After insisting for months that all is well in her office, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal has finally acknowledged that it isn’t.
Bilal’s announcement of a shake-up in her department — which has been widely criticized for failing to properly execute some of its core duties, such as handling property auctions and providing courtroom security — was an important step forward for some long-overdue systemic changes.
Her proposed restructuring, however, still falls short of what the city really needs: the abolition of the office itself.
After all, troubles at the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office are not new. The office has been plagued by a history of misconduct stretching back nearly 170 years.
Once the city established a full-time police department in 1854, the sheriff’s office became a vestigial organ in the vast anatomy of Philadelphia municipal agencies. And, not unlike the evolutionary leftovers in the human body, such as an appendix or wisdom teeth, it’s mostly noticed these days for the discomfort it can cause.
There’s good reason to doubt Bilal’s proposed restructuring will meaningfully improve outcomes. We’ve heard these promises from her before. When Bilal first ran for sheriff in 2019, she pledged to reform the office.
Nevertheless, her critics say, she has spent her tenure engaged in the same tactics as her predecessors (she even hosted a “going to prison” party for one of them, former Sheriff John Green).
Good government advocates say she’s used departmental revenue as a slush fund, struggled to collect firearms from accused domestic abusers, failed to process deeds in a timely fashion, left court officials exposed to dangerous conditions, lost dozens of guns under departmental control, fired whistleblowers, and has been admonished by the courts.
All the while, she has insisted that complaints are unfounded and unfair.
As Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a municipal watchdog organization, said in a statement, the reorganization plan “should have been in place long ago.”
Given that Bilal has been in power for six years, that is a legitimate complaint. Especially since the sheriff has insisted sales and deeds were being processed at “full blast” just weeks ago during budget hearings, only to be disproven by Inquirer reporting and reprimanded by the city’s courts.
Bilal, for her part, responded by saying that changing an ancient office can’t happen overnight, and that she is operating with limited resources. Considering her time in office and penchant for, shall we say, unconventional spending, that argument is dubious.
Bilal’s plan is also thin on some key details. While Tariq El-Shabazz, who has faced his own share of scrutiny in his role as Bilal’s deputy, is set to retire, Bilal has not confirmed the identity of a new undersheriff, or any of the other new staff positions that have been created to implement the plan.
Additionally, there does not seem to be a written outline of her proposals. A request from this board to Bilal’s spokesperson for a copy of the plan had gone unanswered by Wednesday afternoon.
One thing is clear: The courts must continue to press Bilal for improvements to her agency. It may still be necessary, for example, to appoint a court official to oversee deed issuance, particularly given the lack of transparency about how well those processes are functioning.
Ultimately, the sheriff’s office overhaul the city should undertake is one that will eliminate the department altogether, alongside the similarly mismanaged and unnecessary Register of Wills. Until then, the bad news will keep on coming, restructuring plan or not.
