Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz has been fined by the Ethics Board for doubling as a criminal defense lawyer in Philly
The Sheriff's Office had initially denied that its top legal adviser was representing Philadelphia defendants. He will pay a $16,000 fine.
Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s second-in-command has been fined by the city Board of Ethics after he acknowledged he’d been operating a private legal practice representing defendants — including those charged with firearms offenses and violent crimes — who were prosecuted by the city District Attorney’s Office.
The Inquirer reported this month that Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz, a longtime defense lawyer and onetime candidate for district attorney, had been taking on criminal clients in and around Philadelphia despite being a full-time city employee now earning $200,000 a year.
At least 10 of those cases were brought by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s prosecutors. City employees are prohibited from representing defendants “if the case is prosecuted by the Philadelphia District Attorney,” according to guidance published by the Ethics Board.
Last month, El-Shabazz, who serves as Bilal’s top legal adviser, told an Inquirer reporter he didn’t “have any criminal cases,” before hanging up the phone. He declined to answer follow-up questions.
Teresa Lundy, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, later conceded that El-Shabazz had, in fact, been doing private legal work — but not 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 showed that not to be true.
On Thursday morning, the city’s Ethics Board released a settlement agreement, signed by El-Shabazz, in which he admitted he had been “representing defendants in cases prosecuted by the [Philadelphia] District Attorney.” El-Shabazz agreed to pay a $16,000 fine and to refrain from doing that type of work.
The settlement states that El-Shabazz “fully cooperated with the Board’s investigation and resolution.” (This is his second fine by the Ethics Board. In 2018, he was penalized for campaign finance violations during his unsuccessful 2017 bid for district attorney.)
» READ MORE: Philly sheriff’s top legal adviser has been moonlighting as a criminal defense lawyer
In an interview on radio station WURD earlier this month, Bilal dismissed the El-Shabazz article (and an unrelated story on a $6,600 office party at sports bar Chickie’s & Pete’s) as sensationalized and motivated by the termination of an advertising contract her office had with The Inquirer.
“You couldn’t get the Ethics Board here to give you a comment,” she told WURD, referring to the El-Shabazz reporting. “You are grasping for straws.”
But in a second WURD appearance last weekend, Bilal seemed to allude to the impending settlement.
“He’s addressing it. He’s fully cooperating,” she said of El-Shabazz. “He fully cooperated with Ethics.”
El-Shabazz was hired as undersheriff in May 2021. Court records show he has since represented at least 15 defendants in Pennsylvania for crimes that include theft, illegal gun possession, armed carjacking, murder, and fraud.
Just a few weeks after he was hired by Bilal, he 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. That case was prosecuted by the state Attorney General’s Office.
Legal ethicists described the arrangement — a top lawyer for a law enforcement agency who moonlights as a defense attorney — as highly unusual and rife with possible conflicts.
“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.
District Attorney Krasner, a former defense attorney like El-Shabazz, said last week that he had been aware of El-Shabazz’s criminal defense work and that his office did not view it as a legal conflict.
“There’s a difference between an actual legal conflict and something that people might interpret as a conflict because there’s an appearance of impropriety,” Krasner said. “That is all completely separate from whether or not there’s an ethical issue.”
The district attorney said his office had not looked into potential ethics violations.
“That’s not what we do,” Krasner said of the ethics code. “We don’t enforce it. We don’t investigate it. We don’t offer opinions on it.”
In her radio appearances this month, Bilal insisted that her office had discussed El-Shabazz’s side work with the Ethics Board and the District Attorney’s Office.
Shane Creamer, director of the Ethics Board, disputed that claim on Tuesday.
“I’m not aware of any inquiries from the sheriff or her chief of staff about the conduct of the undersheriff,” Creamer said.
Bilal was elected sheriff in 2019, and since then her office has experienced significant turnover, as well as three whistleblower lawsuits by former employees that have cost the city more than $1 million in legal settlements and fees. She recently launched her reelection campaign for a second term.
Bilal’s office did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on the Ethics Board settlement.
In recent months, court records show, some of El-Shabazz’s criminal cases in Philadelphia have been transferred to an attorney whose law office address and phone number are the same as El-Shabazz’s.
Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this article.