PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office announced on Tuesday, October 27, that Hassan Bennett, the chair of the city's Citizens Police Oversight Commission, has been arrested and charged with bribery, witness intimidation, conspiracy and related offences. Prosecutors allege that Bennett provided unredacted criminal case documents naming witnesses in an attempted murder and aggravated assault case to Thomas Scott, an inmate, in exchange for $500 — documents that, prosecutors say, Scott then used in an alleged effort to threaten a witness and stop that witness from testifying. All of the conduct described by prosecutors is alleged; neither man has been convicted in this case, and both are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Source: NBC10 Philadelphia
What prosecutors allege happened
Prosecutors allege that Scott, who is in custody accused in a domestic attempted murder case, was seeking information about witnesses in that case. They allege Bennett provided him with unredacted criminal case documents — the kind of file that is normally released publicly only with sensitive information blacked out — through Bennett's work at either the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where he also works, or the Citizens Police Oversight Commission. Assistant District Attorney Joseph Lanuti put the allegation plainly in comments reported by NBC10: 'Those documents were only supposed to go through attorneys. They're not supposed to be sold outside the legal system for 500-hundred dollars.' Prosecutors say Scott used prison calls and linked social media posts to threaten the witness, and that investigators recovered recordings and digital evidence tying Scott to efforts to stop the witness from testifying.
How the investigation unfolded
According to the accounts of the district attorney's announcement, the Gun Violence Task Force opened a monthslong investigation after prison staff flagged suspicious calls. Investigators say they uncovered the alleged exchange through jail calls made in August and through digital records, and traced the documents to photographs allegedly sold for about $500. Both Bennett and Scott were arrested as part of that inquiry. Prosecutors say they are still determining whether Bennett used his official roles to obtain the files — a question that goes to whether access controls inside the oversight commission, the defender's office, or both, failed, or whether the documents moved through some other channel.
Bail, charges and legal status
Bennett is being held on $1 million bail. Scott is being held on multi-million-dollar bail, with outlets reporting figures in the $2 million to $3 million range. The charges against Bennett, as announced, include witness intimidation, bribery and conspiracy, along with related offences. A witness-intimidation charge is among the most serious non-violent allegations in the Pennsylvania system because it attacks the court process itself: if witnesses are afraid to testify, prosecutions collapse regardless of the underlying evidence. No trial date has been reported, and the district attorney's review of how the confidential records were accessed is continuing.
The Citizens Police Oversight Commission is the independent body Philadelphia created to investigate and oversee police conduct — its credibility rests entirely on public trust that it handles sensitive information with integrity. Its chair now stands accused of selling the most sensitive information in the criminal system, the identity of a witness, for $500. Whatever the verdicts, the case will force a public audit of who can open unredacted case files in both the oversight commission and the Defender Association, and how that access is logged.
Bennett's background: a 13-year wrongful-conviction fight, then the oversight chair
Bennett's path to the oversight chair is part of why prosecutors' announcement drew immediate citywide attention. According to Prison Legal News' account of his earlier case, Bennett spent 13 years fighting a murder conviction, taught himself law in the prison law library, and ultimately defended himself at his fourth trial, where witnesses testified that a detective had coerced their original statements; he was acquitted in 2019. He later worked as a legal worker, and Philadelphia City Council appointed him to the Citizens Police Oversight Commission in March 2022, when the commission — created under a 2021 law as an independent agency to ensure the just, transparent and efficient oversight of the Philadelphia Police Department — named its first nine members. He was appointed for a four-year term and rose to chair the body, while also working for the Defender Association. His biography made him a prominent voice for reform; it is also why the allegation that he sold witness information has landed as a profound breach-of-trust story in the city, rather than a routine corruption arrest.
What it means locally, and what happens next
Philadelphia and its suburbs are home to a large and growing Punjabi and South Asian community, including families in the Northeast, in Upper Darby and across Montgomery and Bucks counties — communities for whom the fairness of the police-oversight system and the safety of witnesses in violent-crime cases are not abstractions but the machinery their own cases move through. The prosecution now moves to preliminary proceedings for Bennett, while Scott's underlying attempted murder case and the new intimidation allegations proceed in parallel. The open institutional questions — how the documents were accessed, whether the access was logged, and whether the commission or the Defender Association changes its controls — remain under review by prosecutors, and further announcements are expected. Awaaz Punjab will update this report as court dates and official responses are confirmed.