Ammo, DJs, a $9,000 mascot: Inside the Philly sheriff’s ‘slush fund’ spending

Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal describes her office as dangerously underfunded, to the point that she is unable to buy needed supplies for her deputies.

“This jeopardizes the lives and safety of our sworn and civilian personnel,” Bilal testified before City Council last year.

But when it came to getting a costume made for a newly created office mascot, her staff spared no expense.

They tapped an internal bank account full of public money to bring “Deputy Sheriff Justice” to life in time for last year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, cutting two checks totaling $9,250 to Pierre’s Mascots & Costumes. The storied costume shop in Old City has crafted outfits for the likes of the Geico Gecko, Temple University’s Hooter T. Owl, and late-night host Jimmy Fallon.

The checking account the Sheriff’s Office used for this — and hundreds of other recent off-budget purchases reviewed by The Inquirer — contains revenue from fees that the office charges for various services such as property sales, evictions, and writs.

Expenses such as these violate provisions in Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter, according to a 2022 audit by the city controller and an opinion issued by the city Law Department. The charter defines fee revenue as public money that should be turned over to city coffers and allocated by the mayor and City Council during the annual budget process.

Instead, for years, the Sheriff’s Office has kept the money, and used it to purchase everything from ammunition, Tasers, and filing cabinets, to the foam mascot and numerous promotional items, such as Rochelle Bilal trading cards.

City Hall has allowed the spending to continue, two years after the audit and four years after a former top aide to Bilal flagged it as a “slush fund” that skirts city regulations.

No one in Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration would discuss any aspect of the revenue stream this past week or respond to any questions from The Inquirer about how such money is collected or spent in the Sheriff’s Office.

» READ MORE: The history of Philly’s scandal-plagued sheriff's office.

Robert Vargas, an associate professor at the University of Chicago who studies law enforcement spending, said it is concerning that the head of a major public agency had access to off-budget funding with less transparency and accountability than with ordinary city expenditures.

“Accounts like this allow law enforcement leaders to spend on things that would not be approved by local governing bodies,” Vargas said.

An Inquirer analysis of 17 months of Sheriff’s Department bank records and other documents obtained through Right-to-Know requests identified nearly $3.2 million that flowed into a TD Bank account controlled by the sheriff called “Operation Cost Payable.”

Following the source and final destination of all that money is often difficult and sometimes impossible. Even so, reporters tracked nearly $2 million that was paid using checks that covered more than 700 discretionary purchases, such as the mascot costume.

Many purchases had little to do with the sheriff’s core duties of auctioning property, serving warrants, transporting inmates, and providing court security.

For example: About $40,000 went to companies that supply branded merchandise such as backpacks, polo shirts or fidget spinners; $20,000 went toward food and catering costs, including a $6,600 party at Chickie’s & Pete’s; and $8,000 more paid for professional DJs and other entertainment.

The fund has also been used to pay for temporary Sheriff’s Office staffing and, most recently, an administrative assistant who is paid biweekly but is not on the official city payroll.

Some checks are cosigned by Bilal herself, such as a $32,000 payment for advertising written last year to TML Communications, a firm run by Bilal’s former campaign manager who now serves as the office’s contracted spokesperson.

In addition, the Sheriff’s Office used more than $300,000 from the same account to cover the costs of a “pop-up health care clinic” in April 2022, according to a summary released by the office last year.

Bilal and her senior staff have previously said they believe they are permitted to spend this money themselves because they don’t receive enough funding from the city. They did not respond to requests for comment over the last week.

In a recent op-ed, Bilal said she has been working to improve the office’s accounting practices “with an eye toward transparency.” She said that the “accounting practices the office now uses conform to city finance requirements.”

Parker administration officials declined to confirm that detail.

When questioned about these funds at Wednesday’s budget hearing, Bilal’s undersheriff, Tariq El-Shabazz, told City Council that the “state has authorized” the sheriff to use the fees to supplement its operations, such as purchasing bulletproof vests, due to underfunding.

City Controller Christy Brady says the characterization was not correct.

“The charter requires that spending by all city offices and departments, including the Sheriff’s Office, be specifically authorized by appropriations in the city’s annual operating budget ordinance,” Brady said in a statement to The Inquirer.

A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration said it was unaware of any special authorization granted to the sheriff for these funds.

» READ MORE: Philly sheriff’s top legal adviser has been moonlighting as a criminal defense lawyer

Sheriffs across Pennsylvania charge fees for property auctions or court services, then typically transfer the revenue to their county’s general fund, minus small mandatory payments to a state fund for deputy training and education.

Representatives for the sheriffs in Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, and Chester Counties confirmed that is how they operate.

Experts in local finance say the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office’s practice of circumventing the city budget process raises concerns.

“Generally, the body that spends the money should not be the body that’s collecting the money,” said Jayce Farmer, an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and Leadership at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “You want checks and balances to make sure the moneys go to where they need to go.”

He said he was particularly surprised to learn that a sheriff could purchase a $9,000 mascot with service-fee revenue.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be real,’” Farmer said.

» READ MORE: Philly sheriff used money meant to hire deputies for executive raises, tried to double her salary to $285K

Bilal, a former Philadelphia police officer, ran for sheriff in 2019 as a self-described reformer looking to clean up an office roiled by scandals and years of financial mismanagement — including the spending of millions out of off-budget bank accounts.

But immediately after Bilal took office in 2020, her first chief financial officer, Brett Mandel, said a member of her transition team handed him a folder that described “contract obligations to the sheriff’s allies and associates.” He was told to use the off-budget funds to pay these costs, according to a whistle-blower lawsuit he later filed.

Mandel, a former deputy city controller, refused and was terminated from the job within weeks. He said he later learned that Bilal herself had started signing checks from off-budget funds. In June 2021, the city paid about $465,000 to settle Mandel’s lawsuit, including $77,802 to cover Bilal’s legal costs.

