The Philly school safety officer shot was hit by stray bullets

Philadelphia police believe the school district safety officer shot over the weekend was not targeted and was likely struck by stray bullets fired during a nearby road-rage incident, officials said.

The 68-year-old officer was returning from a patrol assignment, driving in his marked district car on the 300 block of North Columbus Boulevard about 1:45 a.m. Sunday, when he was shot in the chest and face, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

“There’s a good chance he was not a target or anything,” Vanore said.

Investigators recovered surveillance video from the area, he said, that appears to show a small car accident just before the shooting erupted.

The driver of the one of the cars involved, a white 2017-19 Kia Sportage, appeared to bump into a rideshare driver, Vanore said. The rideshare driver appeared to try to get the other driver’s attention, he said, when the man in the Kia got out and fired multiple shots toward the other car.

The school safety officer, whom officials have not named, was driving in the lane next to the rideshare driver when four bullets flew through his windshield, Vanore said. He was struck multiple times, and crashed into a tree, as the shooter fled.

The safety officer was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he remained intubated and in critical but stable condition, Vanore said.

No arrests have been made; investigators found four 9mm spent casings at the scene.

The officer, who has spent nearly 20 years working for the district, is also a retired Philadelphia police officer.

Philadelphia school officers are not armed. They wear bulletproof vests but carry only batons and Mace.

The force was rebranded in 2020 under Kevin Bethel, who was then the district’s top safety official and is now city police commissioner. He changed officers’ title to “school safety officer” — it used to be “school police officer” — and ordered them to wear polo shirts rather than traditional police uniforms.

Bethel wanted officers to be seen more as mentors and trusted adults and less as law enforcement officials intent on locking up students. Some school officers were not thrilled with the changes, which they believed made them less respected and more vulnerable.

Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, a school safety officer who is head of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, the union that represents the district force, said she has long worried that a tragedy would happen to a school safety officer that looked to the public like a police officer, but without the protection and tools of a full officer.

“They changed our title, but never changed our job — that’s the sad thing,” Ambrose-Smith said Sunday. “We have more work, not less work, and now we’re in a labeled car, and if somebody’s asking for help, we have to help. Nobody gives us any thought or respect until it’s needed.”

Bethel has ordered the case investigated by the police department’s homicide unit rather than its nonfatal shooting group.

He said he would put “our top investigators” on the case.

“We will find them and bring them to justice,” Bethel said.