How local governments are partnering with crime scene cleanup companies
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The morning after her grandson was gunned down just steps from her front door, Addie Dempsey stepped outside and saw the blood still there, dark and unmoving. Raheem Hargust was 36. He had died the night before on a South Philadelphia sidewalk.
In the quiet that followed, no officials came to clean the scene. No city crew arrived. So Dempsey, 76, filled a bucket with bleach and water and began to scrub.
She was not alone. A doctor from across the street came out to help, and neighbors followed. Together they worked in low voices, wiping away the carnage and sweeping the blood toward the gutter like storm debris.
It was not the first time Dempsey had done this. On her block, too many families carry the same unspoken burden, cleaning after tragedy with no help, no resources, and no official response.
That reality reached Philadelphia’s chief public safety director, Adam Geer. “We were horrified, frankly, that our citizens were doing this work,” he said. A grandmother should not be on her knees scrubbing the sidewalk where her grandson died.
In response, the city launched a pilot program with $500,000 of funding to send professional biohazard teams to public crime scenes in the districts most affected. Officers remain until the cleanup crew arrives, and teams respond within 90 minutes so the work is done with urgency and care.
“No one should have to bear this responsibility other than us, the city,” Geer said. This is more than municipal housekeeping. It’s a public health decision that shields families from hazardous cleanup and tells residents they won’t face tragedy alone.
That shift raises urgent questions: Who pays when violence leaves biological contamination behind? How quickly should help arrive? And if one city can turn neglect into care, what would it take to make that promise everywhere? Trauma Services examines how municipalities are addressing crime scene cleanup as a public health issue.
Why Governments Step In
The story of Addie Dempsey is not an isolated one. Across the country, families like hers have faced the same quiet, hazardous work: cleaning what violence leaves behind with no protective gear, training, or support. This practice has gone largely unseen, but the risks are not invisible.
Blood and other biological materials can carry serious pathogens such as hepatitis B and C. Improper disposal can expose neighbors, sanitation workers, and even children playing nearby to dangerous contamination. Left unaddressed, what begins as a crime scene can quickly become a community health hazard.
Trauma That Doesn’t End
These dangers are not only biological. Survivors of homicide are more than three times as likely as the general population to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, and research shows that repeated traumatic experiences increase the severity and complexity of mental health symptoms.
Having to scrub a loved one’s blood from the ground adds another layer of harm to grief, embedding traumatic memories that linger long after the street is clean.
The AVP’s Blood on Our Hands report underscores that survivors interviewed years after a homicide described flashbacks and anxiety specifically tied to the details of cleanup. In effect, families trying to protect their neighborhoods are left reinjuring themselves.
A Matter of Trust
Communities already traumatized by high rates of violence often feel abandoned by institutions. Leaving grieving families to clean up after a shooting deepens that sense of neglect, while coordinated cleanup programs communicate something different: that residents’ lives and well-being matter enough to merit swift, professional care.
Publicly funded cleanup programs like Philadelphia’s pilot do more than sanitize sidewalks. They serve as visible commitments to public health, public dignity, and shared responsibility.
Still, no government can carry this responsibility alone. The most effective programs are born from partnerships between city agencies, community organizations, and residents who know their neighborhoods best. To understand how these efforts gain traction and truly last, it’s essential to look at how collaboration shapes results.
Partnership Models
Recognizing the need for trauma cleanup support is one thing. Building systems that actually deliver it is another. Cities and counties approaching this work have taken different paths, each shaped by local capacity, budget realities, and the urgency of need.
What emerges are three distinct models:
- Reimbursement programs that help families pay for services after the fact
- On-call contracts that send professional crews directly to crime scenes
- Licensing systems that guide residents toward vetted providers
Each approach carries different implications for how quickly help arrives and who bears the initial burden.
On-Call Contracts: Speed and Coordination
In late 2023, Philadelphia launched a different kind of response. Instead of asking families to make calls and cover costs, the city created a $500,000 pilot program that contracts directly with professional cleanup vendors.
When police finish their investigation, officers call dispatch, who then alerts the vendor. A cleanup crew must arrive within 90 minutes, while officers stay on-site until the job begins.
