A Tom and Jerry–style feud had endured for decades between the Sheriff’s Office and the City Controller’s Office. No matter how many times the controller — the independently elected watchdog of the City — sniffed around the Sheriff’s Office, revealing everything from missing firearms to inscrutable accounts to frivolous spending, the Sheriff’s Office, as an institution, skated by.
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The same can’t be said for individuals at the helm. In fact, dating back to the 1980s, every person elected to the office has been embroiled in scandal. One, John Green, went to prison for a bribery scheme that ended his 23 years of service. The next, Jewel Williams, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in the office. And yet serious reform eluded the office, much to the chagrin of good-government champions like the city controller.
In 2019, Controller Rebecca Rhynhart decided it was time for a new tactic. There was a new sheriff in town — quite literally — and for once they appeared to have common goals. Rochelle Bilal, a retired cop who’d recently won that year’s municipal primary election, had vowed to remove the “dark cloud” hanging over the institution.
If there were hope for a new relationship, though, an olive branch was in order. The Controller’s Office set up a meeting that fall with Bilal, along with the newly elected heads of the Register of Wills and City Commissioners, two more offices with a history of tussling with investigators. The purpose of the meeting was simple: Offer a list of recommendations for how not to get audited. Ideas included hiring a credentialed HR professional — who’da thunk? — instead of, say, someone’s cousin. And maybe, for once, the Controller’s Office suggested, the Sheriff’s Office could focus on its duties — court security, prisoner transportation, serving legal documents, and execution of sheriff’s sales — instead of opaque spending and alleged hiring or firing based on loyalty.
Truth is, “everyone knew she was dealt a shitty hand,” says one person in the office with knowledge of that meeting, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid violating a public disclosure agreement. “The idea was to save them a headache.”
It didn’t quite work out that way, though. Once Bilal took office, “it was pretty common for the sheriff’s first deputy to be on the phone screaming at us,” says the source. “She ran to be a reformer, but then, for whatever reason, decided to do the opposite.”
“I’m over here trying to change the narrative, so that when I leave this office, it can finally function in a professional manner.” — Rochelle Bilal
Headlines over the past six years certainly tell that story. Bilal has come under fire for alleged financial mismanagement — everything from trying to double her own salary to awarding a lucrative no-bid contract to a Maryland auction house to commissioning a $9,000 mascot named Deputy Sheriff Justice, a pigtail-wearing, Annie Oakley–style doll that accompanies Bilal to community events. Earlier this year, Bilal asked for a 54 percent increase to her department’s budget (a request denied by the mayor), despite The Inquirer recently detailing an alleged surge in off-book spending at the office, including a television recruitment ad during a Penn State football game. Along the way, Bilal has become something of a caricature of Philly politics. She talks loudly, bombastically, with a strong press conference game, deflecting criticism with the best of them — all while at times failing at some of the basic functions of the job. Needless to say, that is not how Bilal sees it.
“That’s the sensationalized stuff,” Bilal says. “When you use words like ‘scandal’ or ‘corruption,’ it’s ‘got you’ journalism. You’re accusing me of a crime and yet I haven’t been arrested.” On the contrary, Bilal says that transparency and efficiency are vastly improved. The reforms simply took time. “I think we’re turning a curve,” she says.
Critics remain unconvinced. In May, a group of Philly judges issued a court order to Bilal, threatening to appoint a “special master” to oversee sheriff’s sales if her office can’t step up its duties. That came on the heels of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority — a state watchdog of City spending — recommending that the Sheriff’s Office be eliminated altogether, pointing to financial mismanagement and its reputation as a “stereotype of patronage and corruption” in Philadelphia. The good government organization Committee of Seventy has also advocated for abolishing the office, contending that the duties can easily be distributed to other agencies. And in 2024, State Representative Jared Solomon took the extraordinary step of releasing a public letter, addressed to a local judge, calling for interventions at the office. It was a last ditch effort, Solomon wrote, “before further exploring legislative powers to hold hearings, gather testimony or documents, or initiate an investigation.”
None of these efforts have seemed to matter. If anything, Bilal appears to have more support than ever among the city’s political elite. In March, City Council honored Bilal as a pillar of the community during Women’s History Month — and not for the first time.
Why do people want to defend a scandal-ridden sheriff? And just how much longer can this game keep going?
