Philly FOP president John McNesby is resigning to take a new job

John McNesby, the longtime president of the Philadelphia police officers’ union, will be departing his post next month to take another job.

McNesby, who has led the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 since 2007, said in a statement Friday that he will leave the union on Nov. 10 to take “a new position with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” He did not elaborate, and, through a spokesperson, declined to be interviewed.

McNesby has for years been a prominent and controversial local figure — an unapologetic promoter and defender of police officers, including some mired in scandal; a bruising labor leader who has secured consistent raises and other benefits for the rank-and-file; and a pugnacious public presence whose often inflammatory comments have at times been criticized as insensitive, tone deaf, or even racist.

He helped build the FOP — which represents more than 13,000 active and retired officers — into a local political player, issuing endorsements in contests ranging from Philadelphia mayor to Pennsylvania’s Senate race, sometimes with mixed success.

He has sparred with a dizzying array of police critics, including city officials, journalists, protesters, a former Eagles safety and even, at one point, Di Bruno Bros. specialty food stores.

And in recent years, he has become perhaps the most prolific public critic of District Attorney Larry Krasner, the city’s reform-oriented prosecutor. Krasner, for his part, has been quick to blast McNesby as out-of-touch and an obstacle to improving policing in the city, and he has frequently sought to associate McNesby with former President Donald Trump, whom McNesby met with several times while Trump was in office.

McNesby, 57, of Byberry, became a police officer in 1989, and was an academy classmate of former Commissioner Richard Ross. While on the force, McNesby spent much of his career in narcotics, and was elected to lead the local FOP in 2007.

He has remained in that post ever since, typically winning reelection by wide margins. He’s helped oversee contract negotiations that have raised officers’ salaries and loosened the residency requirement, allowing those with five years on the job to move outside the city.

McNesby has often drawn plaudits from his membership for publicly defending officers accused of wrongdoing, and, in recent years, for being outspoken in his disdain for Krasner (his union has taken out billboards and hired planes to fly banners at the Jersey Shore targeting the DA). And he is frequently at the side of relatives of police officers killed in the line of duty, often for years afterward.

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, who was fatally shot by Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1981, said in an interview Friday that McNesby has provided unwavering support during the years she’s spent returning to court to monitor the status of Abu-Jamal’s long-running appeals.

“I think no one understands, when you are the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, all the time and effort you have to put into taking care of people,” Faulkner said.

Just this month, after Officer Richard Mendez was fatally shot at the airport, the FOP collected donations for a reward fund that offered nearly $300,000 for information leading to the arrest of any suspects — more than 10 times the typical reward offered by the city in other homicide investigations.

Still, his union’s strident defense of police has also drawn criticism.

Police commissioners and community members alike have long lamented that the FOP, using a state-mandated arbitration system, has frequently been able to overturn or reduce discipline for officers accused of a range of misdeeds, including using excessive force, violating citizens’ rights, or committing domestic violence.

Jane Roh, a spokesperson for Krasner, said in a statement Friday: “Only a rogue few are disdainful of the public’s expectation of accountability and integrity — which has been the posture of FOP leadership under John McNesby for too long.” The FOP has said it is simply using the grievance system to ensure its officers are given due process.

Last year, the union came under fire again after an Inquirer investigation showed that hundreds of officers were out on paid leave for extended periods of time while saying they were too hurt to work — a program that was enabled in part due to diagnoses from questionable, union-selected doctors. McNesby later acknowledged that some officers may have been improperly collecting the benefit.

And at various points over the years, the FOP has sued to try and prevent new initiatives by other city agencies, including the DA’s development of a list of officers with potential credibility concerns, and City Council’s passage of a law that sought to address racial disparities in traffic stops by banning stops for some minor infractions. Both suits were unsuccessful.

Beyond the actions of his union, McNesby has been criticized for his incendiary rhetoric. In 2017, for example, after a group of protesters — some of them affiliated with Black Lives Matter — gathered outside the home of an officer who had fatally shot a Black man in the back, McNesby called the demonstrators a “pack of rabid animals.” The remark was widely denounced as racist; McNesby said he was not making a racial comment.

And in 2020, he was criticized after initially failing to forcefully condemn members of the alt-right Proud Boys group, who had been seen mingling with officers outside the FOP’s Northeast Philadelphia headquarters following a visit from then-Vice President Mike Pence. McNesby later issued a more critical statement.

The FOP’s board will meet next week to elect McNesby’s successor, according to the statement announcing his departure.

The Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church and an advocate for police reform, said Friday that he believed McNesby was “polarizing in ways that have not been helpful,” and that the FOP under his leadership was “the impediment to police reform” in the city.

He said he hopes whoever takes over is willing to listen to community input — and, at times, criticism — and recognize that it is possible to do so while continuing to advocate effectively for FOP members.

“Public safety needs everyone at the table — nobody benefits from a city that’s not safe,” Tyler said. “It would be much healthier for all of us if we had a sense of common ground.”