This model transfers responsibility from residents to the municipality. Survivors no longer need to find a provider, negotiate pricing, or file paperwork. The city absorbs those logistics and costs, providing immediate and professional help when it’s needed most.
And speed matters. Every minute that biological material sits exposed increases public health risk and trauma.
Quick response reduces community exposure and prevents families from attempting cleanup themselves out of desperation to restore normalcy. While Philadelphia’s contract requires a 90-minute arrival, cleanup teams are averaging just 48 minutes. That responsiveness demonstrates how seriously the city treats urgency.
Geer researched whether other cities had implemented similar programs before launching the pilot.
“There were certainly some jurisdictions that looked at cleaning crime scenes inside the home, which presents a whole other host of problems,” he said. “We wanted to focus on what we could easily manage as a city, on public property. We did our research and discovered that there really wasn’t a roadmap for this.”
This approach also avoids the need for the city to hire, train, and equip its own cleanup staff. Instead, it leverages private sector expertise.
Companies like Steri-Clean in California, which contracts with more than 40 cities, maintain the industrial tools, safety certifications, and medical waste protocols required for biohazard work. They do the job well, and cities provide the framework to make their services accessible.
Jackson County, Missouri, offers a more community-based variation. Funded through its Community Backed Anti-Crime Tax (COMBAT), the county partners with the AdHoc Group Against Crime to deliver cleanup services alongside trauma counseling and home repairs.
Licensing and Directory Systems: Quality Control Without Funding
A third model focuses on quality control through licensing. States like Florida, Georgia, and California require biohazard cleanup companies to register with health departments, creating directories of legitimate providers.
These registries ensure companies meet safety standards and waste disposal laws, helping families avoid scams or unsafe practices, but without providing financial support.
Florida’s Department of Health, for example, lists approved providers by county. Registered businesses must demonstrate compliance with biomedical waste regulations, including permits for transporting contaminated materials.
California goes further by defining practitioners as valid “Trauma Scene Waste Management Practitioners” and allowing families to seek reimbursement if they hire a registered provider. But none of these models solves the core issue: without upfront financial assistance or city involvement, the burden still falls on victims.
Procurement & Standards
Every successful trauma scene response begins long before a call is placed. It starts with how cities select, evaluate, and contract the vendors who will be responsible for entering some of the most emotionally charged crime scenes in the community.
In Philadelphia, this work gained structure through the Anti-Violence Partnership’s pilot program, which created a formal contract and vendor dispatch system to ensure a fast and qualified response for police-referred cleanup.
That framework offered more than a service; it introduced standards. Procurement teams began with a needs assessment, followed by a clear scope of work through requests for proposals (RFPs).
Vendors were then required to prove their qualifications, document their approach to hazardous material disposal, and show how they train and protect employees during exposure to biohazards.
Other cities have adopted structured contracts to reflect the high-risk nature of this work.
For example, the City of Orange executed a professional services agreement with Crime Scene Steri-Clean for police biohazard remediation, specifying cleanup scope, documentation, and protocols.
Pasadena, on the other hand, took a competitive bid approach, awarding cleanup contracts based on cost, capacity, and adherence to safety standards. Each of these frameworks makes cleanup not only faster but also safer for everyone involved.
And that safety is tightly regulated, no matter the city. Under federal law, any contractor cleaning blood or bodily fluids must follow the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Bloodborne Pathogens standard. This includes written exposure control plans, vaccination access, PPE usage, and mandatory training.
States can also add their own requirements. California, for example, goes further by requiring biohazard cleanup companies to register under the Medical Waste Management Act. A model, other states like Florida and Georgia are now following through with their own credentialing systems.
By tying vendor selection directly to safety and legal compliance, cities reduce risk while strengthening public trust.
In turn, officers are able to make a single call and activate a vetted cleanup crew within minutes. That ability to respond quickly and consistently is only possible when procurement is built on more than price. It has to be built on people, process, and protection.
Benefits vs. Costs
Pennsylvania, for example, caps crime scene cleanup assistance at $500, a limit that hasn’t changed in more than 22 years. Surrounding states offer slightly higher caps, like $2,500 in New York or $4,000 in New Jersey, but none match the actual cost of services.
These funding gaps matter because when professional crews are out of reach, families are forced to clean the scene themselves. That means handling blood and biohazards without training or protective equipment, all while coping with raw, immediate grief, and the long-term psychological problems it can cause.