Playing the victim
Bilal has maintained a clear, consistent message over the years: It’s political opponents, not her job performance, who are behind the complaints about her leadership. It’s a narrative Bilal has leaned into since before she became sheriff. During her nearly 20-year stint as the president of the Guardian Civic League, an organization for Black police officers, Bilal legitimately faced retaliation for speaking out against the Philadelphia Police Department.
One of many public battles with the PPD and rank-and-file members unfolded in 2009, when Bilal initiated a class-action lawsuit that brought down Domelights.com, a message board on which cops frequently posted racist screeds. A few years later, she pushed City Council to pass legislation banning offensive symbols on City property — after whistleblowers revealed that a city-owned vehicle was sporting a Confederate flag decal and some officers had white supremacy tattoos on display — and got Mayor Jim Kenney to sign it.
But crossing the “blue wall of silence” had consequences. “My life was threatened,” Bilal said in a 2017 Philly Mag interview. “They tried to make me shut up, which I’ll never do, especially when I know I’m right.” After the Domelights saga, Bilal got dragged in the press for her alleged “double-dipping” of personal income. In 2013, it was reported that Bilal had been collecting a PPD salary while working a second job as public safety director in nearby Colwyn Borough — a clear violation of ethics rules, according to Internal Affairs investigators. The matter was resolved without any punishment and Bilal retired from the PPD, but she told Philly Mag that “all of that was phony,” and “they were coming at me because of my outspokenness.”
Bilal has weathered each controversy since becoming sheriff with similar aplomb. She deflects criticism by going after critics. She talks publicly about being besieged by rivals. And to be fair, the first female sheriff in the city’s history didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome. Less than 36 hours after
Bilal was sworn in, agents from the Controller’s Office launched a brand new investigation, finding evidence of 101 missing firearms in the sheriff’s armory. While Bilal initially pinned the errors on her predecessor, she took a different approach three years later, when a follow-up report concluded that only 26 of the missing guns had been recovered.
“They constantly keep trying to put it on this administration as to what they claim are missing firearms,” she said during a press conference, alleging that the guns were likely burned or traded — not lost in the wind. “If the controller would have done their job 10 years ago, and audited that office, maybe we would not be here.”
Philly loves a charismatic underdog. Bilal is adeptly aware of that. However, a well-trod persona is not the only thing protecting the sheriff. Bilal — and, more important, the institution itself — has friends in high places, too.
Allegiances are often painfully obvious in this city. Not so with Bilal. She won her first election without being endorsed by the city Democratic Party; she has never been firmly encamped with progressive groups.
Today, her web of support continues to eschew tribalism. To illustrate: Two of Bilal’s biggest supporters, as evidenced by the high number of joint press conferences they hold together, are District Attorney Larry Krasner and State Senator Sharif Street, who occupy very different stations within the local party. Last winter, Street, a centrist and consummate insider, celebrated the sheriff.
“When we talk about how can we have a greater level of trust between law enforcement and the community? Sheriff Bilal is leading the way in doing that,” said Street. Then, in January, Bilal was flanked by Krasner, a progressive firebrand, as she delivered a tirade against President Trump and ICE — declaring “You don’t want this smoke” in a viral moment.
The sheriff’s relationships — at least with elected officials — are those of a political survivor, not an ideologue. At the same time, Bilal, a former secretary of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, has ties to several identity-based groups. She’s a founding member of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, which also counts Ryan Boyer, the head of the building trades unions, and several members of City Council in its ranks.
Bilal and allies have often invoked her identity as a Black woman in responses to critics — suggesting, at times, that a double standard exists for White pols. On the other hand, more than one source, speaking on background, said the racial politics of this city are part of what’s keeping Bilal in office. There’s a sense inside City Hall that nobody wants to be the first elected official to condemn the first Black female sheriff, given her popularity and ability to defend herself. Plus, it’s not like the problems of the office began with Bilal.
Political patronage, a Philly tradition
The muted criticism is not just about the sheriff, but also about what the office represents in the grand scheme of Philly patronage. Patronage is the old-school philosophy — I scratch your back, you scratch mine — that guides the invisible hand of city government in so many ways. It can take many forms: a ward leader’s nephew getting a desk job, maybe, or a no-bid contract getting steered to a political ally. For decades, the Sheriff’s Office has been known as a steady source of Black patronage jobs. But if pols suddenly came after the office in droves, how many other patronage mills might be exposed, and forced to reform too? “If it was truly an outlier, the Sheriff’s Office would be a bad look for the Democratic Party,” says Ken Smukler, the longtime aide to Philly’s Democratic Party boss and former U.S. Representative Bob Brady, who himself spent time in prison for campaign finance violations.
