Committee of the Whole, April 8, 2025

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE FY26 BUDGET City Hall, Room 400 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, April 8, 2025 10:00 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE-RICHARDSON COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN JEFFREY J. YOUNG, JR. COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS HELEN LOUGHEAD, CLERK - - -

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone. This is the public hearing and the public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Bills Number 250-195, 250-196, 250-197, 250-198, 250-199, 250-200, 250-201, 250-202, 250-210, 250-211, 250-212, and Resolution Number 250-214. Ms. Loughead, would you please call the roll and take attendance?

Councilmember Squilla.

Present.

Councilmember Gauthier.

Present.

Councilmember Jones.

Present.

Councilmember Young. Councilmember Driscoll.

Present.

Councilmember Lozada.

Present.

Councilmember Bass.

Present.

Councilmember Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember O'Neill. Councilmember Gilmore- Richardson.

Present.

Councilmember Thomas. Councilmember Harrity.

Here.

Councilmember Ahmad. Councilmember Landau.

Here.

Councilmember Brooks.

Here.

Councilmember O'Rourke.

Present.

Council President Johnson.

Present. I want to thank you, Ms. Loughead. A quorum of the committee is present and this hearing is now called the order. Ms. Loughead, will you please read the titles of the resolutions.

Bill No. 7 250-195, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1500 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Wage Net Profits Tax by revising certain tax rates, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-196, an ordinance adopting the operating budget for fiscal year 2026. Bill No. 250-197, an ordinance to adopt a fiscal 2026 capital budget. Bill No. 250-198, an ordinance to adopt a capital program for the six fiscal years 2026 through 2031, inclusive. Bill No. 250-199, an ordinance amending chapter 19-2600 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Business Income and Receipts Taxes, to revise certain tax rates and end certain exclusions from the tax on receipts, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-200, an ordinance amending Chapter 12-1000, the Philadelphia Code entitled Traffic Code, to revise a fee for the use of parking meters, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-201, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1800 of the Philadelphia Code entitled School Tax Authorization, to provide for an increase in the tax of the Board of Education of the School District of Philadelphia's authorized to impose on real estate and amending Chapter 19-1300 entitled Section -- entitled Real Estate Taxes; to establish an equivalent reduction in the tax rate for the City Real Estate Tax, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-202, an ordinance amending Section 19-1806 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Authorization of Realty Use and Occupancy Tax to eliminate certain exemptions, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-201, an ordinance amending Section 10-1001 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Fees of Commission of Records to increase the portion of fees for the recording of deeds and mortgages and related documents to be used for housing trust fund purposes, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-211, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Realty Transfer Tax, by revising the rate of the tax, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250-212, an ordinance to amend Chapter 19-4400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Development Impact Tax, to end the imposition of the tax, under certain terms and conditions. Resolution Number 250-214, resolution providing for the approval by the Council of the City of Philadelphia of a revised five- year financial plan for the City of Philadelphia, covering fiscal years 2026 through 2030 and incorporating revisions with respect to fiscal year 2025, which is to be submitted by the Mayor to the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority pursuant to an intergovernmental cooperation agreement by and between the city and the authority.

Thank you very much. Today we continue the public hearing of the Committee of the Whole to consider the bills read by the clerk that constitute proposed operating and capital spending measures for fiscal year 2026, a capital program and a forward-looking capital plan for fiscal year 2026 to fiscal year 2031. This morning we have scheduled testimony from the Philadelphia Police Department. This afternoon, we have scheduled testimony from the Office of Public Safety. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the first witness to testify from the administration?

Kevin J. Bethel, Police Commissioner.

Good morning. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Commissioner. How are you today? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I'm well, sir.

That's good. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Very well. Thank you for asking.

Just state your name for the record and begin your testimony. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel. And I just want to begin by saying thank you for having us here today and I'll begin my testimony. So good morning, President Johnson, members of City Council, colleagues. I stand before you today as the Police Commissioner and fellow citizen deeply committed to the fabric of our great city of Philadelphia. Joining me at the -- to be testifying are key figures in my leadership team, Commissioner John Stanford, the first deputy commissioner, Francis Healy, Deputy Commissioner, Chief of Staff, Krista Dahl-Campbell, who's here as Deputy Commissioner of Organizational Services. Each of us along with my entire executive team that are here with me today and commanders play a pivotal role in this organization. Before we delve into the details of our budget and strategic initiatives, I just want to take a pause for a moment and say thank you. I want to say thank you to the public and in particular for their support in our work. And I also want to say thank you to each and every officer, the outstanding work that these sworn men and women have done, as well as the outstanding work our non-sworn professional staff have done as well. You know, their committed service, their resilience, and their efforts of keeping the city of Philadelphia safe. I am proud of all of them and want to state that, for the record. The work that you put into every day is the backbone of our mission to create this a safer city. I'm profoundly grateful for your hard work, I'm profoundly grateful for your sacrifice and your dedication to our city. And together all of us are making a difference. And so I want all of you to know their contributions are deeply appreciated. I also want to thank this body. It wasn't so long ago during the Mayor's address that you take honor to Officer Jaime Roman who tragically was taken from us in the line of duty last year. His dedication and service and courage and sacrifice remind me every day. And I wear his, you know, a brown bracelet around my wrist to remind me of the why we do this work and why this work is so important that as we go about and our office go about risking their lives each and day -- each and every day to keep our -- our -- our city safe. I know Adam Geer is here. I think he's hiding over there. There he is. He's -- I think he didn't want to be in your direct view. He'll be here later today. I want to do -- I want to thank him and, you know, Managing Director Thiel and all the partners and -- and community partners across government for your support. At the same time, I also want to put on the record my gratitude and appreciation for the Mayor. Her leadership, her compassion, and her vision is unmatched. We all know that the Mayor has potentially set the bar high. And I -- and folks that know me, I set my bar high as well. And so, you know, it is a great place to be in this space working for this Mayor. Her unwavering support of the men and women of this department is invaluable and appreciated. And that can go without words. As I spoke to you, I do want to kind of have a conversation today. I know oftentimes, you know, we read, and I have some notes here to kind of walk myself through, but, you know, I've always said last year when I came back to this job it was an honor to come back to this job. You know, I love this job. I love doing it every day and everything about it. And part of my why when I came back was I wanted to create what I say would be one of the finest police departments in America. That is -- that is where we're driving to be. How do we be the finest? And we can't do that, you know what I mean, without the support, you know, of the men and women in this police department. We can't do that. You know, I have a quote here that Mayor often says, people might not remember what you said or what you did, but they remember how you make them feel.

You know, the mayor's been saying that for quite some time, and I've taken that as the bedrock of how do I -- how do we make you feel? How do we make this community feel when we go about doing our work? And so we've set this a vision to re imagine the work that we do in the police department, and we'll be able to talk to you about some of the things that we're re-imagining internally in the department. And so I share with you part of that work. Part of that work is getting our executive team and getting us all centered around a vision for the department. And that part of that vision was to hire Carla Showell-Lee, I believe she's here, back there with her hand waving, executive director of our organizational communication, to really start to ensure that we leadership and all of us were on the front lines knowing our why, knowing what our brand is. And so, most recently, a couple weeks ago, we did an Imagine If series. Part of her work was to create an Imagine If series with our executive team and envisioning what would it be like, you know, if we drive innovation in this department, what it would it be like if we -- and work internally to be able to build our capacity. You know, what would it be like to make police department one of the most innovative departments in the nation. What it would look like to turn and develop internal professional development, you know, as we go about our work. All of that -- all of that is to collect these collective goals. And so when we look at those collective goals, we look at the crime. I mean, we are just astounded by the reductions in the crimes. And I can sit here and tell that most of the councilmen here -- council here, have benefited from those reductions. You know, when I say Councilwoman Lozada, you know, the sincere deductions we've had in shootings and homicides in Kensington, you know, Councilwoman Bass and others who have had significant reductions in their violence. It -- it's so important for that work as we go about doing that and in our work. You know, some of the things we've been able to do as part of our work is add Ayanna Greene Davis, who's our executive director of the Office of Community Advocacy and Engagement. And I know those will be conversations president you'll talk about, but to have victim advocates in our space for the first time is going to set us on a pace to be a national model in policing as we go about that work. Bringing in David Irizarry, who's doing our gang reduction youth development. I know he talked with Councilman Young and Councilman -- along with Commissioner Massey the other day, talking about what we're going to do in one mind one to one. You know my work about working with juveniles and our work about being seeped and working with young people to be able to put them in a different trajectory. And our -- and our -- we could talk today about our diversion overall, how we're moving young people out of the system and making sure we create a space for them. And clearly Kensington, you know, as I mentioned to you, Councilwoman Lozada, and I know Councilman Harrity and Driscoll, and others who cover that area. The work that is being done, you know, I mean, has been a heavy lift, as you know, but we're proud of the direction we're going and what we're doing. Technology becomes a key part of our work now. And so you'll talk up today about the drones and the sidearm firearms. The things that I talked about you in last councilman -- session. Guess what? They're coming to reality. You know, we talked last year about the Fleet in-car cameras. Guess what? They're in the cars. You know, we talked about drones and the supporting of this body to be able to expand our drones. And we've been able to make those things happen and we're buying those. So seeing what you're providing and the Mayor has provided for us, and this body has provided, we're seeing it starting to go into action.

I got a couple of Ebikes over there and the conversation around Ebikes, but I told them to bring a few props in here that you can see that the men and women now can go further and their stamina is longer. And I have two of the officers here who talk about how it's enhancing their work and moving around and even talk about getting up some of the hills a little bit faster, right? But giving them that work to do and mobile field reporting. But also community partnerships. Like we know we cannot do this work alone. You heard that in my opening. And so we're just really phenomenally proud of this body, you know, offline throughout the year, not just last year. I've worked with many of you who raised issues around concerns around different areas, and we've been able to work through those issues, be able to address those issues in a collective way. And that is important. Part of our work is community feedback. Since the time I arrived last year, I travel around the city every month. I'm either talking to my men and women who are in the districts, or I'm talking to the community. And that feedback has been absolutely invaluable. Getting down on the ground. I told folks, you can't do this job sitting in the high tower. You got to get out there in the field. Many of my executive team members are out there with me listening to those communities, and it holds us accountable when we're talking to them. And then recruitment. You know, that recruitment is big --- is part of our process. The recruitment is significant. The investment that you have made in our recruitment is paying dividends, and we can talk about how we are advancing and bringing in. A large number of minorities are coming back into our department, which is an excellent sign for us as the department to see that happen. And I'll start to close with our five- year strategic plan. I talked to you last year about our 100-day plan where we've been able to be able to raise the funds to be able five years to change. A good friend of yours, David Zaga, who came from the school district is now at -- on my -- off my team as a executive director of strategic plan. It is something we have never embarked on. We have never embarked on a five years strategic plan to be able to guide the department for the future. How does it line with our five years fiscal responsibilities and what do we need? But what David Zaga brings to us is, is a skill and expertise. He did the strategy for the school district, and now he's going to bring that strategy. We will be on the ground in the community through advisory groups and committees, et cetera. We need to find out what does the community want, not what the police want to tell them to do. If we do this right, it'll be a collective effort across this city that'll guide us. And this is part of the mayor's vision for me, was not just to come in here and lay down a plan for 100 days, It was always meant to build a much larger end plan. So my charge and my call is to the -- to the council, is that the majority of my budget is dedicated to staffing, as you know. And we seek a number of internal and external -- I mean, external fundings, and we can talk about how we go about doing that. But the additional funds invest us to invest in technology and training resources. And the approach allows us to be innovative, allows us to improve without compromising our support and the resources needed for our men and women. And so, I -- I'll stop there and just say again, it is our goal with the support of this body, to be the finest police department in America. We will not accept less. And if we're going to be striving and pushing that as long as I sit in this position, and I know the team with me, we all do it as a collective effort. So, Councilman Johnson, I appreciate the opportunity for the opening remarks and now we'll turn it over for questions.

Well, first and foremost, I want to just thank you for your leadership. I want to thank the members of the Philadelphia Police Department for their service to the city of Philadelphia and making sure we have a safer city. And also, Commissioner, I'm always just proud to see how far you have come from us working in the trenches in the 17th Police District in Point Breeze. And I remember I mentioned this one time earlier when you were here, how there was a marathon of shootings and homicides and neighborhoods going back to back, back to back shooting at one another. And we spent the time working in the trenches to reduce the gun violence that was taking place in Point Breeze where I've grown up at. And then also, just for the record, I just want to always just commend your approach to policing, right? Because there's always different perspectives on how individuals police, but I can attest to how when you were a captain, you adopted different young men in the Point Breeze neighborhood that you didn't have to do because you have your own family to attend to. But you thought it was important enough to adopt the young men in the neighborhood so they can go on in a path and do something positive as opposed to something that's negative. So I thank you. I thank your leadership team for being on the front line and keeping our cities safe. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you.

And so, couple questions before I turn over to my members. Let's talk about how we're addressing recruitment. I know a significant part of your budget is around staffing. We want to address the issue of vacancy. Give us an idea on where we're at in terms of reducing the currently -- the current vacancy rate? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So I mean, obviously, so first we have to name the challenges that we have, right? I heard the department is down 1,200 men and women. Coming out of the last four years and going in two more additional years. Our two most challenging years where men and women have gone into the drop. Some of them because of just, you know, time on. And in addition to that, we get a little over a hundred plus officers are resigning throughout the year 13 where we have no knowledge of. 14 What I am most proud of is 15 the work that this body has helped 16 us with, as well as the Mayor and 17 others, to really for the first time 18 stabilize. And that effort started 19 before I walked in the door. 20 Commissioner Dahl and the team had done a really good job to Captain Walker and Inspector Verdell Jones to really reset. Let's start first with the -- as it relates to the physical fitness. You know, with the changing of the physical fitness standards, we're getting unfortunately 50 percent are still failing even though -- but -- that may sound bad, but that's a better than we were, right? We are still getting, you know, a percentage. A good percentage will come in passing at the 30 percent rate, and then we'll drop down to about a percent rate 14 for the other ones. 15 They all have to -- so for 16 your audience, the standard didn't 17 change. They still, as I did in 18 1986 and came out of the academy in 19 '87, had to test out at the academy. 20 So they still have this test out at 21 the standard. So that is working 22 for us. Where we're seeing phenomenal success is the reading test. Through the reading test, one of the things that the team discerned was to give out the practice cards. So even though we have not developed a new test yet, giving them that has created an impact. We now give the test a second time, and we now give the test the third time. There was nothing preventing us from doing a multiple tests to get those individuals prepared. So we're seeing a significant -- a 70 percent pass rate now up from what was 30 percent. That is significant. And so as a result, we were able to exceed our numbers last year of 300. Our goal was 300, we had 369. I believe this year our goal -- to get to our fully staffing, we need to have 75 officers going into the academy every six weeks. Right now, we're hitting a mark around 40, but we believe, and if we continue down our pace, the front line of the department, the men and women in the field, we will get their staffing levels back up in the next one to two years.

What's the recruitment strategy to get to that goal of 75? And then I also just want to say, I think from working this body and having done work in partnership with Philadelphia Police Department, either it was last year or the year before, we have recruited probably the most diverse recruitment class that we've had over a significant period of time. So elaborate on that, and also the strategy on getting that 75. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I think so part of what -- through Octo Design Marketing to this body, we were able to get funds for the first time. I think part of what I -- we recognize coming back -- me coming back into the department is that we were old school. We call and people are going to show up. Those days are gone. We had to start to learn to turn -- I tell people we have to run the department as a business. Even though it's a paramilitary organization and it has the remnants of that, we'll never get rid of all of that. But we can't run an 870-something million dollar budget not like a business. And so part of that was bringing in Octo Design. They helped us actually with our leadership program I described, but they're going to really be laser focused now on being much more targeted on where those specific groups are, where should we be really directing. We can no longer -- and I appreciate the work of this body. We have posters on buses. We have, you know, we're doing our recruitment strategies and the numbers are moving, but not moving well enough. We have a different group of folks we have to engage now, you know, showing people coming off of rafters and guys compelling off of -- off of roofs and all of those things are phenomenal. But most of the young people coming into the department today are coming to serve. And so we have to get them in a different way. Dominique Bethel, my daughter, would not come here unless she was going to serve. And so what we have to do is retool our direction, retool how we talk about policing, but also at the same time, this work matters as well. When individuals are seeing department beat down or talking, I mean, you know, they're not going to come. Why would I come to the department? And so this last year has been a great uplifting year for us. It's going to take some years of momentum. I mean, we're -- listen, and we don't ever sit here and tell you we're perfect, Council President, you know that. But we cannot go back to a place where, you know, the police department is devalued, demoralized, and then say, why can't we get people, right? We have to make sure that we continue to keep focus on the positivity of the departments. The majority of my men and women do everything you ask them every day, you know, with service. And so I think that's where we're going in that direction, bringing in all of those tools and humbling ourselves and say, we don't know. We need expertise to show us how to do that, and see if they can deliver on the contract and the support that this body gave us to be able to do that.

And before I turn over to my members for the next round. Issue very near and dear to me, and you elaborated on it when we had a brief conversation. And that's supporting victims and cold victims of gun violence. First, give me an update on the homicide unit. At one point in time, we were addressing the issue of making sure they had cell phones, technologies. But most importantly, probably the most important thing is making that connection with the family that lost their loved one to census gun violence. The follow-up. Even if the case is cold, still just checking in if y'all still are staying on top of the case with the family members. Just give me an idea and an update on where we're at in terms of the homicide unit and interacting with victims and cold victims of gun violence. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So I want to begin by, you know, obviously, you know, last year when I came back, I had a vision for the department before I arrived. And one of those core areas was the gap between, you know, our victims of homicides and the connection between, you know, the families and the homicide. I went to the Mayor and talked to her about, you know, our budget and being able to do that. I know, President Johnson, this has been a -- something you've been railing about for quite some time, even when I was back as a captain in the district. And Dorothy -- Dr. Dorothy Speight from Mothers In Charge, as well as Shante Love from Amir, all have been talking in those rooms about how we're not connecting, or it was nothing more frustrating to see a mother come up to you and say, I haven't heard anything about my son's or daughter's death in over a year. And no indictment of the detectives, let me say that. You know, it's hard. I mean, we went to a year when we had -- four years, and we almost had 2,000 homicides. The expectation of those men and women to be able to be able to do a lot of that work was a challenge. And we as an organization had to rectify that. So last year, I submitted to the budget, and I again, thank this body, but we were able to bring in an executive director to lead our -- that advocacy work. And we were able to hire Ayanna Greene, who's phenomenal, who understands this space, and she has a lived experience by losing her brother to a homicide. And so we have hired 10 victim advocates. I was able to -- and supervisors. You'll be proud to know, I met with them yesterday, myself, Commissioner Stanford and others went in there and welcomed them.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: These are non-sworn professional members. They'll be trained over the next month and a half to be able to -- to be able to connect with the detectives. Commissioner Vanore is back here. They're primed, they're ready, I think to my left. It's primed and ready. And where they will be the connective tissue between the detectives moving forward in whenever we have an incident where a homicide, the victim advocate. Now this -- I just want to make sure we level set here. I love Dr. Dorothy Speight, I love Amir, I love all of them. This is not to take away from their work, right? This is to be a connectivity to their work. We're not providing programming, right? We're being that connective. Where do the service we can direct them to, you know, and where can we support them? And both of those unit -- entities are training -- helping for our training to do that. But if we do this right, and I said that in my opening, we will be a national model, and we will not just for homicides, though, right away, special victims, the conversations has come from them about what do we do with victims and special victim victims? What do we do in our crash investigations? We have at least 40 individuals who will get killed in hit and runs. What have we done for those families? And what do we do for the countless number of people that we have in shootings? And so part of our work will be, we envision this is a small investment that at some -- at some point will be a larger investment. And again, it's not to duplicate or to remove the work, but if policing, as you indicated, we're going to change. We can no longer advocate some of these responsibilities to others. We want to own part of this space so we bring community into our department, guided by supporting with, you know, non-sworn staff who are executive levels leading our work. And so I just appreciate your early support, this body, and all the work that's going to get underway. And I'm excited about where we're going.