Despite Mandel’s high-profile dismissal, no one in City Hall fixed the problem.

In May 2022, an audit by then-City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart concluded that both Bilal and her predecessor had been spending this money inappropriately and “operating outside of the checks and balances established in the Home Rule Charter meant to protect taxpayer funds from mismanagement or misuse.” (Earlier, Rhynhart’s auditors had to issue subpoenas to Bilal’s staff because they would not provide basic financial reports.)

“During multiple interviews, Sheriff’s Office’s management stated that it believes fees collected from the public for services provided are funds to be used at its discretion,” read Rhynhart’s audit, which found that the practice “increases the risk for fraud, waste, mismanagement and/or abuse.”

Auditors obtained a legal opinion from the city solicitor confirming that Sheriff’s Office revenue must be turned over. A key recommendation in the audit: “Remit all fee revenue to the city.”

Once again, city officials took no public action to halt this spending.

“Everybody knows this is going on,” Mandel said last week. “It’s like a wink-and-a-nod deal.”

» READ MORE: ‘Where is the money?’ Ex-homeowners seeking leftover funds from sheriff’s sales are being stonewalled.

Some of the off-budget spending over the last year was used for typical law enforcement expenses, including $276,000 to equip deputies with Axon Taser devices; $118,000 for ammunition or other tactical gear; about $50,000 to Bustleton Bikes for the sheriff’s bicycle patrol unit; and $2,000 for vet bills for the department’s K-9 unit.

But public money also found its way to a wide variety of expenses largely unrelated to the office’s official purpose.

In 2022, the sheriff planned a free, two-day pop-up health care clinic at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The costs were supposed to be covered by sponsorships, but they fell short, leaving the Sheriff’s Office on the hook for $312,500. The office reported in a year-end review that it had tapped the off-budget account to cover “lodging, meals, and transportation for the medical staff and volunteers.”

In recent years, the office says it has expanded its public outreach to include more than 100 community events a year, from regular food giveaways to an autism awareness day. Many of the supplies and other costs associated with these events are underwritten by off-budget money, including branded merchandise featuring the office’s seal or items with Bilal’s name or image.

Last year, Bilal faced a bruising primary against deep-pocketed Democratic challenger Michael Untermeyer. Campaign finance reports from that period showed Bilal’s campaign lagged the lawyer in fundraising, and was $28,000 in the hole after the May primary.

In the six months before the vote, the sheriff hosted a string of events, running up $26,000 on such costs as catering, DJs and pop-up tents, as well as shirts, trading cards, and pom-poms, some of which were given away at community events.

In September 2023, before the general election, bank records show, the department cut a $23,000 check to Staples Promotional Products, an arm of the office supply giant that produces custom branded drinkware, pens, clothing and other products. Four more checks in the following months, totaling $7,900, were paid out for polo shirts and fleeces, or to other branded merchandise suppliers — marked “promotional products” in one memo line.

After Bilal’s reelection in November, a $3,750 catering bill for her “inaugural luncheon” in January was again paid by checks from the Operation Cost Payable account. And, in recent weeks, Bilal has continued to embark on still more promotional efforts, launching a paid podcast on local radio station WURD, and sponsoring articles on local news websites.

Farmer, the local finance expert at UNLV, said it is not unusual for government agencies to spend money on promotional items and community engagement. But he said there should be outside oversight over all of the money, rather than a department making its own decisions on how to use public money.

“If you keep saying you have a shortfall in other areas, it raises the question of, ‘Do you need more polo shirts?’” Farmer asked.

Vargas said this spending could also have another purpose: cultivating support from voters and politicians who control the purse strings.

“When the next budget happens,” Vargas said, “the sheriff can go to their clients and say, ‘We’ve given you all these things, and done all these cool, random events. Now, it’s your turn to come out and support us.’”

» READ MORE: Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office seizes firearms in just 13% of domestic-abuse cases. Victims say it’s unacceptable.

At Wednesday’s budget hearing in City Council, during which Bilal requested an additional $12.6 million — a nearly 40% increase to the office’s $32.8 million budget — Council members complimented Bilal on her frequent appearances at community events.

The sheriff faced little scrutiny, while some, such as Council President Kenyatta Johnson, were effusive in praise.

“I just want to thank you for your hard work and your dedication and working in partnership with members of Council and the city of Philadelphia,” Johnson said.

Still, since 2020, the city has budgeted for tens of millions in expected fee revenues from the Sheriff’s Office that it has not received. According to one city report, fees from the department were projected to be $11.3 million in 2023, but instead the city received nothing.

That report blamed the missing funds on the ongoing pause on the sale of tax delinquent properties in the Sheriff’s Office that started with the COVID pandemic. That pause continues today, due to Bilal’s office issuing an invalid contract that outsources those sales to an online auction house. The sales are supposed to resume this summer.

Mayor Parker’s spokesperson, Joe Grace, said last week that neither the city’s longtime finance director, Rob Dubow, nor any other official in the administration would answer questions about how the revenue is collected or spent.

“We expect the fees to increase as sheriff sales resume,” Grace said in an email.

Yet, the sheriff’s bank records show funds continued to pour into the discretionary account anyway, including a $1.5 million bank transfer last November.

Marisa Waxman, executive director for the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, which oversees Philadelphia’s finances and approves the city’s five-year budget plan, said the board was aware of long-running issues involving money “being held improperly and a lack of internal controls” within the Sheriff’s Office.

Andrew McGinley, vice president of external affairs at the Committee of Seventy good-government group, said the city charter is clear on the matter.

“These funds belong to the city of Philadelphia, not an individual office,” McGinley said. “That’s public money.”