Philly Sheriff Bilal touts progress, state Sen. Street slams PICA at presser

Thanks to a conference room packed with supporters, an event billed as a press conference to spotlight the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office’s report on its accomplishments over a four-year period looked and sounded more like a town hall.

The presser was held at Laborers Local 57 in Philadelphia – a nod to Bilal’s continuing strength with organized labor, as evidenced by ther recognizing Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council Business Manager Ryan Boyer. 

During the hour-long event, Bilal, the first African American woman elected to the position in the city’s history, focused on improvements on the more well-known aspects of the office, including an increase in serving warrants, apprehending fugitives and in online sheriff’s sales of properties. Bilal also noted a cumulative $8.3 million of excess proceeds from sheriff’s sales returned to homeowners between 2020 and 2023 – a $5 million jump from returns processed from 2016 to 2019 during the administration of her predecessor, Jewell Williams. As part of her efforts to expand the visibility of the Sheriff’s Office, Bilal also mentioned a commitment to community outreach featuring hundreds of events a year and a focus on autism awareness.

“We remain committed to meeting people where they are, working alongside neighborhood leaders, elected officials and residents to ensure our service reflects the needs of the people we serve,” Bilal said.

Among the elected officials in attendance was state Sen. Sharif Street, who, in addition to expressing his support of Bilal, engaged in a fiery defense of keeping the position of sheriff as an elected office. In addition to elucidating the constitutionally protected nature of the office and the irreconcilable differences that would arise by abolishing it and folding its duties into other municipal departments, Street took those calling for the office’s abolishment to task, singling out the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. PICA, which states its mission is “to ensure the long-term fiscal stability of the City of Philadelphia and the continuing provision of essential services to its citizens,” publicly called for the end of the Sheriff’s Office in March, citing what it called “ongoing and serious operational and financial mismanagement.”

In response, Street said, “PICA’s comments about trying to dissolve the Sheriff's Office are grossly inappropriate. PICA should not be taking their position as to whether the Sheriff's Office should be dissolved, because its role is to determine whether the fiscal stability of the city has moved forward, not to determine the constitutionality of the elected offices. And I speak as a person whose father (former Philadelphia City Councilman and Mayor John Street) wrote the legislation to create PICA when he was a member of City Council. PICA is out of order. It is beyond its scope of its authority.”

Editor’s note: The author of this story was an employee of the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office in 2021.