How Kevin Bethel’s ‘strong and direct’ persona and focus on protecting kids made him Philly’s next police commissioner

For a moment, on a mild June evening long ago, a narrow street in South Philadelphia filled with the sound of innocence, the voices of children playing.

Then came gunshots and screams.

A 13-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man had gotten into a fight, and shot at each other on Sigel Street near 22nd. A stray bullet found an even younger victim, 4-year-old Nashay Little. The bullet tore through an artery in the girl’s thigh. She was fortunate to survive.

In the aftermath of that 2006 shooting, Kevin Bethel, then captain of the neighborhood’s 17th District, grew emotional. “What threshold do we have to hit,” he told reporters, “before people start to realize how serious this is?”

Seventeen years later, that imaginary threshold has long since been obliterated. The city is plagued by a gun violence epidemic that has claimed 335 lives so far this year, and resulted in another 1,187 people being wounded. Too often, those victims are young people; in 2022, nearly 200 children were shot.

And now it will be Bethel’s responsibility to turn the tide, to prevent more kids from being traumatized by the long, unpredictable shadow of gun violence. On Wednesday, during a news conference at City Hall, Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker introduced Bethel as Philadelphia’s next police commissioner.

Parker said she believes Bethel “will lead our department into a new day, and a new era of public safety, and community engagement.”

It is a homecoming of sorts for Bethel, who worked for 29 years in the city’s Police Department before retiring in 2016, and has spent much of the last four years serving as chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has tapped Kevin Bethel for police commissioner, sources say

He will face a mile-long list of expectations, from providing stability for a police force that has been led by four different commissioners since 2019, to the more complicated task of driving down crime numbers without employing tactics — like unnecessary stops of civilians — that could inflame tenuous community relationships.

“I’m a proud Philly cop. I’m proud to be a cop,” Bethel, 60, said Wednesday. “But we’re not your enemy. We’re here to serve. We have our issues, and we can address them.”

Of all the candidates said to have been considered by Parker for the commissioner’s job, Bethel — a West Philly native, father of three daughters, and husband to a former police officer, Rhonda Bethel — traveled the longest path to the position. Glimpses of Bethel’s career, and interviews with people who have worked with him, offer a sense of how he might lead the Police Department at such a critical moment.

“There’s a lack of belief in institutions, not only in this city, but nationally,” said Anthony Erace, the interim executive director of the Citizens Police Oversight Committee. “The police commissioner is the embodiment of the personality of the Police Department.”

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

Bethel became a Philadelphia police officer during one of the most tumultuous periods in the department’s history.

It was 1986, just a year after officers in a police helicopter had dropped a satchel of explosives onto the roof of MOVE’s Osage Avenue headquarters during a standoff, igniting an inferno that killed 11 people — including five children — and destroyed dozens of homes in the surrounding West Philadelphia neighborhood.

Following the bombing, then-Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor resigned, and an investigatory commission deemed the city’s actions “unconscionable.” The saga became a permanent scar in the city’s psyche, a visceral reminder of the power that police wield, and how poor leadership could lead to chaos.

Bethel was assigned to the 6th District, which includes Chinatown, and parts of Center City and Northern Liberties.

On New Year’s Eve in 1988, Bethel and several other 6th District cops said they witnessed a 19-year-old man, Charles Sample, fatally shoot a 21-year-old man outside a club at 13th and Locust Streets.

Bethel chased Sample, according to news reports at the time, and fired once when Sample turned toward him, wounding Sample in the back. He survived, and was charged with murder.

Years later, Bethel shared an anecdote with a reporter about his time as a patrol cop, one that fit with a recurring theme of helping young people. He recalled stopping a “corner boy,” a youth who was selling drugs — but instead of arresting the kid, Bethel lectured him. One day, Bethel said, the two reconnected, and the young man had started his own business.

Bethel steadily accumulated promotions and assignments — Narcotics Strike Force, Internal Affairs, Narcotics Intelligence Investigative Unit — and was made captain of the 17th District, in South Philadelphia, in 2005.