Thank you. And just a statement before I -- as I turn over to my members. We are at a historical low when it comes to homicides and shootings here in the city of Philadelphia. And so as the lead law enforcement agency in the city of Philadelphia, I think y'all deserve some credit for the work that y'all have been doing in terms of addressing this issue. So I'm going to give y'all -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you so much.

-- a round of applause because it's easy to always criticize and say what's not happening, right? And do the whole -- but I'm coming from lived experience, so I can't speak to a lot of privileged folks that get in this space and say their perspective. But when you live in the lived experience, and you come from an area that deals with poverty, and you grow up in the neighborhood and you see gun violence, and you grew up in the neighborhood when you see half your friends being murdered in the streets, and you actually see the dead bodies as a young person, right? But now as a dad, raising my two children in the very same neighborhood that I live in, and I see that crime has been cleaning up, and I see homicides and shootings are down, I just think it's something that we need to acknowledge and be straight up about. It's not a political issue. We're talking about people whose lives are being taken on a day to day basis. And so that's not a sound bite. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I appreciate you.

So I just want to thank all of you for y'all hard work and your dedication. To the gentleman who's the leader in this body around this particular issue, I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr. the first one, who's the chair of Public Safety.

Thank you so much, Mr. President. And I will only say that if I was your political advisor, this was the year to ask us for more money because we were feeling you. And so -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Bless you.

But since you did not do that, and the basic increases for the crime lab which we are for, which is in the process of actually performing your duties to be able to solve crimes. All of us -- many of us have actually visited that two small crime lab that I've never seen that much marijuana and cocaine in one spot, so many guns. And to know that you guys have outgrown that space and that it matters to the person who's processing the rape kit to be able to find out DNA issues with the ballistics, to find out if that was the same gun, you'd -- it matters. And so for you to finally have a location that may even produce a training school for future forensics operators, I'm very proud of. But let me lead off by saying thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you for you. Thank you for the Mayor, thank you for your team, whether it is in the 19th when we have our 7:00 a.m. roll calls, which you have actually been on working with our schools to talk about how to get our babies, our scholars, to and from school without hurting each other, or whether it is right outside this door for the plan that we're putting together to make sure that the 10 or so schools in this area don't use our plaza as their school yard and battleground. Thank you for being responsive. Thank you for the nuisance business task force that is dealing with as Member Bass talks about and fought against, liquor, single drinks, Lucy cigarettes. These little -- you are on the front line of helping us solve at a granular level. So now I've said all of that, but I mean it, and I believe our president doesn't say things he doesn't mean. So thank you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, sir.

I want to then transition and say, with the 39 percent decrease in homicides, we worked with you guys on our blueprint for Safer Philadelphia, and thank you and your team for working with us to produce those recommendations. What I would ask you, what do you attribute the reduction in violent crime in Philadelphia to? How would you say, if it were the top three things, what are they? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I wouldn't put it in three and no, I think it's all of it, right? I think we have to be careful because you can see that when things got bad, everybody looked down, took their brake pad off and started hitting the gas, right? And I think that's where the posture we have to stay in, right? It was no longer be, hey, I think the police department is getting it done and so let them carry the load. I think this group is getting it done, let them carry the load. No, we all, all -- I think as a person we're seeing at the school district receiving so many of the young people getting killed -- getting killed at the doorstep of the school. What are we at the time with the school district are doing to make sure and we are doing mental health. I mean, and working with young people, and we're doing mentoring programs. What is our part? I think all of it -- all of it plays a part. Clearly technology, and I talked about that. But the Mayor has very consistently said her whole strategy is rooted in prevention, intervention and enforcement. That is an inclusive strategy, right? It is not just about the police department putting cops on dots. And we know that focused policing and hotspot policing, hot places, hot people, hot times, can -- that -- that's been -- we know where that works. We know that if I put enough cops here, that these things are going to happen. But the reality now is we have to understand that all, all of it, every time an adult touches a child's life and have one positive adult in his private life, we know the data says that you can change the trajectory of that child's life. We know that. It doesn't lead on the news, it's not going to be seen, but we know that it's happening. We know that when we -- when we do our policing work effectively, we know when we do our diversion work. And so I could not relegate it or get into those three boxes of prevention. And I know that Adam will be talking about the work that their team is doing. We can talk about the prevention, whether it be our, you know, our PAL centers and all of the other activity that we're doing to address these issues. I do think the technology, though -- I will lean into the technology. I think the technology that we have today, and Commissioner Vanore or his team, as numbers have come down, what it has enabled us to do is much, much better investigations and not to be overwhelmed. And so that's why you're seeing an 83 percent clearance rate in the detective homicide, 37 percent clearance in the shooting investigation group for those of people who have shot somebody, but they could have killed that person. So treating those, I mean, those -- the work of those groups as well as the detective visions and our non-sworn and our forensic staff, I know Ryan's here from our team, assistant director, dealt -- all that stuff is having an impact.

So I want to, if I may, Mr. President, just put this question and I'll yield the mic. Describe for us how technology, manpower and interdenominational forces work together. And what do I mean by that? In the case of individuals that we've seen go from, let's say, the Macy's on the subway through Temple into North Philly, how do you blend multiple departments working together using technology such as cameras and others to apprehend individuals and through license plate readers and the DBCC, how is that blending together to be a force multiplier? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Oh, yeah. I think you just did it, right. You nailed it. You blended together. And I'm going to echo exactly what you just described. Today, you know, we have around 6,500 crime cameras across the city fill up. I think we have around 2,500 plus that are ours. But we work with SEPTA, University of Penn, others that we have access to cameras. Today with the technologies, particularly for our Genetec system and be able to share that video, you know, and we can see, I mean, and the user, the subscriber. I know Kevin Thomas who's from data analysis, we have 3,400 subscribers today who can look at those cameras. And so the ability to say, Hey, somebody came off the camera here, what direction we can do, have somebody visually looking that almost like a visual foot beat, be able to pick the person up. License plate readers, I think that became a conversation in one of the previous sessions where we now have over a hundred license plate, but we have hundreds now. The Fleet 3 camera system that we put into our cameras has LPR capacity. And so we're now being able to triple and quadruple our ability. So if a car leaves here in a shooting and a tag and has been picked up already by passing, the car hasn't made it been stopped by the police officer, but he's picked up that tag, we can start to localize where that individual is going. Then we can go to those cameras that you described. And then we have some other technology that we won't get too steeped in here that really, really -- the technology has really taken us. And our drone technology, which we may talk about more advanced is a false multiplier as we have our first responder model with that underway.

So, Mr. President, we've come a long way from the homicide police getting their first cell phones to the body- worn cameras in the 22nd to where we are now.

Yeah.

And I think that has played a part -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Absolutely.

-- and without violating people's civil rights, that we can use this to protect the rights of citizens. And I'm grateful. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Member Jones. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.

Thank you, Council President. Good Morning, Commissioner. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Good morning.

I really appreciated your testimony and thanks to you and your team for being here today and for the work that you do. Last year, we celebrated an important budget victory, additional funds to make our 911 department more competitive by giving operators raises and creating supervisor positions. The goal of the additional funding was to improve operator retention. So we were not losing experienced operators to collar counties. I would like to check in on the status of these changes. First, did we implement raises for 911 operators? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

If we did, how does our pay rate currently compare to surrounding counties? Have we created the supervisor positions and hired for them? If not, why not? And what are the barriers to us doing so? And how is the department working to remove those barriers? And finally, can you speak about how these changes have impacted 911 staff turnover numbers? Are we seeing improvements in retention? And what has been the impact on operator morale? And how would you describe operator morale today? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So those are all excellent questions. I don't think I wrote them all down, but maybe I'll -- hopefully I'll cross all of them as we -- as we speak. You know, one of the first things that I did, councilwoman, when I arrived is recognizing where it just as demoralizing and low morale in the sworn was equally, if not, double in the non-sworn. The -- they had definitely men and women who were working each and every day who felt like they're -- they were not valued.

Yeah. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And so I embarked on meeting with them, sitting down with them. I created an advisory group from that work. And now I meet with them regularly as well as the chief who's in there now working with them to really elevate them. And it's going to take some time.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I will -- I will -- I have to name it. It is going to -- you don't -- just because you say it's getting better, no, I think the Mayor eloquently say how people feel, right? And so we have been working very diligently to support them. We do still struggle with some staffing challenges, getting folks to get through the process. The days when I came in almost 40 years ago, sitting at a desk, now's like a cockpit. And I think some of you were there not too recently, if you -- it requires a much-heightened skill that's requiring a lot more work. And so we are continuing to work to deal with those vacancies. The raise for the -- of moving those into the supervisory position, that is part of our FOP contract. I expected that to be resolved as we go through our contract process with the FOP as it relates to the work rules and common work. We'll be able to address that. But we are moving in the right direction, I believe. But I would be totally wrong to sit there and say that are continue to be challenging in the space. As it relates to comparative salary, I know that was an issue before. None of our salaries compared to the -- to the counties.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Even by policing salaries. However, you know, I mean, many of them make up with overtime and able to make well beyond their salary base as a result of the staffing shortages.

Thank you. Is there anybody here who can -- I appreciate that context. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. Yes, ma'am.

Is there anybody here who can give more specifics about whether the raises happened? How we're doing on retention? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: The raises did happen. The raises -- the raises did go through?

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

And what do our hiring and retention numbers look like at this time? And is there any more you can say? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, of course.

I understand that the supervisor positions are a negotiation with the FOP, but is there more that you can say around how those talks are going and if that's likely to actually happen? Because that was a big part of sort of the morale issue with the operators. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Good afternoon or good morning still. Chris Dahl-Campbell, Deputy Commissioner of Organizational Services. I just want to say thank you for your support in this area. You've always been a great supporter of our dispatchers. So we actually have an active list for the positions for supervisors for our non-sworn staff. The hope is once we complete arbitration, we'll be able to go into that list and begin to promote those individuals into those spaces. And there has already been, you know, a monetary raise, associated percentage raise when they get those positions. So that is ready to go once we get through arbitration.

Great. And any information about hiring and retention numbers? I know last -- in prior years, we were kind of struggling with that. What does it look like today? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: So we are continuing to press to hire more individuals. We have smaller classes. One of the things we've heard is that the continuous training is draining to the floor. So what we've done is to be able to stretch that out a bit, give people the ability to not always be in training mode, but continue to bring resources on. So we're continuing to try and bring our numbers up. We do think that that will help with retention as well, giving people less time to be in that position of constantly in training. Meaning the experienced dispatchers. So we can balance that retention as well as recruitment.

Thank you. If you all could follow-up with the specific numbers to the Council President -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah.

-- I would appreciate it. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: We'll look at that.

And thank you so much. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Yes, ma'am. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And I do want to emphasize council on what she's described about, one of the things, meeting with those 911 dispatchers, the morale also was impacted. We were dump -- we were putting so many people through the training, they couldn't come up for air, right?

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And that was impacting the downstream impacts of how the person was getting trained. So we did have to go slow to go fast because we were definitely, that was one of the things we had to give them a little bit of a break in that -- in that process.

Thank you. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you very much. And also, just to follow-up with the actual responses in writing to the Chair, and we'll provide the members of the committee. Chair recognizes Dr. Anthony Phillips.

Thank you, Council President. I just want to thank you again. Y'all have been great with working for our district and our neighbors and seen a lot of great -- our neighborhood has seen a lot of great improvement from each of you. So thank you again. And also for your work with me as well, in general. I just want to ask a series of questions around young people. As we approach the summer months, what are the, you know, particular safety plans that you're going to -- that the department's going to have in place to protect young people and families at recreation centers? So that's one. The next question, I just wanted to also pose while I still have the time is, youth inclusion at the TWIS program. What efforts are underway to ensure that youth voices are authentically included in the design of the TWIS violence prevention activities? Okay. Lastly, can TWIS share how it's -how it collaborates with youth serving organizations? And I also want to learn about the Safe Quarter program. What data or community feedback is used to determine school participation? Are there plans to expand into high violence, underserved school zones? All right. And I'll talk about Town Watch Integrated Services later. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So will you -- so Doctor, I -- I'm trying to make some notes about start with the rec center. Wasn't -- are you talking about TWIS, Town Watch Integrated Service?

Yes. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Because that would not come under my charge.

Yeah, that's right. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Per se.

That's right. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: So that would be under Anthony Murphy and under Adam's team.

Okay. I'll come back to that one. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

So let's just start with the question -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: The rec center?

Let's start with the question around the Parks -- the rec centers. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So what do we have historically done as we shift, as, you know, we have 58 -- well, you would know, but we have 58 officers assigned to our school beach. As the summer approaches and schools starts to close, we've historically every year shifting to our rec centers and playgrounds, et cetera. We have started that process, Commissioner Cram, who leads the patrol operations, leads that effort with Commissioner Slawson. And they will start to sit down and go through using the data. We have a large, as you know, over 190 playgrounds and et cetera. So we have to be very focused on the data and we will start to determine where we're going to start to move our men and women into those forward positions to address those areas. We get -- as you know, we get a number of issues around our pools. And so we spend a lot of time working with the rec centers. And they do a phenomenal job in that work as a true collaboration. And so we will start to focus on those areas. In light of the most recent shootings, one at Finley and the other one at Lonnie Young, we directed -- myself and Commissioner Stanford directed Commissioner Cram to develop a pre-summer because we don't want to ensure that we're not having a pattern of activity at our rec center. So as a result of that, we shifted some funds as well as staffing to be able to start now ahead of the summer to start to direct our attention to core areas of the -- of the city where we impact -- have significant impact. So we're moving forward in that strategy. Our police athletic league is part of that. And then obviously the mayor's strategy globally that we announced last week as it relates to all of the activity going on.

Thank you so much. And I just want to hopefully get more time to talk about this later, but I want to learn more about your -- how you're coordinating with your department to respond to quality of life issues, you know, abandoned cars, vehicles, trucks, all that and more, like, because I know that the response time in the past has been slow. How are you finding ways to make them more expedited in the department? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

That's it. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

Thank you.

Anything else, Dr. Phillips?

That was -- that was it.

You're welcome. Thank you. The chair recognizes Councilmember Nick O'Rourke.

Thank you, Mr. President. And good morning to all the top brass of the PPD. Thank you for being here today. We spoke a bit about the cameras in the built environment. But I did want to mention that last year, I believe you said the department had deployed 3,435 body- worn cameras. And that the plan was to outfit all first specialized units by the end of 2024, and then the whole force by the end of '25. So here we are a year later, as I understand it, with the same number of cameras deployed and the same timeline. There are no new cameras, but the department is saying that you're still on track. Given that the reasons for delay really haven't changed, what is the department doing now to actually prioritize camera deployment for specialized units and then the whole force? And I say especially for the specialized units like the Narcotics Strike Force. I'm going to raise this point that I think, it was last May that Inqui reported that the narcotics officer secretly used cameras during drug bust, and then hid the footage that contradicted their court testimony. So can we share a bit about how you're actually prioritizing camera deployment specifically for the -- really for the whole force, but really around the specialized units, Commissioner? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So I don't know if the numbers got inverted, but we -- all of our district personnel have body-worn cameras, as you may know. We're also switching now from, you know, a -- Camera 4 is another new version. This is Bluetooth technology. So we're in the process of switching out those cameras to be able to -- and what that Bluetooth technology will allow us, when my camera turns on, your camera will turn on automatically without the officer even engaging his camera. And so we're moving to a much more advanced technology in that regard. All of our special units, I think there's only -- Kev, four? Three remaining special units. So part of, most recently after the airport incident where we recognized that the airport had not had their body-worn cameras, because many of those peripheral units were being the last ones to be deployed their.

The periphery units, you said? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Say it again.

You said the periphery units? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, the -- like the airport would be a unit that's -- in the airport, we're definitely trying to get the front line men and women who were at -- when -- at the front lines, even though the airport's at the front line, but in a different line of activity. And so the -- all of those have been done. So the Mayor, you know, made it very clear our very expectations. So we were able to rework a lot of the activity. We have three remaining special units to be deployed. And in addition to, we now have been able to put the Fleet 3 cameras -- car cameras in all of our cars. So all of our cars now have cameras. We're still working with Melissa Scott in IT to make some connectivity issues. We still -- but we have the cameras and we anticipate by May -- mid to late summer. Not only we'll we have body cameras worn in all of our front line and our folks who are connecting in the community, but we'll also have in-car cameras to support that as well.

I heard the bell, but just to clarify, the -- you're saying by mid to late summer, the remaining three specialized units will have body cameras? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I think they'll be -- yes, that's correct.

I'm going to say this and then I get off the clock. Has the department actually updated any policies around, I guess they're called real- time crime center cameras since they came out? And can you commit to prioritizing -- well, you've already done that. Has -- do you have any updated policies around real-time crime center cameras since that came out? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I think we have done -- I can't say for sure. I know that we've made some adjustments because of some of the issues coming out of the defendant's association around how we were, you know, direct using that language, around the cameras in court. But I can follow-up with you. I don't know if there's any specific part of the policy that you were referring to, was something key that you were looking at, Council?

We may have some questions about it. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay.

I just -- I think the first thing was to kind of understand if there was any, not improvements, if there had been any updates as it relates to the policies? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, I can't say if there's been any --

-- and then from there we might have some follow-up. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir. We'll follow-up. I can't say if there's been specific updates, but I'd love to.

I'm going to respect the discretion of the Chair and I'll come back around for a second around. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Member O'Rourke. Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you. And good morning. It's good to see you today. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Good morning, ma'am.

The city's proposal includes a call for the independent investigations into police misconduct to be performed by the Citizens' Police Oversight Commission as defined by the CPOC legislation. Is the department's leadership in support of the transparency and accountability that the CPOC is working towards? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes. We understand the charge of the order that was executed, and we're following that as we go through that process.

So, is the department in support of the CPOC performing independent investigations as well? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, those are the conversations underway along with our union as it relates to how that goes underway. I mean, those things are moving in through arbitration to have those conversations about the ability to do that.

Okay. And what are the barriers to CPOC performing independent investigations from your perspective as police leadership? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I don't -- I mean, I guess this a difficult to have the conversation here because it's part of the arbitration process. Councilwoman, I don't know if I -- not to not answer your question, but those are kind of questions that are going to be handled in the arbitration at this point, so I don't want to get ahead of that. I do think at times we have to figure out how to separate those processes. Today, we sit in the room and we do those investigations. The perfect process now is what does that look like from an independent investigation, now bringing that investigation back to the police department, and those then bring you over into the labor issues and part of the conversations in the contract negotiation with the FOP.

Okay. My next groups of questions is around the drones. How many functioning drones does the department have and what company makes the drones for the department's purchases? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So Axon is our body-worn camera -- company that does our Fleet 3 and also does our body-worn cameras. Skydio is the company that does the drones for us. We have a policy in place on how to use that. We're -- I don't know if you're asking a more larger question, but we have a significant ways to go in our drone process. We have an initial purchase. The police foundation was able to support us as we got underway, and then we'll -- using the funds that we received from City Council last year, we'll be making a continuing purchase. But there's some infrastructure things as we move into our first responder model. Long term, we hope in the next four to five years, that we will be able to deploy a drone on all priority one and two incidences, and that that drone will be on location less than two minutes.

How many police department staff or civilian are approved to operate these drones currently? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: How many?

Yeah. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Right now, we have six officers who are assigned to the drones. They're primarily been working in a beta testing model. Much of it we have done down at the Eagles games because of the massive traffic. We are down in Kensington. We met with the community down in Kensington as we've gone through using and starting to use the drones to support us in the open-air drug markets and the situational awareness for the men and women down in the field. And we're going to continue through that process, that testing model because as I shared, we have a long way to go in building the infrastructure for a full drone program citywide.

