Inside the Philly Police Department’s plan to act like a ‘modern business’: Quality-of-life officers, AI, and video calls

Until last year, Philadelphia police detectives wrote search warrants on typewriters. Officers still take incident reports with pen and paper, and hand deliver them to detective bureaus. And when someone reports a minor crime, it can take hours for police to respond — if they do at all.

To Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, those details capture something bigger: a department in need of a systems upgrade.

In a new five-year strategic plan released Thursday, Bethel broke from the tradition of his predecessors by treating the police department and its nearly $900 million budget as a business in need of modernizing — with an eye toward better “customer service” for residents — rather than centering on crime-fighting tactics like commanders of the past.

“If we’re going to be a modern police department,” he said in an interview this week, “we have to take on some of the structures of a modern business.”

To him, that’s tackling many of the less glamorous parts of police work: upgrading internal records systems, streamlining police report forms, and expanding training for officers.

But there are also some flashy — if not eyebrow-raising — initiatives within the 73-page plan: integrating artificial intelligence into 911 calls, allowing residents to report non-emergency crimes via video chat, and creating an internal diversion program for officers who violate low-level department policies.

Some parts of the plan — built on conversations with more than 200 people in the department, city leadership, and community — would be funded through grants, the department said, while others still need to be approved and funded by City Council, which has been largely amenable to Bethel’s budget requests in recent years.

The department said the long-term view “allows future needs to be considered through the normal budget process well before they arise.”

It’s been one of Bethel’s signature undertakings since Mayor Cherelle L. Parker appointed him as Philly’s top cop in January 2024, part of a long history of police commissioners and mayors working together to craft long-term public safety plans to guide their administrative goals.

In 2012, then-Mayor Michael Nutter said the department would focus on confiscating illegal guns, and ramp up overtime to put more cops on the street. And in 2020, amid an unprecedented spike in gun violence, former Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw outlined goals to increase the clearance rate for homicides and shootings.

Bethel’s plan, by contrast, is light on specifics for traditional crime fighting. While it broadly describes strategies like increasing foot patrols on SEPTA and expanding the use of digital forensic evidence in investigations, it doesn’t set targeted reductions in homicides, shootings, or traffic deaths.

That, he said, was intentional.

“This plan is really not a crime plan. We have a crime plan. We’ve been covering it for a long time. We know that space of it,” he said. “But we’ve never done anything as an organization with, how do we move into being a modern and forward-thinking, always-evolving organization?”

Bethel’s plans come as Philadelphia faces a more positive outlook. The city is on track to record the fewest homicides in more than half a century. The homicide and shootings clearance rates has hovered around 98% and 40%, respectively, the highest in decades. And Philadelphia is no longer the poorest big city in America.

That’s likely given Bethel the rare breathing room to look past the crime stats that have defined past administrations and focus instead on the machinery behind them.

Here are some standout parts of the plan:

Quality-of-life concerns have long dominated community police meetings, Bethel said. So within the next two years, the department plans to install “Quality-of-Life Officers” in every police district to be the point of contact for residents on issues like abandoned cars, illegal dumping, and nuisance businesses.

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Those officers, Bethel said, would be responsible for coordinating calls with other city departments to more quickly resolve problems.

One of the biggest issues for the department, Bethel said, is poor “customer service.”

Officers typically juggle high-priority calls — like shootings and assaults — alongside reports of nonviolent crimes like petty theft, vandalism, or minor car crashes. Because the lower-level offenses are considered less urgent, officer response can sometimes take several hours, leaving residents frustrated.

Under the new system, he said, people would be able to report low-level crimes online and be provided with a link to a video chat with officers, who can take the report and send a copy to the caller digitally, with no in-person visit needed.

Filing a report over the phone will still be an option, he said, but for people who want to avoid an emergency call for minor issues, this is a new option.

The new system could start to roll out within the next year.

The department also plans to test 911 call systems that use artificial intelligence to screen calls.

When people call for help, they’ll be connected to an emergency dispatcher, with AI listening in the background. Callers who report lower-level crimes, like vandalism or theft, will be transferred to an AI-assisted line, and have the option to report the matter online or via video call.

There will also be a separate, non-emergency phone number that will be answered by an artificial voice. The system will screen for keywords or issues linked to high-priority crimes, like a robbery or shooting, and immediately transfer those calls to a human dispatcher, the department said.

The hope is this would lead to faster response times and reduce complaints that calls for help have gone unanswered.

Bethel said they’re still evaluating potential pitfalls, and acknowledged the nuances: “A theft can turn into a robbery, and a robbery can turn into a shooting, a shooting can turn into a murder,” he said.

When city police officers violate department policy, their disciplinary cases are sent to the Police Board of Inquiry, and reprimands can remain on their record and affect future promotions unless appealed and overturned through union arbitration.

Under a new initiative, officers accused of lower-level violations could go through an internal diversion program that requires them to undergo training and avoids a mark on their record. Among those offenses are sleeping on duty, dismissive behavior, using derogatory or offensive language, or failure to activate body-worn cameras. In the latter case, Bethel said, the diversionary program wouldn’t be available for officers with repeated failures to turn cameras on.

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Officers wouldn’t be eligible for diversion if they’re found to have committed the same offense within the previous six months, or if the offense happened alongside more serious violations ineligible for the program.

Bethel said the diversion option was developed in coordination with the Citizens Police Oversight Commission with a goal of giving officers “a second chance, but also train them.”

The department intends to develop transition plans when captains or commanders leave neighborhood police districts — something community leaders requested, Bethel said.

It will also host quarterly community meetings to review data, and develop publicly available dashboards with additional crime, quality-of-life, and other types of data to measure performance.

By expanding points of contact with the community, Bethel said, “they’re going to hold us accountable.”