It was there that Dorothy Perrine, a block captain and lifelong resident of Point Breeze, met Bethel.

Perrine, 83, said she was in frequent contact with Bethel when he was captain of the 17th, and found him to be genuine, and a good listener.

Bethel was later recognized for his work with the district’s youth with a George Fencl Award, a community policing prize that had been created by former Daily News columnist Chuck Stone, in memory of Fencl, a widely admired civil affairs chief inspector.

During a 2020 podcast interview, Bethel told Jerry Ratcliffe, a Temple University criminal justice professor, that interacting directly with South Philadelphia residents — in their living rooms, on their steps — was the most rewarding experience of his career.

He was also blunt about the toll of being a top figure in the department: “I want [violence] to stop. So you give to get,” he explained. “And what you give is your family life, and your health, and quality of life. All that stuff, wrapped together, you start to lose.”

“I know [Bethel’s] a strong person, and that’s what you got to be for that job,” Perrine said. “He’s strong and direct, and he doesn’t take any crap.”

» READ MORE: Kevin Bethel will be Philly’s next police commissioner. Who is he?

Philadelphia and its police force arrived at another crossroads in 2008, when a new mayor, Michael Nutter, appointed Charles H. Ramsey police commissioner. Ramsey was recruited to tamp down violent crime — the city had recorded 391 homicides in 2007 — and bring reforms to an ossified department.

One of Ramsey’s first moves was to elevate Bethel, then 44, from captain to deputy commissioner, which he later described “as one of the best — if not the best — decisions I made as police commissioner here in Philadelphia.”

In Ramsey, Bethel found a career mentor who doubled as a father figure. Bethel has said that he was a young child when his father left; Bethel’s mother, Odessa, raised him and his three brothers. (One brother, Keith P. Bethel, is the assistant pastor of Christian Stronghold Church at 47th Street and Lancaster Avenue.)

Ramsey maintained a regular presence at community events, crime scenes, and on television screens. Being visible, he said during a recent interview, is crucial for a commissioner — and rank-and-file cops as well.

“You’re not only dealing with the reality of crime,” he said, “but the fear of crime, the perception of crime.”

As a deputy, Bethel was in charge of the department’s patrol divisions, and Operation Pressure Point, a campaign to reduce violent crime in 12 districts. Bethel also worked with the city’s LGBT community to develop a nine-page directive for improving police interactions with transgender individuals.

Ramsey described Bethel as “a right arm to me,” one of the only officials who lingered in police headquarters longer, at night, than Ramsey.

“If anyone was still in the office,” he said, “it would be Bethel, going over crime numbers. He is absolutely driven when it comes to fighting crime.”

By 2013, the city’s homicide total plunged to 246, and remained below 300 until 2017.

The department won acclaim for its restrained handling of protests over police shootings — a far cry from the brute force it used during the civil rights era. Ramsey spoke openly about local obstacles to weeding out corruption: an arbitration system that routinely overturned his discipline of problem cops, and a state disability system that enabled some officers to stay off the job for years with questionable injuries.

“There’s a narrative out there that reforms hurt public safety,” Erace said. “But you can be a nonracist police department and one that has a homicide clearance rate that’s above 80%.”

Bethel was a vocal proponent of Ramsey’s crime-fighting strategies, which included using data to evaluate the effectiveness of foot patrols, and to prevent at-risk youths who’d committed crimes from reoffending.

Yet Bethel’s time as a deputy commissioner was not without some controversy.

Between 2011 and 2014, the city spent $198,000 to settle five lawsuits that had been filed against Anthony Washington, a longtime police official, over allegations that included workplace harassment, civil rights violations, and physical abuse. Among those who accused Washington of sexual harassment were four female cops.

A police sergeant, John Massi, claimed in a federal lawsuit that he faced retaliation after expressing concerns about Washington to Bethel. Massi alleged that Bethel had told him that Washington was a friend, and to not “f — with him.” (The city settled Massi’s lawsuit for $8,000.)

