Philly probation check-ins go virtual, urine tests suspended, as Sheriff’s Office grapples with deputy shortage

At a probation hearing last Friday at Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center, Common Pleas Court Judge Roxanne Covington ordered a defendant to report to the city’s probation offices at Seventh and Market this week for a drug screening.

That, a probation officer responded, would not be possible.

“We won’t have any sheriffs,” the officer, John Masterson, told the judge.

Covington was perplexed.

“You’re saying probation doesn’t have any security?” she asked.

Masterson confirmed that was the case, at least for the next week.

The reason: The Adult Probation and Parole Department, which also houses the Sheriff’s Office’s warrant unit, had been secured for years by deputies, who essentially did double duty.

But the Sheriff’s Office on Friday abruptly moved the unit and its officers to Family Court at 15th and Arch Streets to help safeguard its courtrooms.

As a result, probation officers have been forced to indefinitely replace in-person visits with virtual ones. And drug tests that took place inside the Market Street building have also been temporarily suspended.

The sudden redeployment comes as Sheriff Rochelle Bilal addresses major security lapses inside city courthouses by shuffling deputies from one unit to another.

The Inquirer reported in September that security-related incidents at the CJC and four other court buildings had skyrocketed under Bilal, who took office in 2020. The deputy shortage had left some courtrooms unsecured and caused delays in criminal trials and hearings as prisoners waited for deputies to escort them from jail cells to court.

Last year, the incidents — which include violent acts, vandalism, and threats — were occurring at a rate of six every month, or a roughly threefold increase from 2019, under the previous sheriff, Jewell Williams.

In December, a panel of judges that oversees Philadelphia court operations filed a court order demanding that Bilal staff up the city’s main courthouses within 90 days.

That deadline is next week, which one courthouse official said prompted the sudden shift of deputies out of the probation department to add more security to Family Court.

Security has improved in recent months, judges say, now that more deputies are being sent to the city’s main courthouses. But critics warn that could also lead to shortfalls elsewhere in the sheriff’s office, which has struggled to perform some of its core functions, like holding tax sales.

Bilal and her spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment for this article, and have not responded to any questions from The Inquirer since last summer.

Last Thursday, the First Judicial District informed probation and court officials that — effective the following day — access to the main probation office on Market Street would be restricted to employees only, due to the reassignment of the sheriff’s security detail there to Family Court.

“As an interim and temporary security measure, access to 714 Market St. will be limited only to [Adult Probation and Parole Department] and Pretrial employees,” the memo reads. “As a result, all client contact with APPD and Pretrial that was previously conducted in-person at 714 Market will be conducted remotely or in the field.”

In the meantime, probationers will be expected to report to their probation officers by video call. If they don’t have video access, they can use booths at a Neighborhood Resource Center, a satellite facility that offers services to formerly incarcerated men and women. Defendants with ankle monitors will have them removed at their homes, rather than at the Market Street office.

The move, which will affect tens of thousands of people under court-ordered supervision, follows a recent violent incident at the Family Court building that saw at least one deputy injured, according to two court officials. The officials declined to be named in order to discuss matters of security frankly.

Last year, in the same building, a video shared online by a Fox29 reporter showed an unconscious man lying facedown in the hallway while two other men continued to fight and a lone sheriff’s deputy struggled to break it up.

Bilal has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the security crisis, describing The Inquirer’s September report as akin to yelling “fire in a non-burning building.”

“This pattern of fearmongering not only distorts the truth but also jeopardizes the safety and well-being of the citizens we are sworn to protect,” her office said in a statement at the time.

Judges, however, had described the deputy shortage as a “disaster waiting to happen” and an “emergency situation,” while prosecutors and defense attorneys complained about cases being delayed because deputies were not available to transport jailed defendants to courtrooms from the basement of the CJC.

In December, the Administrative Governing Board of the First Judicial District filed a court order stating that the sheriff’s office’s “systemic failures” to properly staff court buildings pose an “imminent threat to the safety and health of all persons present in the courthouses.”

The panel of judges wrote that it had repeatedly tried to resolve the crisis with Bilal and her staff “to no avail.”

After the order, courthouse security appears to have improved, judges say — at least in the city’s main criminal courthouse.

Richard T. McSorley, a court administrator for the city’s First Judicial District, acknowledged last week that the sheriff had promptly responded to the court order, submitting a draft plan to the courts to “address the shortcomings of their duties.”

He said in a statement that a “reallocation of resources” within the Sheriff’s Office had led to more deputies being present at CJC.

“[T]he Sheriff has made progress in providing timely prisoner transportation and increased security in our courtrooms,” McSorely said.

But Bilal has been forced to resort to reshuffling deputies from other buildings to achieve these gains because of ongoing issues with recruitment.

McSorely acknowledged that only “minor increases” had been made to Bilal’s complement of deputies.

“While the FJD appreciates the progress made, both sides are well aware that there is still a serious shortage of Sheriff Deputies,” he wrote. “The Sheriff Department has provided increased security in our main courthouses, but security in other FJD or Court facilities must still be addressed.”

Benjamin Lerner, a retired Common Pleas judge, questioned whether shifting deputies around would weaken the city’s probation system.

He said the overnight change to probation operations appeared to be rushed.

“Subbing in-person probation officer meetings with virtual meetings is definitely not going to increase the effectiveness of probation supervision,” Lerner said. “You had all this time, and this is all you could come up with? It’s a last-minute solution.”

Some court officials acknowledged that aspects of Bilal’s plan had come together haphazardly as judges ratcheted up the pressure to get more deputies into courtrooms.

“We’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” said one court source with knowledge of the changes but not authorized to speak publicly. “But the plane will be flying. It’s not going to crash and burn.”

Court administrators declined to comment in detail on Bilal’s other staffing changes, but court sources and observations by Inquirer reporters confirmed that deputies from other sheriff’s office units have been increasingly visible in court, apparently to beef up security.

About one fifth of the sheriff’s 274 deputies are assigned to specialized details, like internal affairs, civil-enforcement, and warrant service, which pursues criminal fugitives and enforces protection-from-abuse orders.

On a recent weekday morning, members of some of those units were instead visible performing guard duties at city courthouses.

Some departments were already struggling to perform their duties.

The sheriff’s warrant unit, for example, has lagged behind on enforcement of protection-from-abuse orders. A 2023 Inquirer report found that only 13% of PFA orders filed between 2020 and 2023 were marked as “complete” and that firearm relinquishment occurred in 16% of cases.

The sheriff’s civil-enforcement unit has also seen a major increase in its workload, following the implosion of Philadelphia’s landlord-tenant officer system. A private attorney who had been charged by the courts with enforcing most evictions bowed out last summer amid a string of high-profile shooting incidents, and those functions defaulted to Bilal’s civil-enforcement unit.

While some judges have welcomed the increased deputy presence in courthouses, those changes are only a short-term fix.

Recruiting new sheriff deputies has been difficult in recent years, as the Philadelphia police department and other law enforcement agencies boost their own hiring efforts following officer shortages brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and social-justice protests of 2020.

In addition to increased competition for new recruits, Bilal has blamed the deputy shortage on a small annual hiring window and a lengthy training process that requires recruits to stay overnight at a facility near State College, Pa., hours from the city.

“Considering these challenges, we are in the process of making it a more seamless process which will be announced,” Bilal’s office said in September.

Bilal did not respond to questions about whether any such changes have been made.