Philly sheriff’s top legal adviser has been moonlighting as a criminal defense lawyer

Last summer, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal put out a news release touting the success of “Operation Priority Takedown,” a warrant sweep that netted 31 fugitives.

“We are facing an unprecedented surge in gun violence,” she said. “We are working diligently to take criminals off the streets.”

At a news conference about the sweep, Bilal was joined by dozens of law enforcement officials. But the man standing behind her, Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz — Bilal’s top legal adviser — was also defending people in court accused of some of the same crimes as those rounded up in the sweep, court records show.

While serving as undersheriff, El-Shabazz has moonlighted as a defense attorney, representing clients charged with crimes in Philadelphia and around the state, creating potential conflicts of interest, and likely violating city ethics rules.

Court records show El-Shabazz appeared as a defense attorney for at least 10 clients in cases brought by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office since he was hired in May 2021 by the sheriff. That means that El-Shabazz — a city worker now being paid $200,000 a year — has essentially been opposing the interests of his employer.

Philadelphia ethics rules prohibit city employees from representing criminal defendants “if the case is prosecuted by the Philadelphia District Attorney,” according to guidance published by the Ethics Board.

In all, records list El-Shabazz as a lawyer for at least 15 defendants charged in Pennsylvania, with crimes including theft, illegal gun possession, and armed carjacking cases, an upcoming murder trial in Chester County, and a fraud case in federal court.

He picked up his first fresh case just a few weeks after he was hired, Philadelphia court dockets show. El-Shabazz entered an appearance as an attorney for a man who later pleaded guilty to charges that he illegally distributed explosives used to blow up ATMs in Philadelphia.

El-Shabazz was paid a starting salary of $123,107 as second-in-command at an office with about 350 employees and a $26 million budget. The office primarily serves warrants, transports prisoners, handles security in court buildings, and administers auctions of foreclosed real estate for the city.

He received a small pay raise in January 2022, then, in September, his salary was hiked to $200,000 — about $57,000 more than Bilal is paid.

Reached by The Inquirer last week, El-Shabazz, 59, offered few details about his defense work.

“I don’t have any criminal cases,” he said. “Not now.”

He declined to elaborate, then said he was in a meeting and hung up the phone.

Legal ethicists expressed bewilderment at El-Shabazz’s work as a criminal defense attorney. They said the dual role could create problems for his clients, the Sheriff’s Office, and the taxpayers of Philadelphia.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in a big city,” said Rebecca Roiphe, an expert in legal ethics at New York Law School and a former Manhattan prosecutor.

Roiphe said any scenario in which a lawyer working for a law enforcement agency is defending alleged criminals is rife with possible conflicts and has “a lot of potential for abuse.”

For instance, due to his high-ranking government position, El-Shabazz could give potential clients the impression that he has the ability to influence the criminal justice system from the inside, she said.

“As a defense attorney, are people coming to him in part because they think in doing so they’ll be able to lean on somebody in power to reduce or drop the charges?” Roiphe asked. “Maybe this is a side gig and no corruption is involved, but it raises all sorts of red flags.”

It also raises concerns about his proximity to confidential information within the Sheriff’s Office about criminal investigations. (A spokesperson for the office said El-Shabazz does not have an account for JNet, a law enforcement database containing confidential information about accused criminals).

Then there is the obvious question: How and why does one of the city’s highest-paid employees juggle an outside caseload while working a full-time job?

El-Shabazz, who ran unsuccessfully for district attorney in 2017, did not respond to an emailed list of questions about his defense work. Bilal did not respond to requests for comment.

Teresa Lundy, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, claimed El-Shabazz had not been representing clients in Philadelphia.

“It would cause issues if he was actually handling cases in Philadelphia County,” Lundy said, adding: “There is no conflict of interest. His work happens outside of Philadelphia County.”

Court records tell a different story — that he took on clients both inside and outside the city.

In August 2022, for example, El-Shabazz filed paperwork to serve as a defense attorney for a man being prosecuted by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on robbery and firearms charges, replacing the man’s previous attorney. Court records show El-Shabazz was representing the defendant as recently as November.

In January 2022, El-Shabazz entered an appearance in another gun case being prosecuted by the Philly DA’s Office. In December, a new lawyer took over the case, Qawi Abdul-Rahman. Abdul-Rahman’s law office address and phone number are the same as El-Shabazz’s.

El-Shabazz is also listed as representing another man charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia with defrauding federal pandemic relief programs. A summons indicates El-Shabazz is due in court for that case Feb. 22.

W. Bourne Ruthrauff, a longtime ethics attorney in Philadelphia, said El-Shabazz appears to have a “significant potential ethical conflict of interest” between his sheriff’s duties and his private clients.

“Under the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct, each are entitled to Mr. Shabazz’s undivided loyalty, confidentiality, and independent judgment,” Ruthrauff said. “Those obligations to one could easily be directly adverse to his obligations to the other.”

Bilal has sought to expand her office’s involvement in wider law enforcement activities by partnering with agencies in the Philadelphia suburbs, as well as with the Pennsylvania State Police and state Attorney General’s Office. El-Shabazz has defended clients arrested by state police or prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office, as well as in cases brought by local prosecutors in those same suburban counties.

While serving as undersheriff, El-Shabazz was listed as the attorney for Zahir Yusef Randall, charged by the Chester County DA for allegedly conspiring to ambush and kill a man in the driveway of his Sadsbury Township home.

El-Shabazz has taken other cases linked to offenses as far away as Northampton and Luzerne Counties.

Court records list El-Shabazz as a defense attorney for a man arrested in Bethlehem Township on forgery charges, and another man arrested for allegedly passing counterfeit bills in Wilkes-Barre, Delaware County, and elsewhere.

Bilal, a former 27-year Philadelphia police veteran, was elected sheriff in 2019, pledging to reform an office that had faced what she called “two decades of scandal” under Sheriffs Jewell Williams and John Green.

Williams, her immediate predecessor, was beset by sexual-harassment allegations, which he denied. Green, who served as sheriff from 1988 to 2010, pleaded guilty in 2019 to a bribery-related charge. Allegations of financial mismanagement have hung over the office for years.

“Change is coming,” Bilal said at the beginning of her term in January 2020.

But Bilal and her leadership team would soon face allegations similar to those that had dogged previous sheriffs.

Her first chief financial officer, Brett Mandel, said he was escorted out of the office by armed deputies in February 2020 after he raised concerns about Bilal’s use of “off-budget” spending that circumvented the city’s budgeting process. Mandel later filed a whistle-blower lawsuit, which cost the city $464,792 to settle, including legal fees.

Sommer Miller, Bilal’s former undersheriff, and Anitra Paris, the office’s former human resources manager, also filed whistle-blower lawsuits in federal court in early 2021.

Miller alleged that Bilal retaliated against her when she complained of unauthorized spending, possible theft, and extreme sexual harassment by Bilal’s then chief of staff. Paris alleged that she was fired after refusing Bilal’s requests to hire employees without performing background checks or requiring them to take civil service tests.

The city settled those two cases last year for a combined $585,000.

In May 2021, Curtis Douglas, then Bilal’s undersheriff, retired after it came to light that the office had entered into an illegal six-year contract with a property auction company.

Douglas’ replacement was El-Shabazz.