Inside the 25th Police District, under the hum of fluorescent lights, Captain Stephen Bennis Jr. leans forward when the conversation turns to the neighborhood. The word he keeps reaching for is not enforcement, but trust.

Captain Bennis is new to the role, but not to the uniform. He grew up in Mayfair, only a few miles from the district he now leads, in a family with a long line of Philadelphia police officers and firefighters. He studied at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School on Girard Avenue, earned a college degree in business administration and criminal justice, and is planning to pursue a master’s degree to sharpen his command.

Captain Bennis believes that the path to success in law enforcement is to work with the community, think outside the box, and nip things in the bud. Building trust includes ensuring that people know that any resident can report a crime, serve as a witness, or call for help, regardless of their immigration status, and without fear of being turned over to ICE. To spread the word, Bennis has knocked on doors in the community—among them Esperanza, the trusted North Philadelphia faith-based organization—asking community leaders to help him deliver the message.  

The gun violence epidemic that plagued the 25th district and the City of Philadelphia is another vital challenge for a city that was once branded “Killadelphia,” around 2006, when homicides surged past 400. The toll climbed higher through the pandemic years, peaking at a record 562 killings in 2021. In 2026, citywide, as of late June, Philadelphia had recorded 78 homicides, a 29 percent drop from this point in 2025. In the 25th District, Bennis said, the decline is 38 percent, with firearm robberies down 34 percent and aggravated assaults involving a gun down 16 percent year to date. Bennis said. “It is a trend that we want to continue through the summer and to finish out the rest of the year.”

Bennis credits much of the progress not to arrests but to opportunities such as youth programs and family services brought into neighborhoods through the city’s Targeted Community Investment Grants and other anti-violence funding. It is a view shared well beyond his district: District Attorney Larry Krasner and other officials have tied the citywide decline to violence-prevention spending, grassroots interruption work, and summer programming that gives young people somewhere to go.

“We work closely with the Office of Public Safety and Town Watch to provide programs in the 25th that fit this diverse community.” “I am working with a web of partners, he said, and I have never encountered resistance from anti-violence organizations when we have asked for services.” He pointed to the new Wellness Center at 265 East Lehigh Avenue, built to steer people struggling with addiction into treatment and temporary housing rather than jail cells. 

Captain Bennis is looking for a better future for residents like Mercedes Rodriguez, who has lived in the 25th District since 1980, long enough to watch it nearly destroyed. “We have seen how drugs and gangs destroyed our neighborhoods and lives,” she said. “People lost the value of their investments in their homes, and some lost loved ones to violence, and others became addicted. She agrees with the captain’s “nip it in the bud” and community focus philosophy, recalling how many of the area’s problems cried out for attention 40 years ago and never got it. “It is hard to trust again, she concluded, but my family and I are hopeful that this area, which we consider home, will continue to improve. We have invested too much to leave.”