Cole Welsh, Staff

In her first personnel selection, Philadelphia Mayor-Elect Cherelle Parker selected longtime law enforcement official Kevin Bethel to be the next police commissioner of one of the nation’s largest police departments.

Bethel, who is 60 years old, currently serves as the chief of safety in the Philadelphia School District, where he has steered school safety officers away from strict discipline measures and toward mentoring students.

Prior to this, Bethel, a 29-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD), left the force as a deputy police commissioner. In this role, Bethel oversaw the department’s patrol operations, including the neighborhood services unit, school district police and the community relations unit. His lengthy resume also includes leading South Philadelphia’s 17th Police District, heading the regional operations command for South, Southwest and Center City Philadelphia, performing narcotics-related work and managing internal affairs investigations.

Bethel, who is set to assume his position once the new mayor is sworn in next year, will replace Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford, who himself became PPD’s leader after Danielle Outlaw’s resignation. Amid an increase in crime that has ravaged the city, both Parker and Bethel will immediately be confronted with the task of restoring law and order to the city.

In an interview with 6 ABC announcing the decision, Parker described Bethel as “a leader who is not afraid to make the tough decisions that we need to bring some order back to our city.”

Former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who served on the search committee that interviewed Bethel, said Bethel “caught his attention” when he worked in the field as a cop. In addition to praising him as a hard worker who worked long hours, Ramsey also portrayed Bethel as someone who employs a data-driven approach to policing.

Likewise, many others in Philadelphia have portrayed their optimism for Bethel’s selection. Roosevelt Poplar, who recently became the interim leader of FOP Lodge 5, which is PPD’s labor union, conveyed that he is ready to work with the new mayoral administration and was “overwhelmed with joy” with Parker’s police commissioner pick.

Once the new mayoral administration begins, Bethel will lead a large but severely short-staffed police force that has been hit with morale problems and numerous officers having been wounded or killed in recent years. Upon assuming his new position, Bethel will have to grapple with these challenges and the city’s overwhelming lawlessness. When combined, these obstacles make the police commissioner’s job arguably one of the most difficult in the city.