Stoneleigh Board Member and former Stoneleigh Fellow Kevin Bethel, who serves as the Philadelphia Police Commissioner, discusses the decline in shootings across the city and the extraordinary success of the police school diversion program in reducing arrests of school-age children.
Kevin Bethel was in charge of Philadelphia school safety during what he called “a very difficult, dark time” for the city.
While serving as the School District of Philadelphia’s school safety chief from 2019 to 2023, Bethel watched the city’s fatal and nonfatal shooting tallies climb. About 200 children per year were injured or killed by firearms during that period, according to city data.
“I would see young people getting shot outside the schools — Roxborough, Lincoln, Bartram, just killed,” he said. “It was something I’d never seen in my lifetime.”
But now, the city is in “a far, far better place,” said Bethel, who became the city’s 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’ve been shot has also been steadily declining.