In Philadelphia, a single call through the city’s pilot program can dispatch certified cleanup crews in under 90 minutes. That rapid response removes hazards while sending a message that the city will show up after the crime scene tape comes down.
Other cities exploring similar programs are sending that same message. Replacing paperwork and out-of-pocket costs with direct, professional help at the scene shows care in action and builds public trust one response at a time.
Case Studies
The decision to offer trauma scene cleanup as a public service reflects how seriously a city treats the full impact of violence. Some jurisdictions treat it as essential infrastructure, integrated with victim services and public health. Others leave families to manage it alone.
California, for example, has developed one of the most robust statewide responses through its network of Trauma Recovery Centers.
Originally launched in San Francisco, the model now includes 14 centers that operate through partnerships with hospitals, universities, and community-based organizations. These centers offer far more than counseling. They help coordinate services like crime scene cleanup, relocation, and legal assistance, focusing on the needs of underserved survivors.
Much of this work is funded through savings from Proposition 47, which redirected resources from incarceration toward trauma care. That shift reframes recovery not as a private burden, but as a civic responsibility.
In Missouri, Jackson County has taken a similar approach by using revenue from its COMBAT initiative. That funding supports programs that combine emotional support with practical interventions like home repair and professional cleanup.
Partnering with local contractors and organizations like the AdHoc Group Against Crime, the county brings help directly to the doorstep, often before families know how to ask.
Other cities have opted not to intervene. In New York City, for example, cleanup remains the legal and financial responsibility of property owners. The Department of Health provides general guidance, but no public funds or vendor dispatch exist. Families who lose someone to violence must navigate cleanup while navigating grief, often without training or resources.
However, Philadelphia’s pilot program sits between the models used elsewhere. It began by covering only public areas, but officials soon recognized that trauma does not stop at the curb.
The city expanded its services to include semiprivate spaces such as porches, gates, and sidewalks when they are directly connected to a crime scene.
Together, these examples reveal what policy choices look like in practice. When cleanup is treated as a basic right, recovery begins earlier and more safely. When it isn’t, survivors are left to carry the weight alone, both emotionally and physically.
Challenges & Pushback
While some cities have begun to treat trauma cleanup as a public health issue, many still face significant hurdles.
Limited budgets, confusion over jurisdiction, and fears about municipal liability often stall new programs before they begin. In the absence of clear mandates, trauma scene remediation is seen as an add-on, not a necessity.
That perception trickles down to residents who may not even know help exists. The result is a patchwork of responses where some families receive timely, professional aid, while others are left to scrub blood from sidewalks alone. Public health advocates argue that this inconsistency weakens trust and deepens trauma.
Building effective partnerships with vetted contractors and trauma recovery centers can close these gaps, but only if leadership sees cleanup as a responsibility. Without that shift, cities risk spending more on downstream consequences than they would on timely, coordinated cleanup.
Future Outlook
Meeting survivors’ real needs helps heal not just individuals, but entire communities. That idea has begun to take root in cities that treat trauma cleanup as a public service rather than a private burden. Yet despite growing momentum, most places still lack structured policies, long-term funding, and cross-agency coordination.
However, federal and state incentives offer a way to close that gap. The Department of Justice already funds programs for victim compensation and trauma recovery centers, but local governments often miss these opportunities due to a lack of awareness or administrative barriers.
Without clear model policies or guidance, many cities stall at pilot programs instead of building permanent infrastructure.
Leaders in the field are calling for a shift. Scott Vogel, president of the American Bio Recovery Association, told The Philadelphia Tribune that there has been a push for state legislation requiring cities to hire professional contractors for this work. He said he is working with New Jersey lawmakers to create a statewide protocol.
Vogel’s push reflects a larger demand for uniform standards and trauma‑informed training so that every cleanup signals care, not neglect.
Taken together, these developments point toward a national roadmap: align federal victim‑services dollars with local programs, adopt model legislation to standardize contracts and protocols, and scale vendor networks that communities can trust.
When cleanup is part of crisis response, not an afterthought, survivors regain control and communities rebuild trust. That shift is not only possible. It’s overdue.
This story was produced by Trauma Services and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
