Philly Sheriff Rochelle Bilal slams report saying her office can’t account for 200 guns: ‘They’re derelict in their duties’

Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal on Thursday slammed a recent review conducted by the City Controller that said her office can’t account for nearly 200 guns, contending that the city watchdog’s office made misleading statements and is “derelict in their duties.”

During a news conference in her Center City office, Bilal insinuated that the report released Wednesday was a political hit ahead of the Nov. 7 general election. Bilal, a Democrat, is heavily favored to win over her Republican challenger, given the party’s nearly 7-1 voter registration advantage in the city.

Acting City Controller Charles Edacheril, a career auditor who was appointed to the role in February, wrote in a letter to Bilal on Wednesday that 185 firearms were unaccounted for and recommended the Sheriff’s Office report them to police as missing. They include 76 guns that were part of the Sheriff’s Office’s arsenal and 109 weapons that were confiscated from people subject to protection-from-abuse orders.

But Bilal and Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz strongly pushed back, saying her office has not lost track of firearms that have been in its possession. They said previous administrations practiced poor recordkeeping and had haphazard storage procedures, making it impossible to account for guns that were not properly logged before Bilal took office in January 2020.

“They constantly keep trying to put it on this administration,” Bilal said. “If the controller would have done their job 10 years ago and audited that office, maybe it would not have been in that condition when I took office. ... They’re derelict in their duties.”

A Controller’s Office spokesperson said it stands by its investigation. It declined to comment further.

Bilal said that 20 guns are missing — not 185 — because there is no record of them ever being in the Sheriff’s Office. She said her office pieced together ledgers, receipts, and log books that date to as early as the 1970s to try to account for the other weapons and made “reasonable inferences” about what happened to dozens of them.

For example, she said the Sheriff’s Office “presumes” that 18 of them were traded or burned because there was documentation that other guns that were registered on the same date had been destroyed. Another batch of guns considered “found” is registered to retired Sheriff’s Office deputies who could opt to take their service weapons with them into retirement under previous administrations — but the Sheriff’s Office couldn’t confirm where those guns are now.

Asked why the Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t file missing gun reports for the firearms that it can’t definitively locate, El-Shabazz said the office did not want to assume the guns were removed from the Sheriff’s Office or otherwise missing if in fact they were destroyed.

“We can’t assume that it was taken out of here,” he said. “We can’t even assume, folks, honestly, that we ever received it. We weren’t here.”

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El-Shabazz also said that the office has attempted to locate the guns registered to retired deputies, but that many could not be located or have since died. He said that those retirees could have legally gifted the weapon to a family member, but that if the serial number were reported as missing, then the family member “who rightfully had that weapon is now charged.”

“They’re asking her to accuse people of taking things that we’re not sure were ever taken,” he said.

The Controller’s Office said it still considers 185 weapons missing because the Sheriff’s Office did not provide records or documentation of the weapons’ whereabouts.

Bilal campaigned on a pledge to reform the Sheriff’s Office after years of documented dysfunction and corruption, and she said Thursday she remains committed to that goal despite a handful of controversies that have surrounded her office.

She showed photos of the Sheriff’s Office armory from when she initially took office. The photos depicted piles of what appeared to be unorganized boxes where weapons were kept, and showed what appeared to be unsecured guns on the floor. Then, she showed photos of what the armory looks like today, with updated security and filing systems.

“I came in here to fix things,” Bilal said. “I didn’t come in here to constantly keep going back about other administrations with what they did or didn’t do.”