A few years ago, Philadelphia Police Department 12th District Captain Joseph Green looked around his Southwest Philly community and realized he needed help. His neighborhoods saw a lot of gun violence; businesses struggled with crime; there was little trust between neighbors and his patrol officers. Green knew he wanted to ease all those pain points — but he wasn’t sure how to do it, or who to ask for guidance.
Then, in 2023, he joined the Policing Leadership Academy (PLA) at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, a five-month-long program that trains officers in management, violence reduction and building community trust. At the end of PLA, officers create and design a capstone to address a problem within their department.
Listen to the special audio edition here:
PLA addresses a gap in many police officer’s training: management and leadership skills. Police academies across the country train officers in preventing, stopping and solving crime, but few devote instructional hours to how to lead teams and build community. Nor do they teach officers to embrace innovative problem solving or scale up solutions that have worked to reduce violence.
“When you invest in people, they improve their performance.” — Joseph Neubauer, the Neubauer Family Foundation
Green’s capstone, which he brought back to the 12th District, was a positive interaction program which changed how police officers interacted with the community in their daily routines. Now, officers park their cars and walk through neighborhoods, talk with community leaders, stop to chat with business owners and residents. They log each interaction, so Green can keep tabs on what’s happening in the streets and act accordingly.
Since the launch of Green’s program in 2023, officers have logged more than 14,000 positive community interactions that both increased trust and made the District safer. In that time, the 12th has experienced 20 percent fewer homicides, 30 percent fewer shooting victims and a 25 percent drop in shooting incidents, according to data from Griffin Catalyst, a civic engagement and philanthropic organization. Compare those numbers to citywide stats, where, between 2023 and 2024, violent crime dropped only 17 percent (although citywide, homicides decreased more — 35 percent).
Green’s positive community interactions project was so successful in offering a practical, data-driven solution that Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel is exploring how to expand it citywide.
And now, Bethel is working with the University of Pennsylvania and the Neubauer Family Foundation to ensure that other PPD officers receive the same kind of leadership training Green received — and earn an Ivy League masters degree in the process.
Penn’s newly created Masters of Applied Criminology and Police Leadership will teach officers management principles and show them how these skills can apply to policing. The Neubauer Family Foundation donated $2.55 million to cover tuition for 45 Philadelphia police officers over the program’s first three years.
Why police need leadership training
Former Aramark CEO Joseph Neubauer has sought to translate corporate management sector training to innovation in public sector jobs, like education and policing. When he was at Aramark, he often noticed people who were working in the field created the best, most innovative solutions for the company.
“People were solving problems every day,” he says. “My job, the job of my senior leadership, was to capture some of those opportunities and then spread them throughout the organization … People sitting at headquarters don’t have all the answers.”
In 2014, around the time of his retirement from Aramark, Neubauer and his wife Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer, started the Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders (PASL), to offer public school principals the same kind of high level management training his Aramark executives received in the course of their careers.
The program worked. Schools whose principals have been through the PASL program have higher test scores in the English and math Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), along with higher rates of student attendance and four-year graduation rates.
A University of Chicago alum, Neubauer was familiar with the PLA, and thought PPD captains should have the opportunity to experience the same kind of training. He started working with the PPD about five years ago and made sure PPD officers were in the first PLA cohort.
When Bethel became police commissioner last year, one of his priorities was making leadership and professional development programs readily available to officers. As former chief of school safety, he was familiar with Neubauer’s work in the School District. And his brother had worked for Neubauer at Aramark. So he wondered: Could a similar program help police officers?
Last fall, the PPD held a three day-long leadership seminar at Penn, funded by the Neubauer Foundation. This fall, they’re launching the Masters of Applied Criminology and Police Leadership, which will give officers more opportunities to hone their leadership skills.
“This was an absolute home run for us,” Bethel says.
Innovative policing
While the PLA has been effective, it’s short-term — only five months. Penn’s Masters of Applied Criminology and Police Leadership will provide a full year of instruction to officers. The program is open to officers who have been with the PPD for at least five years.
Enrolled officers will attend weekly online classes and monthly in-person instruction sessions. Courses cover topics like evidence-based policing and leadership in criminal justice. Each officer will design a capstone project, like Green did, to create a solution to a problem within their district or the department as a whole.
“It’s my expectation that the capstones will be able to move to the needle in the police department.” — Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel
John MacDonald is a professor of criminology and sociology at Penn and the director of the masters of science in criminology. He says the new program is similar to the masters degree in applied criminology at the University of Cambridge, where he was a visiting professor. He saw the success of that program and its capstone projects and wanted to create something similar in the U.S., especially because he felt that the capstone projects in the UK led to innovation in policing.
“Those graduates become advocates for testing things out, seeing what works,” MacDonald says. “Policing — or any aspect of criminal justice — is usually averse to trying out new things because they’re risk averse. They’re afraid it’s going to backfire.”
Shaping policing in Philadelphia and beyond
The first class of the new masters program will begin working on and implementing their capstone projects in the fall of 2026 — a few months after the PPD plans to release its five-year strategic plan. Bethel sees opportunities for officers participating in the program to use their capstones to work towards the goals in the plan.
He expects to see projects focused on community partnerships, like Green’s did, and on diversion programs, which the Department has worked to develop in recent years. Bethel would especially like to see capstones focused on youth diversion. Not every project will be a success, of course. But trying out new ideas will allow the department to explore solutions that could be worth expanding.
“It’s my expectation that the capstones will be able to move to the needle in the police department,” Bethel says.
The PPD has recommended 25 officers for the program this year. Penn is in the process of reviewing their applications. The first cohort, which begins this fall, will include 15 Philadelphia officers. In the second year, the program will be opened up to police departments around the East Coast.
For his part, Neubauer hopes police departments throughout the region will capitalize on positive crime trends and make communities safer. He also sees potential for the program to help police departments recruit and retain workers, something the PPD has struggled with in recent years.
“When you invest in people, they improve their performance,” Neubauer says. “Just think about the excitement in the police department, where they know that they can get a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.”
MORE ON POLICE REFORM