Hours before the polls closed on Election Day, Donald Trump posted a claim that “massive cheating” was taking place in Philadelphia. While local officials quickly refuted the allegation, the verbal dustup underscores just how rocky the next four years may be for Philadelphia under the former and future president, who never retracted the erroneous statement. 

Officials in the city where 78.6 percent of voters chose Vice President Kamala Harris for president pledged that Trump’s victory would not slow their aggressive agenda of improving the quality of life in the city, which includes driving down gun violence. As of November 15, there were 46 percent fewer homicides and 36 percent fewer shootings compared to last year.

“The work is local. Policing, for me, is local. I don’t take orders from the president, or anyone,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said during a November 7 interview. “I can’t imagine, or have any visions that, all of a sudden, my federal partners are not going to work with me because we are a heavily Democratic city.”

But to some extent, Philadelphia’s work to curb gun violence isn’t immune to changes in the White House. While the city’s $6.3 billion budget consists largely of local taxes, about $1.1 billion comes from state and federal funding. The budget includes funding to hire 400 new police officers, additional victim advocates, training and enhancements for the community policing program, various crime-reduction efforts, and the expansion of anti‐violence grants to community organizations.

The city received $1.4 billion from the $350 billion American Rescue Plan Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021 to counteract the financial losses states and local governments suffered because of the COVID-19 crisis. More than $200 million of that funding is earmarked for initiatives to reduce and prevent violence in light of the record-breaking numbers of shooting victims during the pandemic. The city is required to spend the remaining $419 million by the end of December. 

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Bethel said that while it is too early to know how Trump’s return to the White House would affect the city’s anti-gun violence efforts, they indicated that they are open to working with their federal government partners under his leadership.

“Despite the results of the election, this is what we know for sure in Philadelphia: gun violence is steadily declining. Homicides and shootings are down more than 40 percent,” Parker, a Democrat and staunch Harris supporter, said at a post-election news conference. She added that for the sake of transparency, the city’s website will start posting about the federal funding it receives and how it’s spent.

Cleaning up the city is part of Parker’s approach of transforming Philadelphia into what has become her slogan: the  “safest, cleanest, greenest,” big city in the country. More than 18,000 city blocks and commercial corridors have been cleaned so far since her administration took office in January, Parker said, and 30,000 housing units are scheduled to be built and repaired. 

“No election would change our focus on our commitment to getting those things done for you,” she said. 

Bethel echoed Parker’s sentiments. “I’ve been at this for close to 40 years. I’ve been through multiple presidents, and I never felt the impact,” he said. “There may be some things that the federal government may push out, but my relationship with our U.S. attorneys has never wavered, whether it be a Democrat or Republican.” 

Bethel said the drop in shootings has happened despite the fact that his department is operating with about 1,300 vacant police office positions. The end of the pandemic, he said, is a major contributor to the improving numbers, coupled with the dispatching of additional officers to the 10 police districts where the majority of the city’s shootings occur. 

“When I came on, my charge from the mayor was safety,” Bethel said. “When we’re focused on the work — the policing side and the community side — we’re showing America that we can be a safe city. We don’t have to have a city that has 560 plus homicides ever, ever again.”


The Trace’s reporting in Philadelphia is a part of the Every Voice, Every Vote project and supported as well by the Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the Neubauer Family Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation. You can read more about The Trace’s Philadelphia supporters here, and read our editorial independence policy here.