And can you just let me know how many arrests have been made since we've enacted these drones in the air -- some of the areas that you do? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. Yeah. I could tell you probably none. I mean, with situational awareness, I can share with you some of the things that we've been able to do to proactively support those men and women, particularly our SWAT team and others who are doing high level entries. That's been a very -- a good tool for us. We see this as minimizing our force by being able to have the drone see before we see in areas that we can't see. Yeah.

So it's been part of the investigative process and gathering information. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Absolutely. I mean, we just did a -- on -- when we had an event on the parkway where we had a child who was missing, got away from his mother and he had a disability, the drone was able to find that child and direct our men and women into that space. So we see a myriad of ways to use the drone to be able to -- as a force multiplier as something to help us in situational awareness. Chula Vista, California, is probably one of the best models you can see. And they really use it in a proactive way to ensure that we use it to be able to support our work. And I think most importantly, the situational awareness we think is going to be a significant benefit. Police officers, if done right, would not be walking into a violent situation because the drone would be able to show them what's going on around them. And we could take, you know, mitigations to be able to avoid those negative contexts.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I have a second round.

Second round. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore-Richardson.

Thank you. Thank you, Council President, and thank you so much Commissioner Bethel and to your entire team. And I'm going to very quickly go through my thank yous for the year. I had my team put together a list of all of the officers we have worked with and all of the captains and community relation officers and crime prevention officers that we've worked with this year. So I'm going to start with thank you. First to you, Commissioner Bethel, thank you very much. And you know, that also comes from Bonnie Lucas. Deputy Commissioner Stanford, DC Dales, Massey, Cram. Rosario, DahlCampbell. Of course, Fran Healy, thank you so much for all of your legislative prowess. We couldn't do a lot of the nuisance business work without you and drug paraphernalia work. POLICE OFFICER BETHEL: Thank you.

We have too many PPD captains to name, and I'm getting this directly from my team. But, you know, I have to start with my captain -- our captain, Councilmember Jones and I, Captain Nuble in the 19th. We love Captain Nuble. I just have to put that on the record. I know you all came to the community meeting at Overbrook High School where Councilmember Jones and I work together. But I just have to put that on the record. We love Captain Nuble in the 19th District. So thank you for Captain Nuble. You know, he has a huge fan club in Wynnefield, and I'm a part of it. So thank you for Captain Nuble. And of course, Captain Brown down at the airport, Captain DeBlasis in the 8th District. He's been helping us with a number of abandoned vehicles in that area. Officer Caggiano from the 5th District and Captain Kimrey. They've been really, really helpful to us. And Officer Caggiano, I have to say, just a stellar community relations officer, just stellar. The 14th Police District. They are wonderful with the CERC Center in Councilmember Bass's District. We visited there together at JJC. You also mentioned the Ebike, so I have to go back to the bike tour we did in the 4th with the late Tab Ali. He kept us going on those bikes through the hills of Manyunk and Roxborough, and we certainly miss him. Captain Green in the 12th, Captain Waters in the 18th, Captain Goodson in the 22nd, Captain Wheeler in the 25th, Captain Busa in the 35th and all of their community relation officers and crime prevention officers. Each one that I named my office personally work with on a constituent case or policy issue over the last year. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, ma'am.

I also wanted to put on the record that I did put this on the record during the labor hearing that we had relative to ensuring that we have community participation as a part of the arbitration panel for the negotiations with PPD and the FOP. I know that's not in your wheelhouse, but I just wanted to put that on the record. I wanted to start with our curfew. You know, that we have the Community Evening Resource Centers. We have our policy for the curfew enforcement. But I wanted to ask you all about any updated statistics you can share around curfew enforcement. Obviously some of the more recent incidents that we've seen with young people have not occurred, you know, during the hours that they should, you know, have been home around curfew. But I wanted to just have you all talk about how you collaborate with DHS and with the CERC Centers. We did receive information based on all the reporting that we have, that with the CERC Centers, we do have a lot of young people who are going voluntarily, which is great. That's what we want, right? DHS shared last week that they were able to service more than 50,000 young people at all of our Community Evening Resource Centers across the city. But we do want to see, particularly as we approach the summer months, that young people who may be in violation of the curfew, we want to see them go to the CERC so they could receive help and support from all of the services that are provided there. And I know it's our policy to try to take them home, but we do want to try to help them with services and support. So I wanted to just ask about the curfew enforcement and any updated statistics that you could share. And then additionally, I wanted to circle back to the hearing that we had last week regarding a nuisance businesses. We had a joint committee hearing between our Licenses and Inspections and Public Safety Committee to address the illegal sale of drug paraphernalia. And we've been working really closely with Fran Healy on that matter. And I just wanted to have you talk about how you would be able to increase additional officers if we were able to double the amount of nuisance business task force that we have for the city. So the thought process is to have one for each tour. So have you know, L&I inspectors, Public Health inspectors, and police officers that can go on your first tour of duty, and then second tour, and then overnight. What would that look like? And what would we need to allocate to ensure that you all be able to have adequate officers to do that? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. So I -- I'm going to do the top, and then end, and I'll let Fran do the middle around the nuisance. But as it relates to the curfew enforcements, I mean, last year we had almost 2,800 curfew violations. And as you know, only a small number, I think based on the data, around 77 kids may have been brought to the center as a result. And many of that -- much of that is rooted in our policy. As you know, our first line of -- is to take those young people home. And I know that sometime goes against all of the things it was built, but it's got to be the right thing for us as an organization. And the conversation around how we address our young people and how we engage with our young people, we think it is part of that process. However, I -- as we build out, as you know, we just started a new diversion program. You know, as we started the school, our school diversion is going extremely well. Right? We've done a 90 percent reduction in the number of children -- go ahead, sir.

Just for the record, Madam Leader, so you just not locking little kids up? You got a diversion program? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

Could you elaborate for the Majority Leader? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So, I mean, as you know, back in 2014, I created a diversion program for our schools that has been -- oh, I must be getting in the middle of a fight here. But anyway, I'm going to make it work. But we were able to divert young people from our school district. At that time 1,600 children were being arrested as young as 8 years old. A child would literally 9 walk into a school with a mace, and 10 we would put her in a cell block and hold her in a cell block for six hours. This is unacceptable. Through that process of changing the way the policy, working with Commissioner Ali's and DHS and other commissioners before her, we were able to instill a program where we divert, as you know, into our CUAs the same -- many of the same locations that we do at CERCs. We went from a 90 percent reduction from 1,600 kids being arrested to last year, 147 children. So we now have expanded that now into the districts and citywide. Working with the team, my team here, we were able to divert now a three- tier process. So officers diverting young people in the field for Tier 1 minor, very minor offense. That kid will get, you know, told that, you know, knock it off but also given -- referred to some services. Tier 2, they get started getting referred to our CUAs. And then our -- those are thefts. And then our Tier 3, we also use brain science. A 10-year- old child in a stolen car, something's wrong.

Yeah. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Let's just name it, we don't have to run from it. I don't have to lock up a 10-year-old child to prove a point. Something's wrong. And so what we decided for our 10 and 12 year olds, for those level offenses, they go into a more intensive diversion with our CUAs. But in those two or three, we are now be able to take them to our CERC. So we anticipate as we ramp up, as the men and women get more engaged in it, we have over a hundred kids have been diverted so far. I know Lisa is here, Lisa Thurows back here, who runs the JAC. We're working -- Councilman Gauthier, I didn't get rid of the JAC. We found a way to make it work so we can integrate our work. So all the diversions, a lot of it's going right through the Juvenile Assessment Center. So we kept that. I know last year I was pulling away, but I'm a smart man when I know I need to reset. And so we think those CERCs are going to be a very good tool for our men and women to start to move. There's, I believe two other CERCs now have the time period to be able to address that earlier time period. We think working with Commissioner Ali and her team we'll be able to start to use that as another way to work with our young people in addition to the curfew activity we have now.

I heard the bell, so I'm going to honor the clock and circle back on the second round regarding the nuisance businesses. But I was writing so small and so fast because I didn't want to forget anybody. I want to make sure I said Vanore and Kelly, too. Okay. Thank you all so much. And then really quickly on the CERCs, I will tell you that I did visit one of our CERC Centers. I'm not going to say which one. And I had an opportunity to sit with the young people. To your point, regarding the young people and the stolen vehicles, I learned something completely new that day. They called them licks. When they steal the cars it's called licks. And the young man said, but I'm here now. He said, I really like it here and I enjoy coming here. And he said, this is like my third or fourth week coming. And he said, I'm not going to do any licks anymore. And I was like -- and so anyway, I learned something new going to the CERC. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, you're teaching me over here too, so.

Right. I've never heard that before, but I'll come back on the second round to just circle back on the drug paraphernalia issue and the hearing that we had last week just to see what the needs would be in order for us to adequately do the enforcement along with PPD and with Health and with L&I. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am. And --

Okay. Thank you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: -- Commissioner Healy will take that when he comes back around.

Thank you. My sisters giving shout outs. So Deputy Commissioner Dales, I see sitting over there served in the 17th, going to the young boys that was shooting up the neighborhood house out in Tasker, trying to tell them to put down their guns or we coming to get you, and how can I adopt you? And that's -- and I want to also thank Deputy Commissioner Cram for helping me with the dirt bikes.

Yeah.

Yep. That are having significant impact in South Philadelphia. As well as Joe Green, who was with me recently doing our "Peace Not Guns" walk, where a young lady with 17-year-old was murdered in a driveway in southwest Philadelphia. And obviously Captain McKinney who worked with us during our "If tour" in South Philadelphia and Point Breeze Avenue. Thank you, Councilwoman Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson for making sure we put it on the record. Because we want to give people flowers when they actually doing the work. Right? As opposed to, you know, always saying what's wrong, we want to celebrate what's right. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And I want to say, I appreciate that, Councilman. I didn't say that at the beginning. I mean, we're old, but we appreciate, I mean, I don't care how -- people love to be appreciated.

Yes. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And that's how you feel valued. And we just say thank you for elevating that. Thank you so much.

And you're right here in Stanford for dancing with the people during the parade. He was like -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, but he --

-- Super Bowl parade. He in deep South Philly too, having fun with the residents and lifting up their spirits. Majority Leader.

To your point, to put on the record, I have to say, because we have a good track record. Councilmember Jones knows this in the 19th, DC Stanford was our former captain in the 19th.

Oh, okay. He was in Philly?

I just want to put that on the record.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Understood. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Stay with him. Stay with him.

We have to be careful or -- every time we celebrate -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Every time you talk, you lose them. You lose them.

-- they wind up getting promoted. So that I was -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, I was just talking about the 19th district captain. I think we give -- that's -- no, no. 10

The Chair recognizes Councilmember Cindy Bass.

Thank you, Mr. President. Good morning. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Good morning, ma'am.

How's everybody? I also want to follow the lead started by my colleagues and start off with a round of thank yous. Commissioner Bethel, thank you so much for all of your work and for your years of service to the city of Philadelphia. You know, we know that, you know, in this job, I always say we make it look easy so people really don't know how many things we're doing beneath the surface. You know, just trying to keep everything together for the department, for the city. You know, hats off to you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, ma'am.

Much respect. Much respect due. I also wanted to give a big shout out to, in the 39th District, Captain Busa, in the 14th District Captain McCollum, and in the 35th Captain Burks, all of the community relationship officers who we have great working relationships with, the police clergy, the PDAC members who really support our police on the ground. District Deputy Commissioner -- I'm sorry, Deputy Commissioner Joel Dales. I didn't see him here. Somebody said he was here. Is he over there? He's over there. I remember when he was Captain Dales in the 14th District, many, many moons ago. And we had a great working relationship at that point, and still continues on to this day, as well as Deputy Commissioner Healy who worked with us and who helped us write a couple of our nuisance business bills. So thank you so much for your service. And Northwest Inspector Nick Smith, who does fantastic work. We have a great time working with him. And I also want to shout out the one and only Mighty Massey, as I call her. Deputy Commissioner Massey. Mighty Massey. Mighty Massey, who does a fantastic job. Thank you so much for all that you do. I wanted to just start out with a couple of questions around nuisance businesses. And I wanted -- I know my colleagues started talking about, you know, the work we can do to address them. But I want to look at it from a different angle, which is the fact that we often park a police car in front of these nuisance businesses. And it absolutely drives me insane that it's almost as if these -- some of the worst players in our communities get this level of police protection. And I know that we've talked about it before and we've talked about, you know, pulling a car off could mean that somebody could get, you know, shot, hurt, injured, something. But there's got to be a better, more strategic way that we figure out how do we keep our community safe, and at the same time make sure that we're not giving this level of protection to the cause of the problem often in the community. When that's a card that could be circling the block, making all the neighbors in the community feel safe. Any thoughts on what we can do about that? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I'm going to let Fran --

And also, are we working with L&I? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah.

Because if we know that this is a site where it's going down, you know, is L&I also want that to help. You know, like do something about this business that we know is operating against the, you know, wishes of the community in which the way they operate. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I'm going to let Fran -- I mean, as he's the orchestrator of a lot of it. But Commissioner Massey and her team have done a phenomenal job last year when, you know, I was just getting on the record. When it relates to commercial corridors, they did 226 sweeps, eight business checks, and they closed down six properties. You know, short dumping with 35 investigations, multiple warrants, and there was a judgment that they were able to obtain working with law for almost $3 million. You know, they made numerous arrests and different nuisances just walking through some of the highlighted, you know, short dumping, you know, and just the activity that's underway in abandoned autos. You know, 8,300 written abandoned autos, I think was almost 11,000 abandoned autos taking off of the streets. Councilman Lozada, 8,881 just in your area alone. And so there has been this very concerted effort to really address this. It was part of the Mayor's charge and part of creating Commissioner Massey's community partnership bureau was to -- I don't mean, bureau, but area was to really focus on this. So we're just getting our feet under to do more of that. I'll let him talk -- Commissioner Healy talk about some of the more granular issues around what we're seeing. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Good morning.

Good morning. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: And thank you for the question. When it comes to the officers you're seeing out there, oftentimes what it may be a result of is actually your legislation. And I say that in a good way. Okay. Because what happened with the 9-4400, we're now getting into abatement plans with a lot of the nuisance locations.

Oh, good. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: And we work with the law department, oftentimes one of the options are is to hire reimbursable overtime details. So that car isn't taking away from the district itself, it's an overtime detail.

Okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: So that's one way that we're using the available resources and we're actually holding these individuals accountable. It's actually through the 944 process with your initial bill, as well as Councilmember Phillips amendments, it's been an incredibly valuable tool. We track the first, second and third letters, so we know how we're having an impact at what level. And, quite frankly, a lot of the business owners are actually taking action once they get that first letter. They get that warning. They're stepping up and saying, how can I resolve this? A lot of the resolutions they're coming to is both these abatement plans, and it includes lighting -- whatever it may be, lighting more security gates, whatever the negotiated settlement comes to. And the law department helps us with that.

I've got a couple of nuisance businesses that I'd like to recommend, you know, to be on your radar. Because I mean, some of these places are just -- it's unbelievable some of the activity that's happening. Like right now, I'm going to give you a list. I'm going to write out a list right now and hand it to you. So I'm sorry, Commissioner, did you -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: No, no, no. It was this.

Okay. So while I have an extra minute, so a quick question, which is around police cameras. And I know that this is probably not something for the public, but as district members and really at large members, can we get a list of where cameras are? Police cameras are. And when a camera goes offline, can we be alerted to that? So that we can help, you know, in any way possible, funnel resources, provide supports. And also if we have a list, it helps us to, you know, supplement the cameras that you have in place. So, for example, if, let's say, I know that you've got a camera at Broad and Wyoming, which is in my District. You know, maybe I can -- because we have a camera program, too, in which we put cameras on individual houses at people, you know, at the request of the homeowner. And we'll do a block, we'll do two houses, one at one end of the block, one at the other end of the block, and one sort of in the middle to help capture. And, you know -- and it gives the neighbors a sense of security in the community. So is there a way to get that list so that we can help supplement the work that we're doing and also support what you're doing? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, that'd be -- absolutely. We would -- we would love to work with you on that. Our team can work. We do have the capacity, Kevin, if I'm correct, to know when a camera's down. And we -- and we have the resources to be able to repair them relatively quickly. But we would definitely love to work with your office to see how we can --

So when your camera -- if a camera goes down, how quickly do you generally get it back up? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, that's -- we know when it went down now.

Say again.

So as soon as we can get the BSS clear. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So we have a team that goes out, but we can give you the time. We can provide you with the time from down to getting repaired. It really is going to be predicated on what went down. Some of the stuff times they can do fix it while with not even responding. But we'll have to see. We'll get that information for you.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And I do want to -- while, you know, Commissioner Stanford has shared with me as released in the nuisance, there were 123 investigations, 39 letters that were perceived for high risk businesses. So there were, you know, getting underway and starting to use that tool to help us with these issues.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay.

And my last question is --

Be brief.

A couple of --

Brief one.

Very brief. Homicides in the 8th District. I ask about every year. One was recently solved, that was the homicide around 15-year-old grad student, Devin Wheaton, who was shot and killed on his way to school. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

Thank you so much -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

-- to you and your detectives who worked to solve that case because this was a young man who was on his way to school. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Oh, I was on the scene that day. It was a very tragic situation.

Yes, yes. Also, there are two others among the many that really weigh with me -- weigh on me. And one is Jeremiah Wilcox, who was a 13-year- old shot and killed in front of a bunch of people. He was a student at Wagner Middle School. And there were a lot of people around when he was shot and killed, and that was probably three years ago at least now. And also, of course, Damien Taylor -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

-- who was a more recent one. We've talked about extensively the student from Imhotep who was killed at the bus stop. And we know that there have been some other developments that may be related to that. But his family has not reached out. I talked to his -- communicate with his mom every so often and she's still, you know, obviously very much grieving. But any developments that you all might be able to share would be greatly appreciated. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, we appreciate that. And I met with his mother and we even brought her down to the office to talk through as she's still going through her grief, but she wants to turn that into action as well.

Yes. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And how we can support her. And you led that effort to connect us, and I appreciate that.

Thank you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilman Rue Landau, then Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Councilmember Jeffrey J. Young.

Thank you.

Zeke, do you want to before we go on the second round? Okay. Then Councilmember Thomas.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for what you do. Thank you to my colleagues who have been lifting up the names of all of our young people who have been victims in any way to gun violence. It is -- you know, none of us are going to rest until the number is zero. So very happy that it is decreasing, but there's still so much work to do. I wanted to -- I'm the Chair of the Tech Committee, and I wanted to ask some tech questions to you and follow-up on some of my colleagues. The first is just so I'm clear about the whole universe of technology. We are looking at -- we have surveillance cameras, body worn cameras, dash cams, and drones. Is that pretty much it? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: We got a lot of technology, but that's a --

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: -- right now they're --

The public facing part, I suppose. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, we have LPRs, license plate readers, other as well.

Okay. Did -- do all of these systems feed into the same database? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, as it relates to --

Storage or database. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Storage. Yeah. All of our video evidence comes into evidence.com. So an officers day, his body-worn camera is going into what's called evidence.com. That's where those are stored and shared with the District Attorney's Office, the Defender's Office, et cetera. Our body-worn camera, like I said, our Fleet 3, which is our cameras in our cars, comes into that same network. Our drones, camera feed from our drones goes into evidence.com. I think -- the only thing I do think is the city cameras, Kevin, would not be --

If we capture evidence, it goes into evidence.com. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Right. If we capture evidence, then we upload that into evidence.com.

Okay. And how long do we hold the footage in evidence.com and also Fleet 3? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I think it's --

As long as it's in evidence. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: As long as it's evidence, it stays. Unless we're told to take it out. It's considered evidence at that point. So unless we are told to remove it, it stays in there forever.

When we originally started, we were moving the Police Advisory Commission into CPOC, there was a question about storage space and the expense of storage is that we've moved beyond that and we can hold it indefinitely now? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I believe we have. Yeah. Wait, Kevin's up. Okay.

Yeah. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. I'll have Kevin come up and talk to you about -- as we dig deeper into it.

