For a city of 75,000, Bethlehem is a bit of a sleepy town, with crime rates markedly lower than those of its neighbors. The Press recently sat down with Police Chief Michelle Kott to discuss the department’s disposition following years of social upheaval and pandemic. While all her news wasn’t good, the department has weathered the tests well.

Kott put it simply: “We are one of the safest cities our size in the commonwealth. Crime is going down, it’s not going up.”

There have been no homicides in the city in 2023 or thus far in 2024. Property crime has fallen, and overall calls for service are down. There have been more aggravated assaults this year than all of last, but violent crime in general is down by 9 percent.

Bethlehem is not, however, immune to the nationwide wave of vehicle thefts.

Thefts of Hyundais and Kias are most severe because dealerships possess master keys, which can be stolen or duplicated, and there is an ongoing run on catalytic converters, which may be worth as much as $1,000 at a scrapyard.

Kott has been asking residents for years to be more mindful with their cars; especially by locking doors and removing keys, valuables and guns at night.

Retention

The greatest challenge the department has faced is one of staffing.

Though budgeted for 154 uniformed officers, the Bethlehem Police Department is, as of April 1, down by eight. Crime is down throughout the city, but difficulties with retention and finding replacements is a concern. “I think if the city continues to grow, the police department should grow with it. I’ve always said the Lehigh Valley is a metro area, one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. I don’t want to be stretched so thin that we’re not able to provide the level of services that our community is used to receiving,” Kott said.

She explained, “Twenty years ago when I applied to be a police officer, we had a Civil Service list of over 500 people. Nowadays we’re lucky if we can get a list of 30 people.” The civil service exam used to be good for two years or until the list is expended. But now, she said, “we’re testing twice a year because we can’t get enough applicants for a current civil service list that lasts two years.

“It’s just a plethora of factors affecting it – the economy, COVID, competing agencies; the social justice movement events of 2020 may have made some people not want to go into law enforcement. I don’t even call it an applicant pool anymore, I call it an applicant puddle.”

“In law enforcement you have this phenomenon called cluster hiring, where you’re hiring multiple people at a time,” she said, because that’s how police academy classes work, “and so down the road you’re going to have multiple people retiring at the same time. Gone are the days of people staying 20-plus years. It seems now the majority of our retirees are leaving right at 20 years.

“How are we going to be able to keep our officers so we don’t have six, seven, eight officers leaving at the same time, leaving these gaping holes?” She said previously out of a group of, say, five, one would leave at 20, while others would stay for 23, 25, 27 years.

Causes for this include economics and personal wellbeing – people want to collect a pension and get another job. Wellness-wise, people get burned out; with fewer people there’s more overtime and more of a load to lift.

Kott said the department recently got a grant to fund a recruitment sign-on bonus and also instituted a recruitment bonus for current officers; $2,000 for each referral who passes both the police academy and Bethlehem’s 12-week field training, or FTO, program. “Our best recruiters are our current law enforcement officers. It’s important to have everyone from the chief all the way down trying to replenish our staffing.”

Technology

Keeping up with the changing tech is another challenge, Kott said. Like computers and mobile phones, body cameras have a shelf life of five years. The cams fielded by the department when she became chief are now outdated. A new model has been ordered through and getting new ones through Motorola. “It’s incredibly important to keep up with the technology available right now, and being a data-driven police department, we’re making smart choices and utilizing resources to the best of our ability.”

Another technical resource on the way is software for fixed license plate readers in street cameras, made possible through a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Many jurisdictions have them today, Kott said, including Allentown, Freemansburg and Upper Saucon Township. “They are so incredibly useful as investigative leads for certain crimes. To find suspect vehicles ,for example, an individual saying, ‘I was never in Bethlehem this day,’ that license plate reader would catch an image of that car to prove or disprove the statement. They’re not only useful for crime,” she said. “You can put alerts if you have a missing person with dementia, you can put the plate [number] in there and it can help find missing people. Kott said as part of the agreement, the software company will assist city IT personnel with installation and training.

Wish list

Five years ago, Kott’s greatest unlikely wish was to get the department out of city hall’s basement. That remains a pipe dream, and no additional satellite shops have opened in recent years either. “We’re really interested in getting more space,” she said. “Something that I would love to have is a dedicated training center.” Police currently train at the casino conference center and in a basement under the Wells Fargo bank on Broad Street – leased “out of the goodness of their heart for something like $1 a year. Training is so important and something we do year-round.”

Kott said she would also like to rebuild the K-9 program, now down to Officer Bean after Silver and Blaze retired. Unfortunately, that would also require new K-9 vehicles, and officer training and finding the right dogs.

A job well done

Kott said she is most pleased with the Community Connections program, which integrates police, social workers and mental health workers in continuous response and care. “Working together not only with referrals for follow-up but co-responding to calls for service. has been very successful. We’ve helped families with food insecurity, we’ve helped families that really had nowhere else to turn to, who felt that their pleas weren’t being heard elsewhere. Having the ability to follow up with them and reach out to social service providers for them was extremely beneficial. A lot of people were very surprised to see that our police department has a program like this, so it was a very pleasant surprise for them. We also do a lot of proactive outreach to the unhoused population.

“There’s a continuum of care and people who do not have to repeat contact with law enforcement.”

In all, Kott said she is proud to have maintained a watch over low crime and quality service to the community despite recent challenges. “Even though we’re short, [officers] continue to go out there and take care of business, and that is absolutely one of the biggest success stories in my eyes.”