical of a return to policing methods that could erode public trust, such as stop-and-frisk — a tool Parker has embraced. But Parker has carefully avoided blaming him for the public safety situation in the city, saying in October: “I may not agree with all of his decision-making, but I know the DA’s office plays an essential role in helping us to address public health and safety.”

In a statement Wednesday, Krasner said he looks forward to working with Bethel on shared goals, including improving police staffing and “incapacitating violent offenders more quickly by solving more shootings.”

He also said police accountability is “non-negotiable for making cities safer and freer from violence and suffering.”

Roosevelt Poplar, the new head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said Wednesday that he and Bethel have worked together in the past. He said he briefly met with Bethel and Parker on Wednesday morning.

“We’re going to have our times where we don’t agree,” he said. “But we should be able to agree to disagree and also have respect for each other. And that’s what’s going to happen.”

It’s unclear how Bethel will navigate stop-and-frisk, the controversial but legal police tactic in which officers stop and search pedestrians. Parker embraced the approach while campaigning and has described it as a necessary policing tool.

Use of the tactic soared under the Nutter administration and while Bethel was leading patrol operations. But the ACLU sued the city in 2010 because police were overwhelmingly stopping people of color — often without legal justification, and the city remains under a monitoring agreement.

Reporters asked Bethel his position on stop-and-frisk, but Parker stepped in to answer, saying: “I will not allow this day, on this day, for us to be taken down by that,” and said “I’m the mayor of the City of Philadelphia come January 2.”

“Law enforcement has to have just cause and reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or will be committed in order to make that stop,” she said.

» READ MORE: Stop-and-frisk is getting renewed attention in Philly amid a mayor’s race focused on crime

Activists have vowed legal action against Parker’s administration if racial bias proliferates.

“If she wants to pursue these failed and harmful policies,” said Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, “we will be there to drag her and her new commissioner into court.”

Bradford-Grey said she’s worked with Bethel in a variety of capacities over the years and believes he’ll take a balanced approach.

“What we’re talking about is a policy that police departments create,” she said. “I don’t think Kevin Bethel would say ‘Oh, as a matter of policy, go stop everyone in North Philly.’ He’s much more intentional.”

Staff writers Sean Collins Walsh, Rob Tornoe, and Kristen A. Graham contributed to this article.