While I'm also asking that question, can I also put out the, who has access to this to this footage? And do we share it with any regional or federal partners?

Yes. My name is Kevin Thomas, Executive Director for Data Analytics and Technology. Evidence.com access our primary evidence repository, which both the police department and the DA's Office has access to. That's for the purpose of evidence. But we also aggregate data into our data warehouse, right. That allows from all our LPRs and any of our other systems within the department. That way we can make those data available for investigators, for police officers, for analysts and the like. So I just wanted to delineate that difference. One is for the purpose of evidence. Right? And in that case, there's really no retention policy because it's still evidence.

Okay.

The other one, we have -- we have another policy when it comes to retention. So for example, I don't believe -- I think we keep LPR data for a year right now by policy for the purpose of the Genetec camera system, that's 30 days. And a lot of that gets restricted, not so much more because of just the volume of data that has to be managed, but -- so there's -- I just want to delineate those two different things. There's evidence, right, and then there's what we do to aggregate data for the purpose of analysis and investigations.

Okay. And do we share any of that data with regional or federal partners?

Yes. And primarily through the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, which is our Fusion center, where we have multiple federal and state partners present and local partners.

Who are -- do we have policies of when we share it or do they have full access to see this information?

So how we share information is dictated by the by CHRIA or the Criminal History Records Information Act, I believe, which is a state statute. It depends on what the nature of the data is. If it is criminal history information, that's different than if it's investigative information, which is also different than if it's -- if it's intelligence. And each of those different types of information have to be handled in a certain way. But it -- it's all based around whether or not they have a right-to-know or -- and if they have the need-to-know. And those are the two sort of variables that we have to identify before any information is shared. If it's protected information, like intelligence, for example, there actually has to be an audit trail for how that information is disseminated and shared. And that's a requirement by both the feds and the state police.

Okay. I think I understand. So we're make -- I have some drone follow-up questions, too, so I think I got enough there.

Yeah. I'm being generous, but your time -- we're trying to get to a second round.

I know. Let me just follow-up to finish up this piece then. We affirmatively have to make the decision as to whether or not we're sharing it on a right-to-know or need-to-know.

Right.

Is that correct?

Yes, ma'am.

And do -- who does this? Do we have lawyers associated with this as well?

So that's articulated within policy. I mean, and it's also very simple. If it's law enforcement sensitive information that can only be shared with another law enforcement agency, that's the first criteria. Are you a law enforcement agency, for example. The second one for the need-to-know is whether or not that partner is -- is actively -- has an active investigation. So we can't necessarily share information unless we know from that law enforcement partner that they are actively investigating and that data is relevant to that investigation. So that's an example of right-to-know and need-to-know. From an intelligence standpoint, which is where we have the greatest level of protection, that's managed by directive by -- and actually by federal and state policy, by our lead intelligence officer, which is the captain of the criminal intelligence unit. And that person makes that determination about whether or not those are met and ensures that those data are properly logged and accounted for.

One tiny final follow-up.

See, when you have lawyers on council.

I can't help it. If --

Now you're doing interrogations and --

Let's just say ICE was looking for me.

Right.

Does ICE have access to our cameras without your permission to look for me on the street corner?

Okay. Direct question.

No. So it's -- we do not -- we do -- I would have to double check, but my gut reaction is, no, they do not have access to that. And no, they do not have access to really any of our core systems either. If there's a request that comes through the Fusion center, that's handled in a different way. But again, they have to meet that criteria of need-to-know and right- to-know in order to get access to that information.

Okay. Thank you. I'd love a follow-up on that to get the answer.

That's why.

Thank you.

I know a little bit about questioning, so obviously I'm here, right? Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity, Quetcy Lozada, Young Thomas, and then we'll be officially in our second round.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Chief. And thank you everyone who's here. I'm going to say a quick thank you to everybody because I'm not going to start naming names because I run citywide and I deal with all -- pretty much all the captains, and they're all hardworking caring individuals. But I'd like to get to know more about the JAC program. So can you tell me more about the three tier diversion system being funded for the JAC, and what does the process for juveniles determine to be low risk look like? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: See, I think I have it, my notes. Let me see if I have it with me to break it down. If not, we can pull it up, so. All right. So what we had done, it's part of the JAC. Originally, remember last year, I was very concerned about where we're going to JAC. We still have some movement to do because I still have officers assigned to the JAC. That was my biggest issue and we still do that today. But part of what we're looking to is -- now is to bring in other folks to take over that JAC. We're moving those officers into what we call youth specialists. Those officers will be working across the city doing follow-up with our young people, meeting with the families to discuss how we can help them to change their trajectory. And so that's our big vision right now. We're using it after their tour of duty to do that. What we also decided to do, continue to utilize the JAC as the hub of all of our juvenile activity for when kids come through to get processed. However, we also recognize many of the kids do not need to touch the system. So in a Tier 1, public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, you know, where they get code violations, the officer is able to release that individual. And then they offered them with support services within two days to be able to do that and follow-up. And that's a -- that's a portion of them. Then we move into our Tier 2. These are juveniles who've been arrested for trespassing, vandalism, thefts, many of our kids with retail theft and theft models, theft in general. Those kids are eligible, but in those cases, they're transported home. They'd be released to a guardian. And then the juvenile must tend a one day restorative justice program or a counseling referral. And that's what we do. We also -- our officer offer them IPS services if they need it as part of the CUAs intensive preventive services in that regard. And then we move into our much more heavier category, which is our Tier 3. Those are going to be for -- now, again, we use -- what we did was walk down this age appropriate area. So a child who's to years old is, if he gets 10 caught with a motor theft, burglary 11 or narcotics, then we move them into 12 a mandatory process where they go into a diversion model. They are required to complete one of the IPS providers programs, the same program that we use with the school district. And we work with them as part of that process. And then we also do some of the lower level civil assault categories. And so that's our encompassing. We just embarked on that, I guess, what, two months ago? About two months ago we launched that.

So just to -- for my own criteria, like, I remember -- well, like Councilman Johnson, I, too, as a juvenile got in some trouble. One of my first jobs was because my parents decided they weren't going to pay for the fines anymore for the diversionary programs I had to keep taking. For instance, disorderly conduct class. We had back when I was a young person for when they caught us hanging on the corner, making noise or disturbing people's peace in their houses and stuff like that. And, of course, the drinking underage class that they used to have where you would take the class, pay the fine, and then you wouldn't have it on your record. And so what I'm trying to get to is we're still letting them, especially for the low offenses, letting them have a couple bites of the apple for these diversionary programs. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: In some of the areas we will. We -- we're still -- we started in January 6th. But just so you know, my work before I -- when I left the department, was really also around collateral consequences of arrest and recognizing that, you know, young people stayed in the system like you talked about because they could not pay the fines to get out.

Exactly. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And I remember testifying in this body around what we should do, and this body at that time made a decision to remove that. So we've -- so for example, we've diverted 3,400 kids since we began our program in 2014, in the school district. And no -- none of those individuals have to pay a fine or fee. In this case here, they're not charged. And so we -- Department of Human Services and their men and women and their CUAs and their IPS have been a phenomenal partner. They have baked much of this work into their place-based budgeting. So it has not come at a cost to us and has been a part of their work over a decade later. And we took that same approach here. You know, a 10-year- old child cannot pay a fine unless their parents pays that fine.

Exactly. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And it is unacceptable that you -- we would try as a city of this nature and the issues that we have with our young people that we would think that they could pay. You know, I remember sitting down with children who were years in the system because of 7 exactly what you said. And I tell 8 people, this ain't soft on crime. I 9 can be the hardest guy you ever want 10 to meet. I don't have time for folks out there shooting and all of that. But I do have time for young children, you know, and I will not have a system that's locking up 10-year-old children, and, you know, we have to figure out a better way to work with our young people.

Absolutely. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And we can do both.

There's nothing underlying usually when they're that young. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: You know, prevention, intervention enforcement is what the Mayor charges with. And so we can go upstream and do the prevention and we can also, you know, I mean, because that matters, and keeping -- redirecting young people and keeping them from going deeper into the system has to be just as equally part of our work as it is locking them up.

You know, when the Mayor picked you as her chief, I was actually excited because of the fact that you spent the time in the school district, because you've seen firsthand that these kids are good kids. They're just sometimes misguided or misled. And I think that that makes you a stronger chief because you were there and you've seen it and you were able to turn it around. So I appreciate the work you're doing there. And I agree. We should not be -- listen, the idea is to teach them a lesson, make them take the class. To fine, I don't -- I don't get that either. So I'm glad that we're not -- we're leaning away from that. Because, like you said, too many times, too many young kids are penalized because they can't come up with that a $100 or $50, and that's not right. Thank you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Young, Lozada, Thomas. Then we're officially in our second round.

Thank you, Mr. President. And good morning. I just have a couple questions about -- first for this round, it's going to be about GVI. And I looked at the budget and it says that GVI is being refocused to a more surgical geographic approach. Can you tell us what that approach is and what that approach looks like, and how will that affect the GVI juvenile pilot that's in the 22nd Police District? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. Thank you for that question. I mean, part of the -- just not so much the -- I mean, when I came back to the department, I mean, we have consistently said that we have 10 of our patrol districts that represent the lion share of our violence. And unfortunately, you have one of those key districts in your zip code that does that. And so just being laser focused on where we are as it relates to going after young people or, you know, group violence, the interventions where it's most needed. You know what I mean? And so, no disparaging, but I don't need you all over the city. We don't have enough resources. And so just being more data-focused and saying, you know, if a large percentage of homicides and shootings and -- are coming out of 19121, then that's where we should focus our work. And so just being laser focused in that part of it, obviously I don't oversee them. That comes out of Adam Geer shop. And -- but Deion Sumpter, the team from the time we walked in the door, we're very open to being, Hey, listen -- and so we provided that information. Here's our areas that we focus at. Larry, you're working here. And that's why we ride together in that work.

Can I get a point of information? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

But are we still doing the call outs? And we started this program together. We went to New York together to bring this program to City of Philadelphia. And I get the compassionate police approach, which I'm definitely a part of, but also a call out for me is necessary to tell some folks that either we're going to take the resource and the support and we're going to try to provide for you, or if not, you got to go, right? Because when I go talk to their mom, right, on that homicide case that y'all trying to solve, right, she want answers and she want to feel a level of comfort, and when you close out a situation, right? So, is that still a part of the focus? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I mean -- I mean, the model that we ran, we --

The word I meant to say is closure. I'm sorry. Closure. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I would say no, right? The focus deterrence model that was run -- that we initiated -- and -- during our -- during my earlier stint here was really a very focused strategy as you know. And it was really very, very targeted. And obviously there was, you know, levers that were pulled. And if, you know, if anyone in the group engaged in x, y, z behavior, then we went into a significant mode of addressing all of that. The GVI is not that. I mean, the GVI is not the focus deterrence model. It is really a model that goes in -- I don't want to get ahead of them, but really goes in and works with those families, meets with them, talk to those individuals that they think may be heading in the wrong path, but it's not the model that we -- that you recall and the call-ins, that model does not right now exist in our work.

Member Young? Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Thank you for that. But -- and can you just talk to us about the -- how GVI, because we all know GVI has been -- the data has said that it works, right? And just talk to us about what we're doing with this juvenile model as we are seeing these -- I won't say upticks, but they're more publicized juvenile shootings happen in our -- in our city. So can you talk to us about what your strategy is regarding this GVI juvenile model and what resources will be dedicated to this particular initiative? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. So I thank you for that. As you know, around 11 percent, a little over 12 percent of 12 our violence across the city is involving juveniles. And one of the things that we identified, and I was pleased to hear that Commissioner Massey and David Irizarry met with you most recently to walk through the Gang Reduction Youth Development model that we're putting into the 22nd District. Part of the reason is as we also ask, there is a true partnership between myself and Adam Geer and his team as he -- as their work evolves, and my work evolves as we overlay in that prevention, intervention and enforcement space. And part of that work was asking them as part of their juvenile -- to work in your specific area because you have a large percentage of young people engaged in the behavior that you described, and aligning that with our Gang Reduction Youth Development program for those who are listening. And, I mean, that is a program that's been run out of LA going back to 2007, where they really focus on all the things that the Mayor has talked about, prevention, intervention, violence, and interruption. So that's why, you know, the GVI program was an excellent tool for that. And -- but most importantly, community engagement and working through a fellowship that I received from Stoneleigh Foundation to bring in David Irizarry who comes from the outside, who's very seeped in that is working together as to see if we can really build a bottom-up model, not a top-down model, a model built in the community. So we're going to do, as you know, Summer Night Lights, is a program that they do in their program where they bring young people together. We put cops and staffing out there to create positive events for the young people in that space. And we'll be able to review that model where we have the research, and I know Kevin Thomas and some others are involved to be able to do that research to see if that's a way -- a path forward for how to engage in those areas, particularly around our young people, where they're highly concentrated and oftentimes nothing to do.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to working with your office on that model this summer. I think it's a great idea. And we're going -- I think we're going to see some reductions in some of the things that we're looking for. Council President, I have one more question. I do know you had to point information during my questioning. So please, thank you. Just one more question around -- for this round around, car break-ins, right? This is something that affects the quality of life of folks in my council district, particularly around where our rec centers are, right? These are large spaces where there aren't homes, right? There's no visibility. So can you talk to us about what the police strategy is around solving some of these car break-ins or preventing some of these car break-ins that are happening in and around our city? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, I mean -- I mean, there -- I mean, I'll be very up front. They're very challenging for us. Very, very challenging for us. And because there's a sheer number, and we really are more reliant on the community to be supportive in that space. And we're constantly encouraging individuals not to leave valuables in their cars. I mean, people think a quarter doesn't matter, but somebody's out there trolling for, you know, money, a quarter gets them closer to that number they're looking for. So what we do from our data -- I mean, part of our CompStat and our briefing, we look more where we starting to see high concentration of areas where we're seeing an elevated level of car break-ins. So Commissioner Cram has the front end patrol. We will start in those positions focusing. Now, a lot of the work we do is around informational; Leafling an area, leafleting in a block, and letting them know that you're -- you know, we're seeing a higher level of car thefts or thefts in -- I mean, the car with breaking into cars for thefts. But it is a challenging from a staffing perspective to be able to really with the sheer numbers oftentimes, and then oftentimes when you get the individual, because it's a low level offense, you know, I mean, they oftentimes are right back out the door. And this is every administration. This is not an indictment of the DA's office. That's been since the beginning of time. And so, we try to be very focused, and if you have an area and what we try, you know, to communicate to the community to help us in that regard. As we start to bring on asking more communities around ring doorbells, we believe that strategy, Commissioner Massey is leading that work under the direction of the Mayor. And we have a grant to start to see if we can start to incorporate the ring doorbells into our visual and ask community to, Hey, take a look at during this time and this time, did you see anybody walking up and down the street? But it is -- I'll be very honest with. And I -- so I always sit here and be honest, it is extremely challenging with the level of violence and the level of other crimes that we have to really focus. So we really -- are really laser focused on those areas where we see a high level of incidences, and then we direct the captain to put resources in there, whether it be physical patrol, bike patrols, leafleting is a big parameter. And then -- and then also trying to make an arrest.

Is there any victim compensation fund for that type of crime? I'm not -- because I -- it just -- when I'm talking to constituents, it kind of, like, kills their entire day. When they come out in the morning, they see that their car window is smashed in, and -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: It is.

You know, so -POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. It's -- no, the -- we're -- I think the victim conversation is not related to property unless during a crime. But -- so, yeah. And during the commission of a crime, but unfortunately, no. 8

Thank you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: But again, we can -- we can -- we'd love to talk to you more about your councilmanic districts and how we can make sure you're informing your people and even talking about how we can let you know when there's a particular spike in your area so you can reach out to your constituents to make them aware. I think it is really common. And that's -- sorry.

Yeah. I just want to add, I think the education -POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

-- component is very, very effective. I mean, it happens. I know in Point Breeze, it happens, you know, from time to time. And I remember the response from the 17th Police District, PDAC, they will actually work with the police to actually go out and put the pamphlets on our cars, telling us to be aware. And some of it just also -- it's not all on the cops. I think it's a public private partnership whether it's Town Watch should be in the neighborhood, right? Being each other neighbor's eyes and ears. But also the small thing is making sure that your doors are locked. And the small thing is when people come and peek inside your car, you might leave your plug -- you might leave your charger cord in there, right? They may think it's a phone in there. And if I'm correct, I think in the past, there's also people with firearms that had been stolen, basically on break-ins inside cars. And so just being diligent on our end as well, making sure that you lock up your car. And also who's walking down the neighborhood that you normally don't know, right? Or that person that's just walking down the block just taking a look, or in the evening, checking doors. And so just being each other eyes and ears. I've seen been somewhat helpful. But I want to keep this round moving. So, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada and Councilmember Phillips.

Thank you, Council President. First, I'd also like to recognize and shout out the captains of East Division who are strong partners of mine and of the community, as well as the captains from the 15th and the 2nd. Thank you to all of you who are here today. Special shout out to Deputy Commissioner Rosario for all of his work and his commitment to restoring and re-imagining the Kensington community with all of us. Mentioning Kensington, we have worked together over the past year or two on different things to improve quality of life. We've worked with community residents, with businesses, with young people all to create tools that we put in a toolbox in order to change what is happening there. And so I'd like for you to talk a little bit about how some of those tools have actually worked, what some of the challenges are. KPD is there. How is the -- how have they been received? I know that when I talk to community residents, they're excited about having additional police in their community. But there are concerns as it relates to how they respond to some of the folks who are living in substance use disorder. And so, I'd like you to talk to us a little bit about what is happening there and how have the tools that we have provided you with -- that we've come up with together, how have they worked? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, so, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Commissioner Rosario. Part of my work when I first arrived and my first request to the Mayor was to be able to make a deputy commissioner first, one, because of his skill and his capacity and his understanding of the work, and obviously being the first Latino police commissioner ever in the history of the city of Philadelphia. And so, Pete, Commissioner Rosario, has been on the ground from the beginning, as you know, addressing this issue. So I think I'll let him walk through the questions you asked and then I'll come back. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER ROSARIO: Councilwoman, I don't mean to be -- good morning or good afternoon, Council. Pedro Rosario, deputy commissioner, leading the Kensington Initiative. Could you just break down the questions one more time slowly so I can answer each of them? Address each of them.

So we've worked together with different tools in order to restore and re-imagine Kensington. We've worked together with community residents, with families, businesses, children. I'm going to use, for instance, the curfew bill that we all worked on together. What have been some of the successes over the last year, year and a half since KPD has been in place? What are some of the challenges? I know that I can share with you that one of the challenges that I've heard from community, some community partners, is that the response to how officers treat some of the folks who are living in substance use disorder, sometimes they'd like to see it done differently. And so, I want to hear from you, what are some of the challenges that you all are experiencing in that community as well as what has worked? Have the tools that we've put in the toolbox, have they helped us restore quality of life? And I know that we're not there yet. I know that there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but over the last year and a half, how has things changed in Kensington? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER ROSARIO: So, I think the -- I think we're in a better place than we were, let's say, a year ago. The efforts and it's -- as Commissioner Bethel alluded to in the beginning, it's a formula that doesn't only involve the Philadelphia Police Department. It's an incredible amount of collaboration first with community getting buy-in from them to a bottom-up approach, right? Getting feedback from them to see what issues need to be addressed on their level, and addressing the quality of life issues ensuring that our officers have the technology and the support that they require to have those types of engagements. Understanding that enforcement is an incredibly important part of our job, but it's not the only part of our job, right? We try to stress to our officers on a very granular level, the importance of saving one life. And I think a lot of us that are at the -- looking at the -- at the mission, at the operation from 40,000 feet, we forget that sometimes. So I just try to remind the officers and the individual officers who are walking the beat, the officers who work the service detail, that if we're able to affect positive change for one human being, then this entire effort is worth it, right? And I think the amount of work that we're doing there every day in collaboration with all of our partners is very rewarding. It's incredibly powerful to see that impact every day. Some of the challenges is just being able to bring on all of our resources online collectively. We're working tirelessly to bring up Wellness Court. And I know that's Director Geer's shop. But we are supporting that process fully. We're working with our partners in Merakey to provide round the clock coverage on the avenue to be able to engage with individuals all the time, so that way we don't have any gaps in coverage during our overnight hours or weekend hours. So we're working tirelessly to address that.

