{"id":687592,"date":"2026-03-28T09:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/687592\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:41:12","slug":"philly-police-commissioner-lays-out-plans-to-keep-improving-school-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/687592\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly police commissioner lays out plans to keep improving school safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published<\/a> by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at\/newsletters<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kevin Bethel was in charge of Philadelphia school safety during what he called \u201ca very difficult, dark time\u201d for the city.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0<\/b>Mayor Parker proposes raising rideshare tax to $1 per trip to fund public schools<\/a><\/p>\n

While serving as the School District of Philadelphia\u2019s school safety chief from 2019 to 2023, Bethel watched the city\u2019s fatal and nonfatal shooting tallies climb. About\u00a0200 children per year were injured or killed by firearms<\/a>\u00a0during that period, according to city data.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would see young people getting shot outside the schools \u2014 Roxborough, Lincoln, Bartram, just killed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was something I\u2019d never seen in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now, the city is in \u201ca far, far better place,\u201d said Bethel, who became the city\u2019s police commissioner in 2024. The number of shootings in the city has fallen dramatically: There were half as many fatal shootings last year as there were in 2022. The number of children who\u2019ve been shot has also been steadily declining.<\/p>\n

Bethel attributes the change to multiple collaborations between the police department and the city, including a violence reduction initiative at Bartram High School<\/a> that he helped design and a Safe Path program<\/a> that places trained adults on school perimeters.<\/p>\n

Bethel continues to pitch in on school safety, alongside the Philadelphia Police Department\u2019s Director of Gang Reduction and Youth Development David Irizarry. The two tout the success of in-school restorative justice programs and a trauma-focused initiative called Handle With Care<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Bethel said he is especially proud of the school diversion program<\/a>, which connects students who would otherwise be arrested for certain offenses to preventative programs instead. He also highlighted the city\u2019s Town Watch Integrated Services<\/a> team, which trains neighborhood groups on how to protect children walking to and from school.<\/p>\n

However, there were multiple large-scale fights in the fall that worried neighbors<\/a> and garnered social media attention<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Many community members fear even more conflicts will arise<\/a> if the school district moves forward with its plan to close 18 facilities and merge or co-locate certain schools. <\/p>\n

Chalkbeat asked Bethel to lay out some of what he feels is improving school safety, and what\u2019s needed for the future.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

What are some of the ways that the school district and police department work together?<\/b><\/p>\n

Our school diversion program, that is one of our marquee programs. We started in 2014 when the [police were] locking up 1,600 children a year [in schools] \u2026 kids as young as 10 years of age, for a whole series of things. I was here as a deputy commissioner running operations at that point. I was very frustrated with the number of young people being arrested. <\/p>\n

I had been part of a national program asking law enforcement leaders across America, \u201cHow are you going to address the disparities?\u201d Because many of the kids being locked up were African American or Latino. That would also open the doors to understanding trauma, adolescent development, brain science, all of that. And so we started that program in 2014 and today we\u2019re at over a 90% reduction. Last year, we had 72 kids arrested for a system that used to lock up 1,600.<\/p>\n

We continue to support the school district as it relates to dismissal times, and we have around 60 officers assigned to the schools across the city to support the dismissals. Most of the high schools have specific coverage, and then we have rolling patrols for our lower grade schools to support that. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s certain corridors that we try to increase our activity. After the unfortunate homicide of the student at Imhotep Institute Charter High School, where he got killed on Ogontz Avenue, we started to increase some of our activity around our main corridors as well. <\/p>\n

Just since this fall, there have been some pretty large-scale fights on high school campuses. What have you found to be effective for handling those?<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much that can ignite young people to engage in that activity. If there\u2019s intelligence or information [that police or a school] received prior that there\u2019s going to be something, then the expectation is that folks are going to get into that and intercept that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very rare with our young people that we have to use high levels of force. Most times they\u2019re not really trying to attack the police officers, they\u2019re just fighting each other.<\/p>\n

But our expectation is this is not just a policing issue. And in particular in our larger schools, we\u2019re expecting the safety team at the school district, which is not just the school safety office, but everyone in that school, to bring it under control, and then we\u2019re here. Our goal is coming to support that. Especially when it\u2019s occurring inside the school, they know the students, they know the players, they know what the discipline should be like. <\/p>\n

With school closures on the horizon, how will PPD be involved with children potentially having new walking routes to school?<\/b><\/p>\n

These are not immediate changes. There\u2019s going to be this transition that will happen as more things start to unfold. It\u2019s not just me. It\u2019s obviously the Safe Corridors program working out of Town Watch Integrated Services. It may require some of that activity to come into play. <\/p>\n

But what we clearly should know, that we should understand, is what the pathway is. In the earlier closings, there were some adjustments of the school crossing guards. So that expectation will be something that will be a part of those plans, to make sure that those intersections that a child may have to walk are properly covered.<\/p>\n

This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times\u2019s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.<\/p>\n

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at\/newsletters.\u00a0 Kevin Bethel was in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":687593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,36004,1448,2830,1311,7207,8152,3060,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-687592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-kevin-bethel","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-police","14":"tag-safety","15":"tag-schools","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116306148331066053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}