If anything, Smukler adds, the office has been a “release valve for the party.” Votes aren’t free. Steerable jobs and resources are what fuel any political machine. That need exists whether or not we have a Sheriff’s Office. Which is exactly the kind of justification that has long reigned supreme in this city, dismaying reformers. Take it from our former mayor, Jim Kenney, who, in 2021, spoke about the corruption charges of union honcho John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty: “I feel bad for the fact that they work really hard in bringing a lot of good things to the city,” Kenney said, embodying the Philly Shrug. “People have been convicted before and the city moves on. That’s the way it goes.”
One of the first people to raise a red flag about Bilal was her first chief financial officer, Brett Mandel. In her first 100 days, Mandel was fired after scrutinizing “off-book” spending. He later wrote a book (and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, which he settled for six figures) detailing some of the controversial activity inside the Sheriff’s Office — like excessive spending on advertising and hiring a team of consultants whose duties were unclear to staff. (Bilal, for her part, notes that Mandel was only there for several weeks and based his claims on a system designed by her predecessor.)
“Everybody knows this is going on,” Mandel told The Inquirer, speaking about the off-book spending. “It’s like a wink-and-a-nod deal.” The Sheriff’s Office may be especially prone to malfeasance due to the millions of dollars in assets from sheriff’s sales it handles on an annual basis. By and large, those transactions fall outside the normal checks and balances of the government.
“She ran to be a reformer, but then, for whatever reason, decided to do the opposite.” — former Controller staffer
Historically, proceeds from sales were deposited into the sheriff’s “custodial accounts,” which served a variety of purposes. Custodial accounts were used to pay down the debt on delinquent properties prior to transferring the deeds to buyers. But they were also used to pay for administrative items like office supplies — or, in Bilal’s case, a staff party at Chickie’s & Pete’s. Bilal insists the office has come a long way. In fact, remember those controller recommendations that Bilal received during her transition back in 2019? Well, plenty of them are in place now, the sheriff says. For example, Bilal has done a digital overhaul of the internal accounting system and created siloed spending in order to conform with City standards. The last controller’s audit report on her office was published three years ago, which is when everyone passed judgment on her. “I’m over here trying to change the narrative, so that when I leave this office, it can finally function in a professional manner,” she says.
To wit: The sheriff is legally obligated to publicly advertise its sales of delinquent properties. When she arrived, the advertising budget was close to $8 million a year, which she claims to have slashed, dropping the ad costs per case by nearly 70 percent. “We made a decision to reduce the millions of dollars we were paying to advertise taking people’s homes,” says Bilal.
Of course, everyone can’t get a taste — and that, according to Bilal, is part of the reason she’s come under fire. “[The Inquirer] is a media outlet that is basically mad,” Bilal said in a May 2025 appearance on the City Cast Philly podcast. The outlet, Bilal continued, does not get the sheriff’s sale advertisements like in years past. “So that five-point-something million dollars they used to get from here, they don’t get it anymore. And so the mad becomes personal. The attacks become every little thing that happens here,” Bilal said. “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.”
Still, some developers say they’ve been forced to wait years to assume control of assets they long ago paid for — a recurrent issue under Bilal, they say. All sales of tax delinquent properties were halted between 2021 and 2024, first due to the pandemic and then due to procedural concerns raised by critics. (This came after Bilal controversially issued a no-bid, six-year contract to an online auction house.) Sales have since resumed, but a backlog remains. “This really has far-reaching ramifications, because of the inability [of the Sheriff’s Office] to meet statutory requirements,” says Dan Bernheim, a lawyer representing one frustrated developer.
Bernheim has sued the sheriff, claiming that his client has more than a million dollars tied up in properties they can’t sell or earn money on until the Sheriff’s Office relinquishes the deeds.
But as a lifelong Philadelphian, it’s deeper than that for him. “People are using some of the properties as a garbage dumping ground. Parts of the foundation are rotting,” he says. “Think about what it does to the neighborhood.”
Though the situation deteriorated under Bilal, Bernheim is not in the business of scapegoating. He believes there needs to be systemic change. “Why are we still electing a sheriff in the first place?” he asks.
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