How many of -- I'm sorry. How many officers are actually assigned to KPD? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: There's a total of 115 total between KPD and additional resources we put down there.

How many? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 115. And I do want to put on the record, I mean, the success of what we have done. And, you know, and as a result of the work down there, 45 percent reduction in homicides, 46 percent reduction in rapes, 27 percent reduction in robberies, 13 percent reduction in robbery, others, 24 percent reduction in aggravated assault, 44 percent reduction in shooting instances, 50 percent -- 57 percent in shooting victims, almost 228 firearms. And I know you know much of this, but even just the sheer level of drugs. I mean, you know, fentanyl is what is the main products that are down there, over 845,000 doses at a value of almost $8.4 million. And through the work of Commissioner, you know, Kelly, and federal partners and others, another 2,000,404 doses of fentanyl at a value of $24 million has been taken out of that area. We've done almost 1,500 people and diverted, and half of them moved into social referrals. I mean, and I -- the list goes on and on when it comes -- so I appreciate it. I just want to -- as you know, I mean, we're in for a long and we will not abandon that community. And the Mayor has made it very clear what our role and responsibilities are. And so we are with you. We are not going anywhere. We know this is going to take some time as we evolve, but with the Wellness Court coming on board at five days a week -- and I apologize, President, but I -- if you go out there on a Wednesday when we have Wellness Court, there's a different tenure because folks -- so there is an understanding that when we do bring up the level of enforcement, it can change behavior. So we are confident as we move into a five-day wellness, and we're grateful for the budget that we can have an even -- a greater impact as we move forward. I apologize, President Johnson.

Thank you for -- thank you for that. I think it's important that people know those numbers, right? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

845,000 doses. Can we -- can we imagine all of the doses that we've not been able to recover, right? And then -- and how that impacts the quality of life of young people. How are we responding to the schools that are in that -- in that footprint, right? I think that all of this work that you all are doing doesn't matter if the young people that are traveling through the neighborhood if they don't feel safe. And it really depends on what day and what has been going on. It depends on the stories that you're going to get. So how closely are you all continuing to work with the schools within that footprint? And what are you hearing from some of our young -- our young people? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I'm going to give Commissioner Rosario a softball because the reason I came back, as you know, and the reason I was at Caldwell with Principal Green is because of the conditions that I saw. And so, I'm going to toss it over to him, and he's going to talk about how he's working directly with those principals to make sure that those young people feels relief. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER ROSARIO: So one of the -- from my prior assignment being the captain of the 24th, I had an established relationship with the principals in that -- in that footprint there. And we work collaboratively, literally all the time. I was speaking to Principal Balbuena from Casarez School yesterday regarding support regarding a specific issue. But, yeah, all the principals have a direct line to me. They have direct line to the police commissioner. And more importantly, they'd have those connections with the officers that work in that area. Especially the foot beat officers that are able to respond very fluidly to any issues that happen. And, you know, part of that is messaging from us, from leadership regarding when these officers are working that beat. And not only with the schools, right, but with the businesses, with the residents. We're constantly encouraging that relationship with them. And that is incredibly vital to our success in our operation. But the schools, all they got to do is pick up the phone. They all know my number and we text all the time. So any type of issue that may pop up usually gets an immediate response.

What are we doing to -- what are we doing to continue to secure the spaces --

Member, I have to wrap up --

I'm sorry.

-- to talk to Mr. Thomas.

What are we doing to -- I'm -- what are we doing to continue to secure the spaces that we've already responded to in order to ensure that they don't go backwards? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I'm sorry, say that again, ma'am.

What are we doing to continue to secure the spaces that we've responded to in order to ensure that we don't kind of go backwards?

Brief response, Commissioner. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I mean, we can talk. I mean, it's the ebbs and flows, right? We know we're getting displacement as we go into certain areas. So, you know, we are trying to -- we're shifting to our summer spring model to really try to see how we can lock those areas down and be able to hold them without displacing them. And that's the challenge that we're dealing with now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. Councilmember Thomas.

Good afternoon, Council President. Good afternoon, colleagues. Good afternoon, Commissioner and the entire team. Just a couple questions real quick and hopefully we can get some quick responses. Really a lot of questions based on things that I'm hoping have been done throughout previous budget negotiations and dialogue with the administration, previous administration, as well as the police department. First and foremost, I'm assuming this is the case, but do all homicide detectives have cell phones? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: We did issue all the homicide detectives cell phones. That's correct.

So every time a family is dealing with an unfortunate situation, they have direct personnel that they can contact to be able to give them updates on their case and what's going on? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. I think you arrived after I may have spoken about the -- we just hired, Councilman Thomas, executive director, and we have now on board victim advocates. They 10 are being trained now. They're from the community, and they will be taking on some of the primary roles. They will still be engaging their detectives, but they will have, for the first time in our history, victim advocates embedded in homicide, well, on the same floor.

And those folks who are employed by the Police Department? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: These are full-time. And these are positions that you approved last year, the -- this body approved last year. We have them all on board. We have executive director overseeing that work. We have a supervisor as well as 5 victim advocates. They're going to 6 finish their one week of training -- 7 one month of training, and then we 8 will start to move into their 9 forward position. They will align 10 their selves with homicide detectives. So every time we have an incident, their family will get a victim advocate. They will serve as the bridge for that communication, and then the detectives will still engage them. But if I can make a note, what oftentimes was happening when there's an unfortunate loss, everybody in the family wants to be the person who's the communicator. And so oftentimes they were getting inundated with multiple people.

Got you. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And so this will be able to synthesize that activity as well.

Thank you, Commissioner. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

A little while back before Captain Massey retired, we worked together to come to some level of negotiation -- I said Captain Massey. Captain Massey is right there. That was my captain in the 35th, so I apologize. Captain Overwise retired. We were doing some work around issues related to hit and runs. And we negotiated in a budget that we would get new technology to be able to gather evidence and data when these unfortunate situations take place to put us in a position to be able to solve some of these crimes. Have we gotten that -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

-- technology? But -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, we have.

-- also, and I'm -- we have -- I'm assuming we have it. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

Have -- how much improvement have we seen? And try to be brief because I got two more questions. How much improvement have we seen in our clearance rates with the new technology as it relates to being able to solve some of these crimes specifically related to hit and runs? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, we would've to follow. I don't know if there's a direct correlation to the clearance, but the technology is substantial. Even now we're -- I mean, the technology, if you recall, you -- I think you even highlighted, at the time, around drones. And so we now have an officer with a drone and we're training another one in his staff to be able to connect that drones with the technology to the point they can actually fly over the scene and map out all of the activity, the scene in that regard using that technology. So it's been a great benefit and we appreciate receiving of those dollars to do that.

So I won't come back for a second round. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay.

If you could do me two favors. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

Real quick. Number one, if you could talk about driving equality and the issue with the fake temp tags. A little while back, we came here and there was a lot of accusations that, because of the temp tags -- I mean, because of driving equality, temp tags were running rampant. Clearly driving equality is still law. Temp tags are under control. Please talk a little bit about that process and driving equality, in general. And then if you could just close out by telling us what is the police department doing to work with, not just all of our local law enforcement agencies, but with national law enforcement agencies to make sure that 2026 is as safe as possible for the hundreds of thousands of people that we expect to visit our city? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah. As we -- and we had those discussions, the temp tags were not part of the -- we could've been -- we should have been enforcing the temp tags. The challenge we faced, and I think I had that conversation was, it was so many different versions out there. What we were able to do -- New York City has a Significant Intelligence Bureau. They mapped the entire United States of America and be able to provide a document that we were able to acquire through our major crimes to be able to put out and post actually on our internet and send out to every officer. So they knew what does a temporary tag look like, it was absolutely confusing at that time. And so we are now, you know, fully positioned to do that. That is not a part of the equity bill. We cannot stop people for bad tags. And that's where we're moving forward with, that enforcement as part of our -- what's -- you can -- you can, yes. I was saying the equity bill said you -- not that the equity bill said you could not, right? You can stop cars that had paper, you know, bad tags as part of our work. And so we just had to reset the norms around what we could or could not do in that regard. As it relates to the national piece, I mean, part of that is a -- is a citywide effort. As you know, there's a large contingent of individuals from an operational perspective, from us working for office of emergency management, working internally with our special operations. We were working with all of our national partners. I just left an event this morning at the federal building with a lot of our private and public partners there. It's going to be an all-hands-on-deck for us to accomplish the goals of making that successful next year.

And a point of information and to follow-up in the line of questioning from Member Thomas, I do commend you and your team for having a model around public safety during large events. I saw Commissioner Ramsey, I think was on CNN, when somebody drove a truck in New Orleans down on Bourbon Street, right? And they looked at what we were doing to be prepared when it come to hosting large events and being preventative and trying to look at every last aspect of how a catastrophe can happen. And so, Councilmember Thomas, along those lines of questioning, could you provide additional information? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes. So we have that built into our model. And you see in our special operation events, if you saw even just take the -- take the Super Bowl parade, you will see working with our streets department, we use -- we've been using blocking vehicles now for probably a decade now because the men and women recognized at that time after some incidences where individuals who were driving their vehicles onto the sidewalk. We're now acquiring the devices to put on the sidewalks as well. And so, that will be very much a part of our preparation. But you've seen that in all of our events, all of our parades. You see, though, blocking mechanisms to avoid those types of incidences, but we will be in a very enhanced posture considering all the events we have coming up next year to expound on that.

Thank you. I just want to commend you on the Super Bowl parade and hope that if we could replicate that effort in 2026, for the large events, we know that it'll be safe and it'll be successful. Also wanted to thank you for the driving equality work specifically around temp tags, but also just put on the record, as we've discussed before, that we have a little more work to do around collecting data based on -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

-- our research and the numbers that you've provided, percent of traffic stops over the last few years still have undocumented -- or have not been properly documented. And along with the traffic stops, documentation was a big part of the legislation. So we know we still have some work to do with that. Thank you, Council President. I appreciate the leniency. I don't need a second round.

14 Absolutely. 15

I'll 16 put my questions in writing. Thank 17 you, sir. 18 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, sir.

Absolutely, Member Thomas. So as we go into the second round, I'm going to be real brief because I want to turn it back over to my colleagues. Just real two quick questions. One, we talked regarding minority participation rates for Philadelphia Police Department, specifically professional services contracts. They dropped to 8 percent in FY25 after a high of 37 9 percent in FY24. So can someone 10 give me an idea of the decrease in 11 the participation goals? 12 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 13 You got that? 14 DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: I'm sorry, Council President, can you repeat your question?

Yes. Okay. Minority participation goals, minority participation rates for professional service contracts dropped to 14 percent in FY25 after a high of 37 percent in FY24. So to be quite frank, black and brown and women contracts, which were at percent -- they're at 14 4 percent now, and they dropped from 5 37 percent in a year. So how did 6 the dramatic decrease happen? 7 DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- 8 CAMPBELL: So we had a couple 9 contracts that caused that large 10 increase, which obviously was a 11 positive thing. 12 This year we had a very 13 large contract with the Octo Group, 14 which is what's getting us to our current percentage. We're always looking to increase that number. And we specifically -- I know our finance department and Yvonne Whittington specifically looks to work on that. And it's a continued goal for us. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And we'll follow-up with you, Councilman, to give you specifics on where that increase came from and where the decrease is and what we're doing moving forward.

Okay. That would be very, very helpful. And just briefly, a couple of my colleagues talks about nuisance stores and the things they sell in the stores. And obviously your job is primarily around law enforcement. And, you know, I look at a lot of activism that is taking place. I look at also how certain stores, as Member Bass would say, pry on poor neighborhoods, right? Take advantage of poor neighborhoods. I want to give you an example and see how y'all can be supportive of our efforts. And don't everybody pull out at one time because it's not real. These were banned. I did a bill back in 2013 or '14. They're banned in the city of Philadelphia, unless they're a fluorescent color. Obviously, this was purchased from one of the stores that takes advantage of primarily neighborhoods of color to be quite frank, right? I know in Point Breeze, somebody had a gun, it wasn't real, about two weeks ago, got into a shoot out with a police officer. Is there a way that maybe we can explore partnership with L&I? Now, we know y'all focused on law enforcement and take a comprehensive approach, but also when stores provide products like these, right, in neighborhoods, it perpetuates the cycle -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: It does.

-- that makes our neighborhoods unsafe, that makes your job unsafe, and it's clearly illegal. And so I want to embark on figuring out how we can work in partnership together with L&I to make sure if they are illegal and they're selling them to our youth, right? And I call it really, you're taking advantage of our neighborhoods, right? Whether it's the vaping, whether it's crack pipes that's being sold. But this is death and destruction grooming young people at a very, very, very early age, right, and putting everybody's life at stake. How could there be ways to address it? And I know we're limited on manpower, but -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, no. No, not on that.

This is the budget conversation as well to kind of keep our young people in our neighbors safe. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I -- that is the most frustrating thing, right? And what you describe, I think I remember being a captain working with -- I think may have worked with Anton at one point more.

Yes. That was it. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And because I saw young people coming into school, we started to see a pattern of young people coming into school with the same, and we traced it back to a corner store. And it's like $4, right? And now, you know, we asked them to stop selling them. And they stopped selling them. And so some things I think we need -- and the community was involved. And so I think I'm -- I would love to sit down and talk about it, but sometimes -- well, that should be a conversation. And I have no issues with having those conversations with those individuals, letting them know the impact and the danger they put with on children. And I would encourage anyone who's listening or have this today, that if they have a store that's selling those types of items, there is no delay in that. I don't think we have time to sit there -- I mean, we can build it out, and I know that's not what you're saying. But we would take immediate action to have those conversations in a friendly way, to let people understand that that's not acceptable, that you're putting our young people in harm's way. And I will tell you that many of the time, the margins of those things, yeah, you know, they're drawing them in because they're trying to get them to do other stuff as well. But we should be able to address that in a multitude of ways. One, through our -- using our community relations officers to have a conversation. Two, legislating. And three, obviously taking enforcement actions, if they don't comply.

And for the record, when you pull up or any of your officer on the scene of the situation, you're looking at this as it's real or not real? What comes to your mind first? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Listen, I mean, you know, first --

I mean, let's be frank. I'm not even going to point at you because y'all might -- oh, I won't point at you. But you understand what I'm getting at, right? You get out the car, you're not sitting there saying, oh, is it real, or maybe, I'm not sure. You're going to -- what mode do you go into? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, I mean -- I mean, they are trained when they -- when they encounter someone armed, and, you know, danger of the adversary, they have the appropriate protocols they can use. I won't say they go immediately to the storage of their weapons. However, that risk is very much heightened. There was a time they had yellow markings and there are markings to distinguish them. But then the kids, they would paint over those markings, right? And so they realized, oh, well, there's another market. And so it's tough. I mean, because it just makes, you know, our environment unsafe. But I think all the things you described are all the things that are happening. And I -- and I would dire to do that sooner than later. And hopefully you'll give me the -- where that store came -- where that one came from.

I will get you the information, sir. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

For the record. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay.

Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks. Point of information?

Yeah. So in the event that -- because as being on the education committee, we get all these posts from the school district when incidents happened with fake guns or kids got some gummies -- from the store or whatever.

Oh, them gummies. Yeah.

-- from the store or whatever. Is that information shared with the police department? And then is there an investigation on the stores where the children got that information? Because we get these almost every week, and I kind of figure out in connection with majority leaders, paraphernalia, corner store, information that we are working on, and these guns, how -- or what is the relationship between what happens in neighborhood schools and the police department? And is there an obligation for the schools to report those type of things to the police? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Not so much of -- but I think you raised some good points. We had done that in kind of an ad hoc way if we started to see a pattern of schools, of kids coming in from a particular area. But I do think that's something we can bake into our protocol. We run the program, we have police officers and a detective at the school district who administer the program. So we can build that in. I think that's a great idea to talk, walk back. You know, because for a time we're arresting the kids with the -- but we don't do that, right? That's still a toy.

Right. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: At the end of the day, it's still a toy, right?

And I'm thinking more -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: But I think -- no, but I think we can.

-- investigation part. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, I think that's a great --

We get them every week. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No --

Chair, your time is -- you send them out. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, no, we can -- we can -- I can talk to them today and we can work that into our protocols working backwards to ask the young people where did they acquire those -- that toy from.

Member Thomas?

Just a point of information. Just to provide context, the education committee on a consistent basis, daily basis, actually back when Commissioner Bethel was in charge of school police, we started a system where there would be regular communication to the education committee every time a serious incident would take place. And I think what Member Brooks is asking for is just a level of coordination. But I just wanted to provide context so people understood what the communication is. We do get it on a daily basis. It does get disseminated to the District Councilmembers when it applied to their district, as well as every member of the education committee. So just wanted to provide context, Council President.

Thank you. We just want to -- when we organize around this issue, we want to ask for all the groups that are doing advocacy around these types of issues to join us in this move, for those who pry on our community to be quite frank with you, and take advantage and exploit our community. That's just where I'm at at this moment. We are in the second round officially. The Chair recognizes Councilman Rue Landau.

Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple more questions about the drones. I appreciate so much. I sent a letter to your office. You wrote back to me, appreciate our conversation that we had after that. But I wanted to get some of this on the record. You said that you have -- you got nine drones initially using private donations from the Philadelphia Police Foundation. And you have more 4 that you're going to acquire in the 5 next round. 6 Have you acquired the 18 7 additional drones yet? 8 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 9 No, we're still working through that 10 process. We will have them before 11 the budget cycle is done. 12

And 13 are there -- is there any difference 14 in specifications between the 15 original nine you got and the next 16 18? 17 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 18 No, they're all under the same company. Skydio is the product that we're using.

Can you offer current metrics showing how successful or not the first drone responder program has been? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, I mean, I guess when we start with the measure of success, I mean, right now we're still in the testing model of it, you know, deploying it into -- so we can see the success that we're going to have for our large scale events. We can see how successful that is to help us with the parades and the oversight with some of those large areas. We can see that. We can see the success that we're seeing working at the Eagles game because of just a large contingent of traffic and other issues has been extremely helpful for us to support that area. We can see the success most recent, as I described, finding a young child and even most recently, an incident where we were doing overwatch for a high risk warrant and they were able to identify a person hiding and be able to take them into custody without any further action. So, but we're very, very much in the early stages of our model to set our objectives. We still will start as we work into Kensington doing the open air drug markets. We do believe that the drone is an effective tool to be able to do those open air models. And from there we'll be able to start to do -- measure the success we're having both there with our intentions that we can take that citywide as we go to address areas across the entire city, which was a charge of the Mayor as well to address those areas where we're seeing drugs being sold.

Thank you. You talked about the Police Foundation being -- I didn't know much about it. Mostly unregulated entity which gave me concern that they were able to purchase drones without Council oversight. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Well, I mean -- well, I share -- I mean, I don't know, we say unregulated. The foundation has been around for quite -- for decades. They have been able to support the police department in those areas of where we need support. They have given us funding for our wellness program to help us with our police officers. They've been -- they -- the bikes that you see there, purchasing bikes to help us as we move forward in our work, purchasing motor bikes, because oftentimes we didn't have the capacity, purchasing us helmets when we didn't have helmets for our men and women, purchasing communication devices when we didn't have -- so I can go -- the list and go on. So I don't know -- as it relates to unregulated, I think they have just stepped in as an entity. This is a foundation across the nation. They recognize that our budget does not have much discretionary funds and those additional things that we have, it's posted on the website. So you can go to the Police Foundation. They outline all of the services they gave us. And I would say, as it relates to the drones, what they were able to do, not just around the purchase of the drones, but give us the funding to be able to get our licensing to be able to a forward organization in this -- in the nation. Also, gives us a license to fly autonomously. For you, for the -- for the Council, and those listening, to fly a drone, you have to see the drone. And so we were be able to fly in an autonomous manner. That is moving us into our first responder model. And so they even gave us the seed money, which came on the heels of the funding that I received from City Council already to purchase drones. So they just accelerated that purchase and be able to help us get our program underway as we went through the procurement process.

