Recently, a buddy of mine — a Philly ex-pat toiling away in LaLa Land’s film and TV industry — couldn’t figure out why his phone was blowing up mid-day while he was taking a meeting. It was because so many know him as a “Philly guy,” and the text messages from Resistance Land on the Left Coast were striking a common celebratory theme: “Who’s this Philly sheriff?!? Finally!!”
Listen to the audio edition here:
They were reacting to Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s viral press conference comments about Trump and ICE in the wake of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota. It was a sign of the times: A couple lines had broken through the nation’s noise machine. Addressing Trump and ICE, while DA Larry Krasner and City Councilwoman Jaime Gauthier stood by and seemed to chuckle in support, the Sheriff said, “If any of them [ICE] want to come in this city and commit a crime you will not be able to hide, nobody will whisk you off. You don’t want this smoke, ’cause we will bring it. To you.” Finally, progressives thought, a Black woman had put Trump in his place!
Ah, but what makes you feel good, dear progressive, might not actually translate into progress. Have you heard Trump fulminate about declaring war on Philly? About turning ICE or the armed forces loose on our streets, as in Minnesota? ICE is here, yes, and there have been incidents, sure — but there is no widespread occupation like in Chicago, where the mayor’s rhetoric helped ratchet up tensions. Instead, Mayor Cherelle Parker has been very strategic about not giving the president or his minions an opening. In fact, I’m told that Parker, knowing that her most sacred duty is to keep you safe, has worked closely with Republican U.S. Senator Dave McCormick to make sure the temperature is lower here compared to other blue cities — and that the president knows it.
Among some politicos, Bilal’s comments are being seen as a de facto attack on the mayor’s leadership. The rhetoric of Krasner (author of the “F around and find out” warning to Trump), Bilal and councilmembers like Gauthier actually increases the likelihood of authoritarian disorder visiting our streets. When I called Bilal’s most outspoken critic, State Representative Jared Solomon, the first thing he said about the presser was “I support my mayor and police commissioner.”
It’s no accident that Commissioner Bethel — a homerun hire by Parker — rushed to issue a statement distancing the City from Bilal’s rhetoric. “The City of Philadelphia is policed by the Philadelphia Police Department, not the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office,” he wrote, emphasizing that the Sheriff’s Office is a separate elected entity and is not charged with investigating crime or enforcing the law. (Contrary to what all those progressives texting my friend in L.A. might have thought.)
“We don’t want ICE on our streets making people feel unsafe. But the Sheriff is charged with making the court system safe and there’s no evidence she’s even done that.” — State Rep. Jared Solomon
This is not to say Bilal was necessarily wrong on the merits. When she says that “no law enforcement professional wears a mask,” she’s reminding us just how frighteningly abnormal things have gotten. But her “you don’t want this smoke” theatrics? That’s not a leader speaking; it’s a WWE play-actor. Once you start playing that part, it’s a home game for Trump.
Besides, Bilal was factually all over the place. “The criminal in the White House will not be able to keep you from going to jail,” she advised lawless ICE agents. Well, not exactly. Part of the despair of this moment is that Minnesota is being frozen out of the investigation by a corrupt or incompetent Justice Department. It remains a very real possibility that the White House can protect rogue agents from local prosecution. While most experts agree that federal agents don’t have absolute immunity, the nuances of that debate are open to interpretation.
But why let the facts get in the way of performative politics? Rochelle Bilal has now gotten her 15 minutes of culture war fame. What those well-meaning progressives snapping their fingers may not know is what a disaster she’s been as sheriff. If you care about reform — as progressives once did — you’d be loathe to hop on the Bilal bandwagon.
Another reason to dismantle the office
Bilal, like so many of her predecessors, is an advertisement for the elimination of the very row office she now holds. Solomon has bravely called her out at every turn, even as his Democratic colleagues in Harrisburg and City Council publicly shrug. Bilal’s misdeeds are too numerous to recount in one sitting (not unlike Trump, come to think of it), but let’s highlight a few of the greatest hits, shall we? Her tenure as sheriff started with whistleblowers like Brett Mandel outing “slush-fund” spending, which was followed by the praiseworthy made-up news stories she promulgated using ChatGPT, the 76 guns her office allegedly couldn’t locate, and the nearly 10 grand of taxpayer money given to the creators of the GEICO Gecko for the creation of — get this — her office mascot.
The failure of Bilal’s office to sell tax delinquent properties in a timely manner has cost the City millions, and has fueled widespread blight. As Solomon points out, her office’s recovery of weapons in domestic violence cases hovers at around 13 percent, while surrounding counties report rates closer to 40 percent. But wait, it gets worse. There was her seeming sneaky attempt to make herself the City’s highest-paid employee — more than the mayor. Worse, still: Turns out, a number of folks who were buying properties at Sheriff sales weren’t even receiving the deeds to their properties — while they nonetheless paid interest on their loans.
“Look,” Solomon told me yesterday, “I represent the most diverse community in the city. We don’t want ICE on our streets making people feel unsafe. But the Sheriff is charged with making the court system safe and there’s no evidence she’s even done that.”
What’s been Bilal’s response to all the criticism? To blame The Inquirer. Here she was on the CityCast Philly podcast in a telling passing of the buck:
Your source is a media outlet that basically is mad. Because when I came in here, what I ran on was not spending $7.5 million on advertising [sheriff’s sales in the newspaper] … I streamlined all the advertising we was doing and I cut that down. And The Inquirer and Daily News does not get the sheriff’s sale advertisements because they didn’t want to cut [the advertising cost] down and they wanted to keep it as it was. And we wasn’t doing that. So they don’t get it. So that 5-point-something million dollars they used to get from here, they don’t get it anymore. And so then they mad. And so the mad becomes personal. The attacks become every little thing that happens here … People are getting together to come at the Sheriff’s Office. Why? Because they think I’m the weakest link. I’m the first female in here to run this office and now you think you can gang up on attacking, talk about abolishing the office.
How is this conspiracy-laden “whataboutism” any different from Trump’s “fake news” scapegoating? When will Bilal or Trump ever admit a critique is justified?
I’ve made the case before that corruption in Philadelphia isn’t always illegal. We have a long history of our electeds shirking their responsibilities and placing private gain over public interest. As Bilal’s headlines have accumulated, there has been silence from the mayor’s office over the embarrassment that is the sheriff’s office — but that may change now that Bilal has challenged the mayor’s strategy.
On WURD, Bilal took it a step further, complaining directly about the mayor to Ernest Owens: “I’m not in the conversation they have,” she said, referring to the administration. “Sometimes I’m not even invited to the table.”
This much we know. We’d like to be owning 2026 — we are, after all, the city that birthed the nation 250 years ago, no matter what freakin’ Boston says. But look at the last two weeks alone. What has made national headlines? In-fighting and a controversial dismissal at the Philadelphia Art Museum, tumult and the exit of Jeffrey Rosen from the National Constitution Center, and an ethics-challenged row officeholder going viral with an incendiary rant that, at best, is not smart politics and, at worst, invites danger. Philly, we don’t need any of that smoke.
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