In the past, Bethel denied the retaliation claims.

Bethel retired from the police force in 2016, not long after being awarded a three-year fellowship with the Stoneleigh Foundation to expand a pre-arrest diversion program for youths who got into trouble on school grounds.

After learning that 1,600 students had been arrested during the 2013-2014 school years, Bethel told Ramsey that he believed it was wrong to march “a 10-year-old child out of the school in cuffs, take him into headquarters, fingerprint him or her, because they came to school with a pair of scissors.”

Students who committed low-level offenses for the first time were instead provided social services to address underlying problems in their lives. By the 2018-19 school year, the number of student arrests plummeted to 250.

Ronnie L. Bloom, Stoneleigh’s executive director, was struck by the affection Bethel displayed for the district’s students, whom he referred to in conversations as “my kids.”

The foundation’s fellows often have great ideas, Bloom said, but Bethel’s stood out for being data-driven — and for producing quantifiable results.

“You don’t always have situations where there are specific numbers that show, ‘This many young people had a different life trajectory because they did not end up in the criminal justice system,’ ” she said. “He’s really a star.”

In Bethel’s most recent job, as the city’s school safety chief, he was required to thread the needle between providing a safe space for students amid a period of record citywide gun violence, while acknowledging that some parents wanted no trace of law enforcement in schools. He will have to reckon with a similar dynamic in January, when he will be in charge of making the entire city safer.

“He retrained a school safety department that was hell-bent on being a police department,” said former Philadelphia School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. “He helped those [officers] to understand how to approach a young person in a way that helps manage conflict and reduce aggression, and connect young people to the services they need.”

Bethel implemented a “Safe Path” program that paid residents with radios to monitor areas around some high schools, and utilized drone technology and social media to identify potential conflicts.

“I’d be overjoyed if he was commissioner,” Hite said.

Roz Pichardo is the founder and executive director of Operation Save Our City, a nonprofit that works with families affected by gun violence and the opioid pandemic, twin scourges that have disproportionately impacted Kensington.

“I definitely would love to hear what the plan is,” Pichardo said. “We heard some empty promises from the last administration. I’m hoping we don’t get a repeat of that.”

During Wednesday’s news conference, Bethel said that he understands “the impact gun violence has on our communities, on our children, on families and teachers and all the community.”

References that Parker made during the mayoral campaign to enlisting the National Guard to help address drug activity in Kensington, and to police making constitutional stops of civilians, didn’t sit well with Pichardo. She worries such approaches will only inflame tensions between police and community residents.

“Let’s not cause more harm,” she said.

The stop-and-frisk references also concerned attorney David Rudovsky, whose law firm sued the city on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2010, alleging that police had illegally stopped and searched thousands of Philadelphians.

That lawsuit led to an agreement between the city and the ACLU to ensure that police have sound legal suspicions to stop and search someone.

“Our litigation made significant strides in narrowing stop-and-frisk, to make it more effective,” Rudovsky said.

He expects Bethel will be pressured to make a quick impact on the city’s violent crime.

“It is starting to trend in a better direction, but people will want more. That’s what Parker ran on,” Rudovsky said. “I guess the bottom line is, we’ll be watching.”

Bethel will face an additional wrinkle to the commissioner’s job: The city will soon have a new cabinet-level position, a chief public safety director, who will oversee the police, fire, prisons, recreation, and emergency management departments, and report directly to the mayor.

Ramsey — who, along with former Police Commissioner Richard Ross, interviewed candidates for the top cop’s job — said the new hierarchy’s success will depend on how each official views their role.

“There’s a window of opportunity for change that doesn’t stay open forever,” Ramsey said. “It’s gonna be a rather heavy lift because of where the city is right now, but it’s very doable.”

As Bethel stood inside City Hall, surrounded by current and former city officials who applauded his appointment, he seemed aware of the enormity of the task that awaits him.

He implored Philadelphians to give him, and the police force, a chance — and to raise their voices if the department makes any missteps.

“But let us be a part of the community,” he said.