Would do you --

A real quick one.

Okay. I'm going to switch over real quick to just ask you about the -- your new MIRT program, the Major Incident Response Team. And you are going to -- you've got personnel and you're organizing a civil disorder team by recruiting individuals who have had MIRT or other specialized training. What do you consider civil disorder? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Civil disorder. I mean, it goes a gamut. I mean, we can go from rioting to activity that's, you know, out of -- where we need a heightened level of response. And so I'm not sure the -- is the question -- like, we are -- we are -- I mean, I'm not -- I'm not sure of the question.

Are the MIRT -- are your MIRT personnels or is it -- is it police officers or non police officers? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Police officers.

They're police officers. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Right?

Will they be deployed to protest as well? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Deployed for protest? They will be -- so if we -- for example, have a protest that we believe may turn into civil unrest, we will have a MIRT team potentially depending on the deployments, staffed somewhere to be able to respond if they needed to respond. And they do come at a heightened level. They are wearing a protective gear. They are coming with helmets, they are coming with all of those gears, but they're activated when we're in a very heightened alert and a heightened situation where that level of force may be required. I.e., when we went into the encampments, we use our MIRT team because they're much trained. They understand how to escalate and deescalate. They understand how to operate as a mechanized organ group, and they know how to do it effectively. And that's why we had great success both with the Drexel and the Penn encampment because our MIRT team took the forward lead working with those two different departments as well to support them to be able to do that successfully with no 11 injury or danger to them. And so, what we do know is when my officers were hurt in the -- in the riots, many of them, you know, I mean, they wear their protective gear because when bottles and bricks and other things are thrown, and we demonstrate that from the riots, then so the sheer number of men and women who got hurt in that regard. So they are highly trained, highly effective, very efficient to deescalate and escalate, as necessary.

Thank you very much. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. Yes.

Good. Commissioner, you good? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I --

I just saw you got some notes. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, no, he was giving me some --

Follow-up. Okay. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips, then Councilmember Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson, then Councilmember O'Rourke. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Councilman, is there chance we could take a short break or is that possible? I just got -- all right. We'll keep moving.

Commissioner, we're about to wrap up shortly. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. We're good.

We got a little -- couple more questions and we're going to wrap up. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay. Yes, sir.

The chair recognizes -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: See how he does me. I'm not saying anything. We're on camera too.

The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier. And we've been direct with our questioning as well as our responses, and then we'll be wrapping up.

Thank you, Council President. Commissioner, I really appreciated your comments about your diversion work. Like, Councilmember Harrity, that was one of the reasons I was excited about your appointment. I wanted to follow-up on your comments and give you a chance to speak at greater length or as much as you can before you have to take a break. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I'm all right. I'm good.

First, I wanted to loop back on the Juvenile Assessment Center. Can you specifically talk about changes to staffing and budget levels, as well as how many children were served prior to the restructure of the JAC and how many have been served since? Can you revisit sort of PPDs juvenile diversion program? How is each tier administered and who -- or who is it administered by and how are they trained? And then finally, I commend you and Mayor Parker for reviving CompStat 360. You know, we appreciate the transparency in that. I wanted to ask, will juvenile justice and diversion efforts be reflected in CompStat? So for example, are there goals for reducing juvenile crime levels and recidivism? How are we tracking our progress in those areas? And I see this similar to how we're tracking the daily census at PJJSC if we -- you know, what measures -- I think Councilman Jones always says we know something matters by measuring it, right? So how are we measuring our efforts with juvenile diversion? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: That's not one question. That's questions. 4

5 I'm sorry. 6 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 7 So I'm going to have to get -- I 8 don't think I'm going to get all of 9 that. I'll just give you 10 overarching and then I'll follow-up 11 with you if you want to -- in 12 writing -- 13

14 Thank you so much, Commissioner. 15 POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: 16 -- the responses. I don't have the 17 specific numbers. We haven't 18 changed the model of the JAC as it 19 relates to the work and the 20 workload, but I can get those numbers for you. One of the adjustments that we have made, though, is I -- David Irizarry, I described, who's running the gang youth reduction program, has now taken over all of our juvenile supports. So he comes from the outside. David's a fellow who's come to the department to put -- he has a background in juvenile justice and he's working extremely well. I know with Lisa and the team back there as they evolved the JAC. So he's been given the full authority to really bake in this process. All of the diversions go through the juvenile assessment team personnel. So that team there, those folks working under Faith and Lisa are ones who are -- execute on reaching out to the families. And they -- all the paperwork comes back to that. So that stays part of their central focus. They are the overseer of all of the juvenile work we're doing. The enhancement that we're adding is moving the officers who are there once we're able to move them and move in non-sworn personnel to do that forward processing is those offers are beginning the process now to be switched over to youth specialists. And their work will be similar to a model out of Cambridge where they really took their men and women and put them out in the field to work with young people in a different way. They follow-up on our tier. So this next week, they'll be going out following up with those kids from Tier 2 and particularly Tier 3. But those kids who are not engaging or the programs are not, you know, not following up. So this is not going to be a check-the-box. We're going to be very intentional about that. As it relates to the valuations, we have the -- we've been evaluating, so we created a youth committee. I created a youth committee. Lisa, keep going. I know you know Lisa, so when I refer, Lisa Thurl, have a committee, Anton Moore, you know -- what's the other name? Ricky Duncan is on my committee. Dr. Naomi Goldstein, who've been leading the research for our work when I was at -- when we started in 2014, her team and the youth team at her -- at her facility are leading that work with us. So we -- and Commissioner Stanford, all of us in that group making the juvenile decisions moving forward as we go through this process. And so we have an evaluation tool. We have not identified the funding yet to have the more steep diving analysis, but Dr. Goldstein and her team have been at the forefront to be able to set up the capturing of the data so we can capture the base data similar to what we did with the school diversion. And then when we were able to identify research dollars to be able to now do a more deep dive into the recidivism, and we'll be able to do some. Kevin Thomas and his data team are very skilled and be able to do some of the surface data, but we want to get more entrenched as we did with the school diversion program to see exactly the expansion of this program and the impact it's going to have on our juvenile kids being arrested, the recidivism rate, and the like. And in addition to that, at the school district, before I left, Dr. Blasco was working on a project that was able to get a fellowship there before I left where she's going back and looking at 5,000 young people who have been either shot, killed or killed someone, or were -- or were killed, shot or were shot by someone, and looking at all that data to go back upstream to see exactly where we could have had an intersection point to make it a different -- make it a different direction. I'm really excited about where that's going to go. I think that's going to have national implications of particularly coming from a strong urban center like this. Where was that child when he was in 6th grade or 7th grade? Could we have done something different with him or her then?

And if that comes to fruition, I think that's going to have a significant impact on how we deal with juveniles moving forward across the city.

Thank you. Can I get a very brief request on record, not a question.

Oh, request. Absolutely.

I see that we have in the proposed budget a request for 200 new community police -- community police officers. I wanted to request that some of those be, if possible, assigned to our business corridors in the 3rd District. Our captains, Captain Brown and Captain Waters and Captain Green are working really hard to try to make the corridor safer. But we still have a lot of activity, particularly on Lancaster Avenue and on 52nd Street. And I think we just need more of an on-the-ground community police presence to continue to make a difference in those areas. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, I would have to follow-up. We have an initiative on the way that the Mayor is, you know, directing us to really focus on, you know, increasing our foot beat posture, particularly in our business corridors. And so that's not in the budget, that's just part of our work as it relates to -- so we don't have additional 200 officers coming in as it relates to --

Okay. I'm sorry if I misunderstood. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: As we fill our vacancies, we're down 1,200 officers.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: So -- but one of the part we're balancing is the Mayor gave us our charge to increase the number of foot beats and, you know, community beats. And we've been able to do that by taking the staff that we have now and redeploying them. So we -- if you have a business card or -- we try to cover most of our business corridors as part of that work. We would definitely follow-up with you to see if there's a corridor that -- but we are going to continue as we are able to get more staffing on to be able to increase our men and women on foot and on bikes. And part of the reason of getting the Ebikes was the hope that they'd be able to travel further distance so we can cover more ground. But right now, we have -- I mean the -- yeah. So we're going to walk through -- we can walk through -- you know, Commissioner Stanford shared with me some of the numbers. We have over, like, 200 and something officer on foot beats and different ones with our summit initiatives, our steady beats, and our school beats. But we can talk through some of the areas that you may want us to consider as we build out our model.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. And thank you, Deputy Commissioner Massey for helping my community in Southwest Philadelphia, particularly the 12th Police District. We were dealing with illegal auto mechanics that were wreaking havoc on the neighborhood. Had a woman that owns the daycare center was crying because she just couldn't bring the children outside the parking lot at 70 Elmwood because they were working on cars, and the senior center next door to it were also under siege by people working on cars in the street, inside the parking lot, and there's nothing to today. Thank you, Commissioner. Like, it's beautiful out there today. Nobody's working there. It's clean. And so I just want to acknowledge you for stepping up and also acknowledge you for providing the extra resource and support because that neighborhood has been under siege for a significant period of time until you came. So -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: No, I appreciate that. And I remember you talking about the older, you know, community was really frustrated. So I appreciate that and keep doing the work.

The Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips, then Councilmember Nicholas O'Rourke, Majority Leader Gilmore- Richardson, Councilmember Bass, Young and then that's it. Dr. Phillips.

Thank you, Council President. Again, I want to echo that the Philly Police Department is continuing to grow.

But, you know what -- you know what, because of grace and mercy, Council will be at ease for --

Five minutes. Just give me five minutes.

For 10 minutes. Council will be at ease for 10 minutes.

Listen, it is what it is. (Council at ease.)

The Chair recognizes Dr. Phillips.

Again, I just want to echo the Philadelphia Police Department has continued to evolve. It's one of the departments that -- in the administration that's continued to do great work, so thank you all so much. I just have a question -- a couple questions. Question No. 1, quality of life is an important issue in a lot of our communities, particularly around dumping, L&I issues, abandoned cars and so forth. Would it be -- would it be something that we can have in this budget where we can maybe hire -- the Police Department can hire retired officers to just focus on quality of life issues in the district? So when someone calls, there could be someone beyond our community, relations officer, that come in and just respond to things, not just during the weekday but also on the weekend because I know the community relations officers are not around on a weekday, but can they be around on the weekends as well and also extended hours? So -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, I'm going to let Commissioner Massey come in and talk a little bit. But, you know, what we're trying to do as we go to move to some more civilian positions is not try to -- and I heard nobody saying it's hard to bring police officers back. And we're working through that now if there's a process but we have been using the police public safety officers now. So we -- as initiating from around graffiti, we were able to work with the Streets Department to bring in police -- you know, Public Safety officers to support that in lieu of -- to be able to make this a much formidable group. But I'll let Commissioner Massey talk through around the things that she's doing that I think may overlay with what you're -- what you're describing.

Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MASSEY: I'm sorry. Good afternoon, I'm Deputy Commissioner Myesha Massey, Community Partnerships. Yes, so to speak on that, we used the public safety enforcement officers last week for the tire removal. So we have been using them over the weekend. We have 10 to 18 on rotational shifts in partnership with sanitation. Actually, 10 of them get sworn in on Friday as officers that will fully, fully be working with us in partnerships. So we utilize them on the weekend and we utilize them during the week for quality of life issues.

Thank you. And then I just want to follow-up around detectives in the department. We just -- there was just a new story that broke out about a gentleman who -- a young teenager died years ago going to the Eagles game. It's been about three years. I guess there's no leads. Is there -- is there a detective -- a need for more detectives in the department to help us with solving crime, cold cases? And also for some of our violence prevention programming, is there a way in which we -- the Philadelphia Police Department can have a public partnership where they can maybe work with some violence prevention organizations to help them with, you know, being mentors and support systems at, like, rec centers, libraries, or places where young people are congregating and they can, like, hug the block in some capacity, patrol the blocks as well in addition to what your work is doing. So those are two questions, the detectives and the violence organizations. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Repeat your question one more time because I think we're kind of trying to split between the detectives and the police officers.

Yeah, so the quick question is that, is there -- is there a need for more enhancement and support services around detectives to solve cold case files? Is there going to be a need for more detectives? And then also the last question was around, is there a public partnership that you can have with violence prevention organizations to help you with, you know, doing some of the diversion programming work? Maybe at some rec centers, libraries in places where kids are always hanging out, maybe they could just hug the block in some capacity and just be around there as mentors. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, no question. I mean, I'll take your last first. I mean, we are on that journey now as, you know, I mean, my work around youth has been -- that's the work, right? And so, you know, the diversion is the first salvo in that. Bring in David Irizarry who's overseeing, for the first time we have a director who's overseeing our juvenile work. So we don't have that influx that you heard with Councilman Young, developing a program in his area around our grid program to really start to see. But we -- and that's why we brought Anton and Rickey Duncan, those individuals into our space. Because we got to figure out what that is? How do we do the system mapping? How do we start to make those referrals? So the youth -- the youth officers -- the youth specialists that we're looking to create out of the JAC, those are going to be one of the prominent guys, are going -- men and women who are going to be out there in the field connecting with our young people, seeing how we can be doing things differently. You know, I mean, but we have a lot of work to do. I mean, we are not there yet and we have the -- we own that as part of our work. Obviously, we have our PAL officers and they're doing that work. As we bring on our community liaison, the second part of our victim advocates, the funding that this body gave us and through the support, you know, of the Mayor was to do community liaisons. They will also come into that. And so some of the things that you were talking about, those bridges that we need to build, how do we better connect with our young people and just the community overall. These are going to be non-sworn staff that'll come into the department, not be community relations officers, they're going to be working at a different level, really building out our capacity and the like. So we're on that journey. Definitely, definitely, I know that's your space as well. Definitely would like to hear your feedback on how we can do that and how we can make ourselves better or pilot something that you felt that maybe have been sitting there for a while that you want to talk through. But we have to be very honest around as we move into the prevention, intervention and enforcements. Clearly, I work as enforcement, but I'm guiding the department, a large percentage of our work in that other sphere as well and naming that and owning that, and we have a process of doing that space. As I said detectives, we can always use -- our staffing as down. So when I'm down 1,200, I'm down detectives. I mean, we do work hard to try to keep our staffing level of our homicide detectives at a level so they can be able to respond accordingly. And with the numbers being down, we think we're at a good number now especially with our shooting investigation group. Commissioner Vanore has talked about the, you know, having a cold case team, I mean, and being able to formulate what we need ultimately as a cold case team to be working on those longer jobs. Right now, those jobs are kind of immersed into the -- to the group, and then there are ones that are pulled out at his direction. So we do have some work in there but that won't come. And we do have to get our staffing levels up because every detective was a cop. And so every time we pull someone in the detective division, I lose a detective. I lose an officer in the front line.

And so we're walking this balance, but we're going to get there. But, you know, with the support we have, we're going to get there, but we have a few more years to go.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

The Chair recognizes Councilmember Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson, then Council --

Thank you.

Then Councilmember O'Rourke, then Young, Brooks then we're done.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you again, Council President, and thank you, Commissioner and team. I wanted to circle back to the question regarding the nuisance businesses and particularly around the issue of drug paraphernalia sales across the city. You all have been doing a really good job in working with us and L&I, and health regarding the inspections of the drug paraphernalia businesses. But what we're seeking to accomplish in this budget cycle particularly because of what we heard in our hearing last week, which is the joint committee hearing of L&I and public safety is figuring out how we expand the nuisance business task force to work across Police Department tours. So what would it take for us to increase staffing just for PPD so we have a better picture as we prepare for the overall budget process? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, from a staffing level, I just need to want to back up and say we have a very good system as you well know with all our partners. So that's number one. We're creating the synergy with the existing resources we have. So, the issue is the additional manpower, that's tight. I'll be very honest. The issue of how we can reallocate individuals, but that doesn't mean we ignore the problem. The fact is we're focusing on the problem under the leadership of Deputy Massey, the Neighborhood Nuisance Enforcement Unit, and the tracking, the data tracker that we have helps us put our resources -- limited resources where they need to be especially with the critical nuisances as well as the chronic nuisances. So they're -- they've been incredibly effective, how our detectives are going out there. We have three -- I think three or four -- three detectives that are now assigned. They do the preliminary investigations on all violence that happens in a location. So we're having a great impact in that regard. But from following up with the conversation from last week, if you recall, some of the problems are -- is the legal, for lack of a better word, shenanigans, that goes on between these agencies flipping. To that end, as I said I would, I'm in the process of drafting something that you can take a look at as well.

Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I have to share it through the chain. But obviously I've identified some things that may be able to -- it may not be very popular with some people, but the issue of tying things, the bad acts from one business to another.

Right. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: From -- the IRS does it, so really, quite frankly, what I've done is I've gone back to my old books and I pulled some stuff apart and created something I think would be at least a starting point for discussion as a result of the conversation we had last week.

That'll be great. And you know that I intend to introduce a package of bills based on that discussion. Because we heard a lot of things in that hearing that I think we need to tighten up from a policy perspective which will better help us as a city, collectively, with all the departments be able to enforce. But I just want to make sure that in this process we are accounting for the needs from a staffing perspective, not only for PPD, but you know I asked the same thing of L&I, and then also of Health. So we'll be sure to followup with you on that. And then secondly, my second question, because President already asked my other question about MBEWBE, but I wanted to ask about the civilian positions. I think we had talked about this previously wherein we have a number of young people who are in the Police Explorer program and then they're too young, once they complete the program, to then apply to be a part of the Philadelphia Police Department as an actual police officer. And so what are we doing with, like, that bridge time between the time where they complete the Explorer Program and until the time they're able to apply for the academy? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, as it relates to that, I mean, this body gave us funding last year to do that bridge. One of the -- we have to be, you know, be honest, one of the challenges we are facing and as we started on that path is the capacity to be able to have to structure a two-year program where you engage into the young person and the like. So we're -- we've been discussing internally and I believe we're moving for a decision to put into an RFP to your point about getting an organization that is much more skilled at the ability to be -- to be able to be the bridge and run the program for us.

Okay. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And we have those conversations with our budget team to be able to move those dollars. But we feel based on my -- what we are doing and our capacity, I mean, you really have to have a number of people engaged with these young people over that two-year period. You know, how to run the stipends, how to fund them. And we have to sometimes be honest with us as a department, say that's something we've never embarked on. I was trying to shove it into our departments, say get it done, but it's - it -- we recognize it's going to take too much. So I've directed Commissioner Massey who's been leading that work to start to look at going outside of the department to have a -- and in aligned with what you described, where others have one of those community groups and organization much more capable of managing a two-year project. And we can now call it a pilot to see how effective it is but be able to get some support and doing it. So that's the direction we're moving in and we hope to get that done before this budget cycle. At least get it moved over and start the procurement process to be able to move into that layer.

Okay. Thank you. And I just -- if you could list for us the actual civilian positions that are currently available -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

-- that someone could go into once they complete the program? Because I know the recruitment is happening for the Police Explorers program now because we also keep them in our apprenticeship guidebook as well. But I just wanted to know the list so that we can sort of direct young people because I know I visited with them, I think up in the Northeast a year or two ago. And it was a young one -- a young one man who really wants to be a cop but he has two years. So I was trying to direct him to another position that he could, you know, get into before he could apply. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

So just a list of those positions. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke, then Young, and Brooks.

Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon now. I wanted to circle back to my original questioning. I didn't ask, but I do actually want to clarify. You said there -- the mid to late summer for the remaining three specialty units being -- getting equipped with body- worn cameras, correct? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: That's correct.

Is this -- is the -- is the narcotic strike force a part of those three? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

Got it. Okay. So we can commit to -- can you, just to alleviate my concerns, like, prioritize making sure that particular unit definitely is, like, the top of those three by the end of summer? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes. Well, I mean, this is a -- the Mayor has made that very clear to me what our expectations are, and we're going to meet those expectations and have all of our units in their -- in their body-worn cameras.

Thank you kindly, sir. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, and the three remaining are Narcotics Strike Force, Traffic Unit and Neighborhood Services Unit.

Got you. Kind of lifted up this a bit already around staffing, but more particularly around civilianization. I wanted to ask about that. The department has budgeted for over 6,300 officers but earlier this year as you've lifted up already a couple times here, this year was short around 1,100. When the department is fully staffed, how many officers would that actually be? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I think 6,380 is our -- is our full staff number.

And who decides what fully staffed means? What data or analysis is used to kind of set that number? Can you share that with the Council? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, we can share that. I mean, obviously that comes out of the budget process. I mean, when I came on the job, it was 8,000. And so, I went and talked to the budget team to determine what the formulations they use. When I left the department, we were at 6,500. And so, there have been -- some of those are just because of budgetary initiatives and availability. So I would have to talk to Rob Dubow and the team to see how they got to those numbers.

Interesting. The city is proposing to move some officer roles like court attendants. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

And crash investigations to civilians. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes.

How many officers are currently doing work that could be handled by civilians instead of being on patrol? And if those roles were civilianized, would the department save money? And if the -- and so how much money could we save? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: We could give you that analysis clearly, or we can break that down for you as to -- I mean, I guess part of what we're defining as what those roles are as you described, so let's say there's 45 officers in our court attendance. That would give us the ability to put 45 officers out into the field. And those replacing them would be an expectation that they would not be coming in the same salary band as an officer, you know, that under the contract, under the FOP contract. So there would be some inherent savings. We could do those formulations for you to see if this X happens then Y would be the results. We could bring that down into -- for you. But I also would say, Councilman, we are also not -- it's not just about replacing officers. You know, in this budget we have 10 project managers. Why? Because we need folks who come from the outside who have the capacity to take a project, understand implementation science, and be able to take those projects as I can't continue to ask my deputies to be able to do that. And so --

Even project managers could be civilianized? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes. So, they will be civilian positions. So we're asking for 10 because those -- to do that, we have to bring officers in to be able to do that. Having project managers allows them to stay out and doing their forward work without doing that. You know, bringing in executive directors from the outside, Iyauta Green and others to be able to lead their work is an effective tool for us. We ask for a psychologist in this -- in this -- in this budget. Why? Because we're having a hard time getting one of the biggest choke points we're having in our recruitment process is the backup people of our officers getting -- or candidates getting their psych tests done. And so we recognize -- well, instead of talking about it, we want to bring a psychologist in to enhance that work. Because I have 60 or 70 men and women in the queue waiting for someone in the outside to give us. But if I can get a psychologist who can complete two or three a day or maybe more, we'll see, then we can accelerate our timelines. So the victim advocates, they're coming in, they're not displacing officers.

Right. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: They're coming in. Now, I could have brought, you know, victim -police officers to do those roles. However, we recognize to do these -- this position, we were bringing victim advocates in to do those roles. So those are positions. 6 And so it's an enhancement of our 7 work also not a displacement of the 8 officers. And so I think that doing 9 it in that contiguous way gives it 10 the -- you know, men and women start to work together and see that we're doing this together and not, hey, you took my job. No, that's not happening.

I agree. The -- I heard the buzzer so I'm going to get off of it. But I would just affirm that the insights and the data that you can provide around that, the savings and all of that that can be provided around that will be helpful in making the case. Because you have community advocates who are realizing that they could also play a role. We talk about the mobile crisis units, things like that, where you have folks who are interested in helping out who are not necessarily police personnel. And if we could find ways to save money on the department or what have you, and allow the civilians to take care of some of that, I think it would be better for the community. So thank you for raising that point. Thank you, Council President for your indulgence. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you.

Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Young.

Thank you, Mr. President. First question is regarding the newly, I guess, merged 9th District. Some folks in, I guess, the Northern part of the area, you know, are just curious about the patrolling of that particular area given that now it includes Center City, you know, and go down on South Street, I believe. I can't think of the southern border of the 9th District, but it's a huge -- it's a huge district, essentially. So some of the folks in my council district, particularly in the Fairmount-Francisville area, just have some questions about patrolling areas. And I know we had the new Ebikes in here a couple of -- earlier today. But can you talk about what the bicycle patrol looks like in that 9th District and particularly around the entire District, not just like the Center City core of it? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yeah, I mean, so part of the consolidation of the 6th and 9th was born from -- you know, during my previous work here in the -- in the -- as a deputy commissioner of running patrol operations, which Commissioner Mr. Cram runs. We combined the 22nd and 23rd where you're at now and the 3rd and the 4th District. And then now the 6th and 9th. What is unique is nothing unique in the sense that, you know, you have the same building, the same operation, the same roll call room, same locker rooms, but two operation rooms running at the same time. People either come in and go left and they come right, right? And so part of what we do was to combine the 6th and the 9th District so we had the continuity of operations, one operations room, right? And then cars are not turning around at Broad Street going back East and the other cars turning around Westbound and going back to the river because the 6th and the 9th Broad Street split the river -- split the Districts. The reality, though, the middle spine of the 6th and the 9th District was where 45 percent of all the crime was happening in that turnaround area. And so we were able to go from three PSAs -- four PSAs -- might go five, Mike? Is a five, a 5th PSA. They have the largest staffing in the city. By size perspective, they're smaller than the 7th, the 8th, the -- in the 35th and those Districts. But it is going -- it was a process to now mold them together so that the Broad Street was not to -- you know, prior to combine them, you could do an offense on 13th Street, go up onto the subway and go on the other side, and then it's -- you're in a whole another District, right? And so part of it is re-engaging and really -- and Commissioner Cram and Inspector, they're working through that process. Merger has some growing pains with it, right? But we have a significant level of deployment. We have a significant part of the building of that model was we would call bikes down to Center City, but by combining them, we're able to combine the bikes together. I think I got a couple of bike guys in here today from Center City, 9th District. There you go, Center City bikes. And so they're here today. So they're able to work effectively. Our motorbikes as you see work together effectively. And so it is this synergy. South Street itself has a -- is a 3rd District, as referring to a South Street detail, and we have about officers there, Mike, I believe, who are working the South Street detail, and we'll be changing that model as we get to the Mormon months, but I think we have an effective strategy downtown, and the bikes and the foot beats and the, like -- but if you wanted to talk a little bit more further, Councilman, is the core strategy and where everybody's placed, we can share that with you as well.

Thank 15 you. Just for the record, that 16 question pretty much was about, can 17 we get the -- we understand that bicycle patrol are in the core of Center city, but in the Northern part of that -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Understood.

-- particular District. Can we have that bike patrol as well?

He's trying basically to say, can you put some bike cops in North Philly. It's like real simple to the point.

Particularly in Fairmount, Francisville, Spring Garden -- POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: He's talking about like 9th District.

Huh? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I hear you. Yeah, we hear you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Member Young. And also, I guess I put my request out there. I'm a strong advocate of Schuylkill River Trail. And every time it gets hot along the trail, you know, there's always some type of mischief going on, and more than likely throughout the summer it will resolve -- result in someone either getting robbed or attacked, and whatever we can do to increase the visibility of bike patrol along the Schuylkill River Trail, that would be very, very helpful to take in consideration as y'all move forward. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, sir.

Last question. Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you, Council President. So I'm going to just give you -- just run down all my questions, and then you can answer some or submit them in writing since I'm the last one and folks are ready to go to lunch? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Yes, ma'am.

All right. So my first question is about the mobile crises, Mobile Crisis Unit. With the mobile crisis programming facing changes, I want to dive more into details on how we can build on that program. So my question is, what percentage of the 911 calls are being sent to 988? The next -- I'm going to just go through. Then the next one is on stop and frisk. You've been working through the city stop and frisk policies for a while and I wanted to ask about the process at this point, how many arrests have been generated? And what are the demographic breakdowns of those arrests? And has the city paid any legal settlements in relation to those? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: I'm sorry, madam. What arrest was that? What was it?

Stop and frisk. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Okay.

And then this is like a budgetary question. And earlier you said that you're moving towards a more business model and you gave us the breakdown of the resignations and how many folks. Do you need to hire and the need versus what you're actually getting? So we've appropriated funding for those positions and some of them haven't been filled. And I'm not saying that it's your fault in terms of recruitment because I know you guys have made some huge efforts to make that. But what's happening with the money that was appropriated for those positions that aren't filled, and how is it spent? Is there a breakdown for it? Does it go into overtime? I'm just trying to get an understanding of what happens? POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Are you talking about unfilled positions?

Yes. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: So I mean -- yeah, so we have to -- Class 100, we have to use to backfill with overtime, you know. And it's significant because of just a significant demand. You know, it took 3,400 men and women to do the Super Bowl.

Correct. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: And so -- and that was including federal partners, state Police partners, and all hands on deck from us. The events overnight. I mean, the leading up, the celebrations. So that is a significant deployment and our deployment across the field. With the fewer officers in, we do have a minimum staffing level that we try to stay at. We still continue to focus on our more challenging areas where we know we have high levels of violence, so we deploy men and women in there. That has been an effective strategy as a result as well. So we do convert that Class 100 money over into overtime to support our 360 days, seven days a year, hours a day operation. 18 As it relates to the CIRT, 19 I mean, we're really proud of the 20 work that those men and women are 21 doing. Our Crisis Intervention 22 Response Team, they received - I'm 23 not sure we said 988. I'm not sure 24 how it comes through, but we get that referrals from 911 and from our officers in the field. We had 1,900 radio calls, 712 engagements. I can say -- and then under Commissioner Cram, who's a veteran in the military, we created a veteran's program. It is going phenomenally well. We've had a dog. We have a comfort dog that we've added, Bailey, that we can invite her -- invite Bailey into -- one day. That dog is a comfort dog, but that dog is absolutely having -- making amazing results for us, even internally as we do our internal work. And that was funded through the foundation, let you know. But we -- and so we -- it is -- and the -- and I tell you when it's good is when the officers keep calling for it. They are constantly calling for CIRT because they recognize them when they're in a situation. And we're looking now as we build out our numbers, how do we build out. This is a model for us. This is a highly effective model. We talked most recently about Center City, and we're going to start to look at how we can expand it even further. But the response that we're receiving, the -- and the professionalism of that partnership between Merakey and our officers, I went down recently and met with their council. I could be no more proud of a group of individuals who really believe in their work, both the cops and the providers, and are really having an effective strategy, and they're getting a lot of trust from the men and women in the field.

Thank you.

That's time. Thank you very much. I want to thank you and your team, Commissioner, for being here. Thank you for the work that you're doing in Kensington. Thank you for the work that you're doing with our young people. Thank you for the work that you're doing for our victims and cold victims of gun violence. And most importantly, your leadership team, for just being in the front line and making sure we have a safer city. Thank you very much. POLICE COMMISSIONER BETHEL: Thank you, sir.

Council will be at -- this hearing will be at ease until 02:30. (Council at ease.)

This is a continuance of our budget hearing. We will be hearing testimony from the Office of Public Safety under leadership of Mr. Adam Geer. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the first witness to testify?

Adam Geer, Chief Public Safety Director.

Good afternoon, Mr. Geer. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Good afternoon, Council President.

You can state your name, for the record, and please begin your testimony. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson and esteemed members of Council, residents of Philadelphia. My name is Adam Geer, and I humbly serve as the Chief Public Safety Director for the city's first ever Office of Public Safety. I'm joined today by my first deputy, Evangelia Manos and my Chief Operating Officer, Marcia Dixon. I'm honored to serve Mayor Cherelle Parker, and to work alongside this body and all our partners, public, private community, and beyond to make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the country with economic opportunity for all. Thanks to the wisdom of City Council, the position of Chief Public Safety Director was created by public mandate and the Office of Public Safety formally established by the Mayor's Executive Order nearly one year ago today. Broadly, the order establishes that our mission is to coordinate cross departmental efforts to promote public safety and provide input to city agencies on matters like resource deployment, policy formation, and stakeholder engagement. In addition to leading on a wide array of interagency intergovernmental efforts, we directly oversee seven core divisions, which under the authority and the umbrella of OPS work emergently, cohesively, and collaboratively to help the office fulfill its mission. Those divisions are -- and if I can ask them to put their hands up if they're here, because I got a big squad with me today. The Office of Safe Neighborhoods, Office of the Victim Advocate, Office of Reentry Partnerships, Office of Criminal Justice, of course, Town Watch Integrated Services, the Overdose Response Unit, and our Anti-violence Grants team. And the other members of the Office of Public Safety, put -- please put your hands up. I appreciate you-all so much doing the work every day. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here. That's just OPS. The Mayor's elegant approach to public safety is PI. Where we live is in the P in the I, the space with incredible support from the MDO, but I want to raise this up, we have tremendous partnership in the PPD, and that's the E, enforcement piece. It's worth recognizing and saying out loud that in almost my years of 15 service to the city in the criminal 16 justice space, I've never seen the 17 type of collaboration and 18 partnership between this police 19 department, Commissioner Bethel and 20 our city government and transparency. The partnership is something truly that we value and it benefits the citizens of Philadelphia. We added several key positions to reinforce OPS's unified and comprehensive approach to public safety, breaking down internal silos and aligning around the shared mission to deliver the highest quality services to our residents. We hired a new directory of performance manager or performance management, who, for the first time in our city's history is creating standardized anti-violence metrics that integrate seamlessly with our city's Philly STAT 360. This is critical to our efforts. This work will allow us to more fully understand which of our interventions and programs are working and which are not, or where they're working in what time, and why. We added a new director of Interagency Partnerships who is responsible for ensuring that we coordinate strategically across city government and with our intergovernmental partners. We added a new director of grants who is tasked with leveraging city, state, federal, and philanthropic dollars, while supporting our own grant making programs in fully empowering community-based organizations to lead the way in neighborhood safety. More administrative capacity will be coming online in the coming months, and I couldn't be more proud of our growing team. So what have we been up to in our year?

While we are building, we are also moving forward, leading, creating, and implementing major initiatives aligned with the mayor's vision for public safety, including the Landmark Glock Switch legislation, which criminalized the use of Glock switch, and thank you Councilman Jones for that. Very important work. Comprehensive opioid canvassing, making sure that we're getting literature and education out to our folks, increasingly older African American folks in some of our communities who are overdosing. The expansion of our nationally recognized GVI program, and the launch of GVIJ, which we'll specifically focus on our youths. The first ever neighborhood resource center, which is placed strategically in our neighborhoods so that folks who are returning can have access right away to vital services and connections. The nation's first crime scene cleanup here in Philadelphia, where we take that burden away from our folks, that visceral reminder of trauma which was spurred from a scene -- a very tragic scene in Council President's District. We didn't stop there. We added CLIP referrals to that program, so when they're out there cleaning a crime scene, they're also putting eyes in the city and saying, can we repair that? Can we clean this up? Can we do that? And we know that that has a correlation to reductions in crime. We have our, of course, magnificent, and I say that with all sincerity, Anti-Violence Community Partnership Grants team, who held for the first time a grantee conference last summer. They launched CCG, which is a new grant opportunity for $50,000-100,000, bridging that gap between our lowest grant opportunity and our highest. They have synchronized the timing of all three anti-violence grant application processes for the first time, so streamlining that, making it easier for the applicant. And this is -- this is big. They have diversified and individualized grantee technical assistance, technical assistance to their grantees in-house from locally owned business leaders, right? So they reached out to local minority owned business leaders and provide our grantees and our rejectees, in some case, the folks who we want to see make it, providing them with workshops on building and managing partnerships, communication strategies, financial strategies, data collection strategies, strategic planning, and then they have their office hours. And the grants team sits outside of my office, and it's a pleasure to hear the care and sophistication that they take on those calls. They love the work. I love to hear them doing the work, making sure we're setting up our community organizations to succeed and grow, or be successful in that application to the city the next time. Neighborhood Wellness Court. My office stood up a court under Evangelia Manos and Joshua Harris, worked tirelessly with many city partners, the police department, many external partners to set up a court that we think will be very impactful in Kensington. The Kensington Wellness Support Center, of course, Councilman Lozada, we continue to build that out. The Juvenile Assessment Center run in our office as well under Kurt August and his team. The Fire Task Force in Kensington, Code Blue and Code Red running out of our office with ORU leading. And of course, the dignified and successful encampment closures. So that's what we -- that's what we've been up to here on almost our birthday for the Office of Public Safety. And we've accomplished a great deal, right, but there's more work ahead, and I can assure you that no one in this administration, no one in my office is complainant -- complacent. So what are we planning for the future? After our analysis of the city budget, and this is for you, Council President Johnson, and thank you for your patience. We did an analysis of our city agency spending, led again by our new Director of Performance Management. We've identified that $264,489,929, I'm sorry, million dollars.

So again, that's $265 million roughly, or a quarter of a billion dollars across our agencies is tied to anti-violence prevention efforts. It's a historic investment that represents, again, more than a quarter of a billion dollars, and that does not include the police department's budget. And of course, you heard the Commissioner testify earlier today. They have some spending that clearly also goes to prevention and intervention. The Office of Public Safety's operating budget is roughly $67 million. This will allow us to expand and continue these key initiatives. Our fantastic $25 million anti-violence grant program, expansion of GVIJ, plus Grid CCIP, and VPP, our CVI Community Violence Interruption models, an OSN, ORU partnership funded by Bloomberg Partnerships Healthy City grants, this is cool. Our GVI program for the first time, we're tying it together with ORU. This is the success of the Office of Public Safety. So when our GVI teams go out and identify that folks have substance use disorder, they are -- they are getting that person help, they have specialized now in that GVI team, they will have folks who will focus on substance use disorder. Because of course, we have folks in GVI who are self- medicating, who are using drugs, and it's the smart thing to do. And it's -- it's a testament to the Office of Public Safety and are able to -- our ability to coordinate. We also have expanded expungement -- I'm sorry, engagement of individuals on State Road and our youth at the PJJSC, expanded juvenile re-entry program and implementation. And we're announcing this today of an AI powered software tool that will synthesize crime data and intelligence to allow precision deployment of our community violence interruption teams. This is a -- this is funded by the Civic Coalition to Save Lives, but we're giving our CVI folks the best of what's out there. Miami used this, they had skyrocketing as in low plummeting numbers of violent crime. This app allowed their -- with intelligence, allowed them to be deployed strategically so that they were more proactive in the community, going to places that based upon the algorithm would suggest, based upon a recent beef or recent shooting in historical data, that they might want to be in this area interacting with these groups. So we're going to bring -- roll that out for this summer. 6 million. We also want to have Neighborhood Wellness Court operating five days a week. This is also another announcement. I'm pleased to announce that people have entered Neighborhood Wellness Court during this pilot. They've entered, they've come in the front door of some of our toughest cases in the city of Philadelphia on Kensington Ave, and they have made it to Riverview. They've made it to the backend, that 90-day to a year facility, beautiful facility. So we know that the connection has been made, and I think that's -- I think that's incredible. Continued opioid canvassing. We have expansion of Kensington Wellness Support Center, 24/7, 365, expansion of PAD Grow program, many other exciting things. The list is getting long, but I want to -- I want to say that we have accomplished a great deal and standing up a new office and building systems from scratch, aligning agencies and launching innovative life-saving initiatives. But make no mistake, we are just getting started. Gun violence and the catastrophic effects of open air drug markets are a scourge on our communities. It steals our children, breaks families, and holds entire neighborhoods hostage. We must continue to meet this moment with urgency, with discipline, and with the relentless drive to save lives. This is a full-court press. We will confront head-on the conditions, systems, and behaviors that allow violence to fester, and we will dismantle them piece by piece. Most importantly, we will continue to increase safety, both physically but also psychologically, and restore norms to every corner of this wonderful city.

I believe in our mayor's bold vision, and I believe in the people of Philadelphia. We are building something stronger than a program or a policy. We're building trust, building connection, and building an ecosystem that protects and uplifts every resident of this city. From the youngest child to the oldest neighbor. Let us move forward with focus and resolve, knowing that the work is urgent. Together, one Philly, we will make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in America with economic opportunity for all. And, Council President, I just have one more leniency. We do have -- this work is not just our office, police department, community partners, this tremendous hall and its members, it's also some of our community members and groups. So we have a number of them here today, and I'd ask them if they could be recognized. Angelique Howard from No Weapons Formed Program. We have Matthew Kerr from Beyond the Bars. Edwin Desamour from the Lighthouse. All doing tremendous work on our grants program. Gary Mills from Shoot Basketballs NOT Guns. Gianna Davis and her staff from Positive Choices and Actions Program. We have Brenda Mosley, Building a Brighter Future Through the Art of Construction. Shante Branham from Philly Youth Making Positive Choices Program. Thank you so much for your work. Key community -- thank you, yes. Thank you for being here. Key partners to our Office of Victim, Advocate Melany Nelson, Executive Director of Northwest Victim Services, Tim Massaquoi, Executive Director of Kingsessing Heals Resilience. Gabrielle Rainey, Director of Victim Services Central Division, Rodney Babb, Penn Trauma Center. Thank you very much for your work and being here. Kensington Wellness Support Center, Dr. Jeanmarie Perrone and Nicole O'Donnell, Penn Medicine Center for Addiction Medicine and Policy. Tremendous partners. And of course, Malcolm Musgrove and David Malloy from Merakey. We partner within a number of important initiatives. Finally, Faith Bartley here from Why Not Prosper, an amazing organization. And my daughters are going to want her sweatshirt, so I already told her that. And thank you very much, Council President. With that and the acknowledgement of our tremendous community partners, I would take questions.

Let's give them all a round of applause, y'all. That's what it's about. I think what you showed, Adam, was the power of partnerships and that we cannot do it alone. And so I thank all the advocates who are here. I thank all the boots-on-the- ground organizations who are here, all for the sole purpose of moving our city of Philadelphia forward and making sure it's a safe city. I just want to take a moment, Adam, first and foremost, to thank you for your leadership. The co-sponsor of the legislation that created your position was based upon our former Council President, Darrell Clarke. Only two members particularly were prime co-sponsors. One is the Chairman of Public Safety, which is Councilmember Curtis Jones, and myself, who serve as chairman of the Special Committee on Gun Violence. And so I believe our investment is we're -- we're receiving a return on our investment based upon your leadership, and most important, how you're bringing people together, which feels very, very refreshing. I just want to take a moment to just acknowledge a couple individuals who my office have been working with as relates to addressing the issue of gun violence here in the city of Philadelphia. And most importantly, making sure my district is a safe district. I want to acknowledge one of the leaders and person who really helped me get started early on before the council presidency, before the state rep office, before the district councilperson, just when I was an advocate running my organization, Peace Not Guns. And I just need some support. I want to acknowlege Mr. Anthony Murphy from Town Watch. I appreciate you always being supportive. I also want to acknowledge, again, before we actually had a chance to, like, take the Office of Violence Prevention to the next level, they assigned this gentleman to actually start working with us to put grants together for the Boots on the Ground organization. I think at that time it was like up to $10,000, now we up to a million dollars. That's Shondell Revell. I want to acknowledge him as well. When you talk about the issue of re-entry and making sure that everybody deserves a second chance because people make mistakes sometime, right? And I'm not -- I'm never ashamed to talk about, oh, I got a degree from Penn, did course work at Harvard, graduated from Mansfield, but I had a judge named Frank Reynolds at one particular point in time, but some people saw some things in me that I probably didn't see early on, and invested in me. So I've been working with this gentlemen to make sure we address those individuals who may have made a mistake and just want to get their lives together. So from the Office of Reentry, Mr. Assata, just want to give her a round of applause as well. She's been helping with the prisoners up in Phoenix Prison, right? And she's making sure that we are supporting the lifers program up there called FACT, and just supporting those individuals. And I also just want to acknowledge making sure we address the issues of supporting victims or cold victims of gun violence. Mr. Derrick Holmes, I just want to acknowledge him as well. And last but not least he's, you know, he's downstairs on the second floor, but he's always seen Johnson. I just want to acknowledged Joshu Harris, a passionate, hardworking individual. I want to welcome him back. And so I'm going to go ahead and do a deeper dive, because I want my members to have the opportunity to ask significant amount of questions during this process, so. But one of the things that came to my attention I just want to address, I always want to make sure we are address in this budget, is making sure we're consistently addressing the support for the boots on the ground organizations, right? I believe from your leadership and even the prior administration leadership and us all working together, we have been able to change the narrative and not focus on mass incarceration, but focus on the issue of prevention, right?

And we are seeing a 30-year historical low when it comes to gun violence and shootings here in the city of Philadelphia. And I believe, and I know for a fact that the work that my colleagues and I have been doing day in and day out to put the support that's needed in the hands of the individuals who are actually out there working with the people who are significantly impacted by gun violence, working with the young men and the young ladies, and encouraging them not to pick up guns and get involved in the life -- or crime and gun violence, I believe it is a direct result of the work and support that we have been done. And so give me an idea of, one, I know last year we had a $20 million -- $29 million budget proposal. And it started at -- I'm sorry, it started at million. 8 12 million, which brought it up to 29 13 million. 14 And so I want to get an 15 idea how much have we spent, how 16 many organizations have we actually 17 supported? And overall, what does 18 the program look like in terms of 19 how you're going to be moving 20 forward? Obviously, making sure you 21 talked about the technical 22 assistance that supporting 23 organizations, which I believe is 24 great. And also making sure that we continue to make sure that this is a robust program that's supporting those most in need. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Thank you very much for the question, Council President. And again, I want to acknowledge your leadership in this area of public safety as well. Your tremendous leadership, your support of these programs, along with many members of Council as well, including Councilmember Jones, who's the Chair of Public Safety. We also, like you, believe that this work is critical to our success here in making our city safer. We too believe in the strength of these community organizations in the work that they do. We -- I wish we could have invited them all here, but that would've been about 142 organizations in terms of what we're planning on funding -- what we have funded with the money, rather. Because we just notified our TCIG grantees beginning yesterday of their award. So to answer your question, it'll be about 142 organizations who will receive money from the city of Philadelphia. We intend to use every single penny of that confirmed this morning with our grants team as well. So we're well on our way to spending every single penny of that money. It will go to our TCIG grantees, of which there will be approximately 62, that's our lowest funding, zero to about -- I'm sorry, 1,500 to about $50,000. We will have 18 organizations in our new community capacity grant. That is about a million dollars of funding. And if I can stop here. Our Community Capacity grant is new. Our grants team was thoughtful enough to think about the fact that we didn't have a grant amount for folks between $50,000 and 100,00. So it went from TCIG right to CEG. Well, we created a program where we invite folks who are doing really good in our TCIG program, that lowest level of funding, if they were doing really good, if they had promise, if they'd been working with us, we invited some of those organizations, of them, into this 15 bridge, this gap between the two 16 fundings so that we can continue to 17 give them support, because the idea 18 is bringing our local, smaller organizations from beginning right, all the way up to the top where they can compete for those bigger philanthropy dollars, where they can -- where they can be the big dogs, so to speak, right? So we had those organizations that for the first time we invited in, and we're going to push them from that CCG middle level up into that CEG, where they can go for that million-dollar funding at some point and help our communities. And in that top tier, we will fund 63 organizations, about $21 million. Now, we have aligned those organizations to align again with the police top 10 districts with our pinpoint districts. So this is strategic.

And we will 16 offer a briefing to Council on all 17 of this, if you would like. But we 18 will show on our fancy heat maps that our director performance management now has given us the overlap between where our grantees are operating and where most of the crime in Philadelphia is being driven. So we're also being strategic about this. But we intend to use every single dollar, and we believe it's a tremendous piece of the puzzle here in our fight against gun violence and violent crime.

And the last question before I turn over to my members for the first round. I'm a very, very strong advocate of support of victims and cold victims of gun violence. And there's going to be a $3 million investment regarding burial costs. And I want to acknowledge, again, Adara Combs, I want to acknowledge Joshu Harris. This was an issue that always have had a significant impact that on the most vulnerable population when it comes to individuals who have to bury a loved one. So talk more about this particular fund. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: So this is something that the Victim Advocate, Ms. Combs, brought to our attention early on and has advocated for, and I know we had a brief conversation before this. That's what she does excellently. She advocates, right, for victims of crime. And what we were finding is that folks who unfortunately had to bury a loved one due to a violent crime, often -- most often gun crime, they're having problems getting reimbursed right from the state. The state as a fund where they can pay for funeral costs. They might not have even had 6,000, $10,000, which is the average to bury a loved one. So as a city and as an advocate, she said, wouldn't it be great if we could help folks get that payment out to these funeral homes who are demanding payment upfront a lot of times, right? Who want that money before they'll take the person in. They're dealing with enough. And our job as a city is to continue to step in these ways. The crime scene cleanup unit that she operates out of her office, the victim -- co-victim letters that they send out with resources to every single victim of a gun crime no matter who you are or what side of the gun you're on. And now, this funeral expense program, which we think will again, continue to assist with the trauma and healing our communities and folks who are dealing with this devastation.

Your current budget's requesting how much for the Office of Victim's Advocate, how much? What's the funding level? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: So the total funding level for the Office of Victim Advocate, and if one of my colleagues finds it, it's $2.4 million. It's a total budget.

Two point? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Correct.

You said 2.4? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: 2.4 million, correct.

Okay. And how are we coordinating with the Office of Victims Advocate? And I'm supportive of sort a proposal from Commissioner Bethel, right? Because we know in the homicide unit, there's always been an issue where revocations are going cold or not. There's a lack of communication between the homicide detective and that family member that's just seeking the answer. Sometimes it's just a phone call to say, you know what, we don't have any information at the moment, but we're still trying to find out who committed the act. How are we co-coordinating? Because if you got the Commissioner and his team doing his part, and the officers created pretty much to really be the overseer of all things -- victims and cold victims of gun violence. And just to remind folks, this started because on a state level, it was -- the Office of Victims Advocate was directly focusing on really acts of sexual violence, not particularly those who are impacted by actual gun violence. So how are we going to co-coordinate those two responsibilities to make sure there's not an overlap? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: It's a great question, Council President. First of all, I believe in what the commissioner in that office, what they're trying to do. As a homicide prosecutor, I saw the frustration often on cold victims of crime wanting to get answers of court dates. What's happening with that? Did you talk to this person? Did you do that? I heard that this person might have been involved. That's a lot on a homicide prosecutor who might -- who there might be another skill set, right? Another assistant who might be able to help in that. And that's what that office is trying to do, so I believe in that work. The good news is that the person who heads that office was a former employee of our Office of Safe Neighborhoods, my office. And we know that there's plenty of work to be done in supporting our victims and cold victims of crime. So their focus, as I understand it, will be really as case managers for their cases, for these -- for these criminal cases, and there's a lot of space for our Office of Victim Advocate to continue to do the advocacy work that she does, the Amirs Connecting folks, running all the programming that she does. And we will -- we will make sure, as with all of our relationship work with the police department, that we're communicating and clear-eyed about people's missions and focus so that there's no overlap, but that we're maximizing our touches on this demographic.

We support what the commission is doing a thousand percent. I'm always looking at making sure we're co-coordinating, right? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Yep.

So everybody be on the same page. And the last thing I need help with, I don't want to spook nobody, right? My staff said, don't point it at them. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Yep.

In all seriousness, right, because you're the head of public safety person in the city of Philadelphia, right? And these are being sold at stores all throughout the city of Philadelphia. And we know in Point Breeze, about two weeks ago, a officer-related shooting was a result of somebody carrying a fake gun, right? But particularly, I look at the stores, which these are supposed to be banned from. I know I introduced legislation some time ago to ban them unless they're fluorescent like yellow or red, right? But technically, they're banned in the city of Philadelphia. But yet these stores, I believe, are preying on our communities, right? Poor communities for the most part, selling these, which I look at as a way of just grooming young people to participate in gun violence, right. And so, I'm going to be reaching out to you and your team and see how we can work in partnership with PPD, but most important License & Inspections, right? To begin looking at these stores that sell these prop guns to our children at the end of the day. And give you another example, I think they have like these gels that go inside of them, right? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Uh-huh.

And I know for a fact a case where they were playing with these gel guns, right, and somebody got hit with one. But they came back with a real gun, right? Because they -- at that particular point in time, they probably didn't feel like playing, or you shouldn't have shot me with a gel gun or not. And so the fact that they are illegal, though, we going to reach out to you and your team is figure out how we can strategize and work together to do our part, to try to keep these out of hands of our young people. Because this is this -- I believe, the graduation to the next point. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: That's right.

Right. And then we -- and our known stories in the past where it all takes as a kid to say, you know what, because it looks so real, let me go ahead and do a robbery with it. They don't know if it's real or not. But they will probably still try to do a robbery, and I've witnessed when they did try to do that robbery with that fake gun, on the other side was a real gun, right? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Yep.

So sometime, you know, we have to police ourselves, right, in terms of our community and make sure that particularly those that sell these obvious belief like all of the other nuisance stores are just taking advantage and exploiting the various same communities that we come from. We are trying to keep crime and violence down. And so I'll definitely reach out to you in the near future. And at this moment, the Chair recognizes Councilmember Jeffrey J. Young.

Thank you, Mr. -- thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to -- good afternoon, first of all. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Good afternoon, Councilmember.

One follow-up on the line of questioning regarding victims and cold victims of crimes. And it's good -- I'm pleased to hear that, you know, there is money regarding, you know, some kind of funeral services and things like that -- that is -- that's awesome. That's a service that many Philadelphians need. But what can we -- can you talk to us about how your office or the Office of Victim Advocates works in conjunction with the district attorney's office of victim advocates, and what is that overlap, right, because they're going to come to us to ask us for money to fund their stuff, you're coming to us to ask for money to fund your stuff, like, tell us what the differences are between those two offices, and what, you know -- and how, I guess, Philadelphians can access those particular services? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Right. So I don't want to speak necessarily too much for the DA's office and their team. What I can say is that they have a team that responds to homicides. They have a team of victim advocates who respond to the scene, they will provide support in real time. Now, we as an office similarly have our rapid response unit, and we have our response folks, Amir, against -- we have our folks who respond as well. They will respond though in to shootings, to other multiple people shootings, so to other incidents, not necessarily just homicides. So that's a distinction. The other distinction you'll find is in the victim relocation funds. Again, as I understand it, the DA's office, victim relocation funds are meant for victims who are tied to a case, right? There's either an active case or there's going to be an arrest made and that person needs relocation. Our, through the Office of Victim Advocate, it's a broader type of case that we can relocate. So there doesn't necessarily have to be a criminal matter or tied to a case or something like the DA's office. So her, as in the victim advocate, her fund is broader to be able to relocate individuals. But I know our office of the Victim Advocate under a Derrick Combs, reaches out to the DA's office all the time to coordinate efforts. She also comes from the DA's office and knows that work well, so I know that she is certainly reaching out in trying to make those coordination wherever possible.

Thank you. My next question is regarding the, I guess, the grants allocated for public safety, right, I believe it's 125 million or something like that that's allocated. Can you talk to us about what type of organizations are eligible to apply and what are the stipulations to receive these fundings? CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Great question, Councilmember. So the types of organizations that we target have to be in the anti -- into anti-violence work. So there must be some type of programming aspect of it that is meant to address violence in our communities, and particularly gun violence. I can tell you a change that we made also, which will illustrate a point here. It used to be that that we would give preference, and we'd only focus on young men. And when we came in, we said, well, let's remove the young men, because there's also some young women in our community -- some women in our community who also there could be increased programming on. So that's a change we made. And so it broadened our scope of folks who can apply for grants and for these opportunities. We have these three grant opportunities, as I said, so we have small organizations setting up one-time cookouts that's meant for people to get into safe spaces. And they're coordinated with schools or whatever, smaller grants that are just one-time programming things, medium sized ones. So the programming might be a couple of weekends or maybe a few months. And then we have our bigger CEG grants, like Amir, again, I keep using them because they're just tremendous, they're great. Where, they're operating year round doing a whole host of services for us. You know, I've told some of you before behind closed doors, the hardest part of my job so far, there's been a lot of difficult things. One of the most difficult things is an organization not getting funding that's a tremendous organization, that's a great organization. We just had record numbers of applicants and we will support and try and strategically align the best organizations for the work that we're trying to accomplish.

Yeah. I mean, I think you -- we have that record number because we just -- we're in a crisis. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Yep.

And there are a lot of people who want to help, who are on the ground -- who are on the ground doing the work. And, you know, sometimes they're pulling their own, you know, taking their own money out to do some -- to do some of this work. And whether they're small size, medium sized, whatever, right, there's a different -- they serve a different -- all serve a different clientele, and have a different reach when it comes to the -- in the community. So I just would like, if you could take a look at some of the, I guess, qualifications for some of these organizations, right, because some might not be as organized as others. You know, I saw Mike Tiban here earlier today, right, like, that's a person that has been on the ground doing work in communities since I was an intern, right, in college, right. He's been on the ground doing stuff, and we just want to make sure that those organizations like that don't get lost because they're really the ones that are actually have an impact, who will -- who have direct relationships with the individuals that we're trying to connect with. So I, you know, hopefully, you know, we can figure what that -- figure out what that looks like and allowing them that -- the grace and opportunity to apply for some of these grants. Thank you, Mr. President. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Member Young. Mr. Chairman of Public Safety, Councilmember Jones.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. We've come a long way since we advocated for this office I heard the width and the depth of some of the work that you're doing, and I'm sitting here thinking that there's got to be a correlation between you, which is the straw that stirs the drink of public safety and the reduction overall in some of these activities. So we are very grateful. I want to focus my questions from the macro to the micro very quickly. What do you think your exposure rate is from No. 20 47 and some of the monies that are actually pass throughs to places like PCCD? Is there an exposure that at some point he may turn off the spigot to some of this? That's question number one. Number two, on the micro side of it, I am singularly, we are about to Thursday vote on a package of individuals that will be, I like to call them the new Beatles of the Citizens Police Oversight Committee and where we are in the negotiations for independent investigations for them. And I would like, if you could, to let Director McClary come up and just tell us where we are by way of the appointments that, Mr. President, you are going to have to review and approve.

Absolutely. CHIEF DIRECTOR GEER: Thank you again, Councilmember Jones. It's worth repeating your support and your leadership here in public safety for the city. With respect to the federal funding, we have not seen any impact at this point. We, thanks to Rep Scanlon's advocacy, received a $615,000 federal loan that we have already started to pay down on it by way of employees, rather, for our GVIJ program. So we've hired three, we're going to hire two more and we're going to have that program rolling, right? But to answer your question, no. 11 We have hired a director of grants. We did a national search, brought her here back to the city of Philadelphia. And it's, I can say good timing. She has a reputation and national reputation. She's worked nationally on getting money into our pockets by any means necessary. So we're going to be creative, we're going to find ways, opportunities to continue to get money so that we can continue our mission, but we don't have -- you're never going to hear an excuse from me. We're going to do what we have to do with what we have, period. To answer your second question with CPOC, I understand that, by the way, again, thank you for your support and leadership on CPOC. It is tremendously important to have an independent body that thinks about police oversight in a city of our -- of our size. And with the complexities of the issues we have. My understanding is that they've recently filled some seats and that they're very excited to share that information, and I know some of those folks. And so I think it'll be tremendous to have that panel finally filled out and working as partners in our space to make sure that we have a police force that we all -- that we all are proud of, and we are.

Could she come up and maybe share where we are? Mr. President, I was taken aback to find out that the first police oversight, not oversight, but advisory committee, was established in 1958 at the insistence of Cecil B. Moore and Reverend Leon Sullivan. And so we are the first in the nation to have a police advisory committee. And I did not know that until Ms. McClary brought that to our attention.