The plot to abolish the Sheriff's Department is lead by liars, charlatans and political neophytes

They're ganging up against the sheriff.

Under the guise of so-called "reform," a clique of business leaders, newspaper writers, lawyers, bankers and elected officials want to abolish the office of sheriff.

Thankfully, they first need the consent of the voters.

In reality, most of these phony reformers are suffering from acute over abundance of political constipation.

The rest (at best) are naïve about how political power is wielded in Philadelphia or (at worst) just plain stupid.

Most of the anti-sheriff crowd are well-to-do white men who have their own political agendas and are using the city's current fiscal troubles as a smokescreen to hide their real goal which is to lessen black political power in a city that is increasingly becoming black and brown.

Most voters have no real idea of the enormous political and economic influence controlled by the sheriff's office nor have they ever bothered to discover how the current African American Sheriff John D. Green, has utilized the levers of power under his control to lessen the impact of the foreclosure crisis on poor and working class families.

And these same voters for the most part, have absolutely no idea how the current sheriff has expanded the workings of his office so that more of its financial resources are spent with African American owned firms (including the Philadelphia Sunday SUN); something that was never contemplated by any of Sheriff Green's predecessors all the way back to the very beginning of the city's first steps at self-governance in the 18th century.

Just to set some of the record straight, all the happy talk about dumping the sheriff's office, (and that of other so-called "row offices"), centers on saving tax dollars by reducing staff. The implied message is that the row offices are flooded with patronage employees. Fewer staff = fewer paychecks, so this logic goes.

Well, in the case of the sheriff's office very little can be saved since more than two-thirds of the current payroll of about 250 persons are civil service, sworn personnel who either guard our courtrooms or transport defendants to trial every weekday. There are less than 45 non civil service staff members on the payroll whose annual salary is around $48,000 each. So, even if you dumped all of them, the savings would amount to less than $2 million out of a total city budget that exceeds $3 billion.

Beginning this week, The SUN will publish a series of articles that will uncover the facts of the plot to abolish the office of sheriff. We will unmask the charlatans and liars who would like to take away from the voters the power to elect an independent sheriff—something that every one the other 66 counties in Pennsylvania currently still enjoys.

Back in 1951, the real reformers of Philadelphia's municipal government left the Sheriff and several other offices undisturbed when they adopted the Home Rule Charter. We will attempt to demonstrate why these thoughtful and deliberative men thought that separating powers among different parts of the government apparatus was good for Philadelphia too.

At the very least, when you have had an opportunity to examine the entire issue, you will know what's at stake for you today and for those Philadelphians still to come. We at the SUN believe we owe it to future generations to leave them as good a form of government as we inherited.

If a part of our municipal government is broken, then let us fix it after careful thought and discussion. But, if it's not broken, then let's leave it alone and tackle the real issues that threaten our collective futures.

PART 1

In a city where foreclosures have drained small fortunes from working-class neighborhoods, a police officer turned politician decided to take on the financial institutions and protect homeowners' rights.

In 2004, and again in 2008, Philadelphia Sheriff John D. Green, a slim, bespectacled man elected to the job in 1987, decided to postpone the monthly sheriff's sale for judicial foreclosures to give homeowners more time to try to save their homes. His activism sent shock waves through the financial sector, which feared the local sheriff's homegrown brand of consumer protectionism might spread like a virus to other cities.

Fast forward to 2010: Philadelphia's foreclosure intervention model, which began as one sheriff's effort to get homeowners, lenders and housing activists talking, is widely heralded as a national model for foreclosure prevention. Other cities come here to figure out how to save homes.

However, the renegade sheriff who took on the bulk of the legal and political risks to secure homeowner rights, is himself facing a powerful coalition of groups - including many run or backed by local businesses and real estate interests - that wants to abolish his office and turn the sheriff's job into an appointed position.

Taking the law into his own hands

The saga begins in 2003, when Green assembled the Task Force for Foreclosure Prevention, a coalition of local stakeholders working to identify ways to increase the number of homeowners receiving loan workouts, stop mortgage fraud and address reports of predatory lending and servicing practices in Philadelphia.

Green posted a "Declaration of Neighborhood Security," on his web-site and began a campaign to inform homeowners in foreclosures of their rights. He conducted a listening tour of neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosure - personally hearing the alarming stories of fraud and cries for help.

"It's not just the sheriff's job to sell houses," Deputy Sheriff's Officer Paris Washington, a veteran of the department and a member of the sheriff's executive team, later would explain to a reporter. "It's the sheriff's job to serve the people who elected him. Because he was elected by the people, he has to listen to the people. Aren't the people the law?"

When the rough waves of foreclosures began to drown people and neighborhoods in debt, Green decided to take more action. By 2004, his office was exposing 1,000 properties a month to auction, most of them in poor and working class neighborhoods. Some of the constituents drifting into his office shared stories that were painful to hear: There were the elderly who weren't aware the loans they had taken out put up their homes as collateral. Scam artists were breaking into abandoned foreclosed homes and renting them out to unsuspecting families Rescue scams were taking money upfront from homeowners who had no means of saving their homes.

So Green decided to do something no sheriff had dared to do before: He summoned national banks and servicing companies to Philadelphia in 2004 for a meeting to discuss homeowner complaints and allegations and to attend the task force's Save Our Homes event, basically an effort to get worried homeowners and bank loan specialists in the same room to discuss loan work out deals.

Green argued to the Court to fix "broken" Sales

At a hearing last year on foreclosure prevention before the Congressional Oversight Committee, Judge Annette M. Rizzo of the Philadelphia Court of the Common Pleas, credits Green with laying the foundation for the City's nationally acclaimed Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program.

She said it was the sheriff who argued the system was "fundamentally broken" and needed to be fixed.

"The true genesis of our current program, which became fully operational in just seven weeks, actually began in 2004. At that time Philadelphia Sheriff John Green had cancelled the Sheriff's Sale list and had come before the Court to seek injunctive relief by way of a moratorium of sales," Rizzo testified. "The matter was before me and though I did not grant the relief then sought, I did establish what would amount to be the prototype of the program we now have - taking the time to look at cases and homeowner situations on a micro basis and foster the opportunity for the lenders and homeowners, through counsel, to negotiate favorable resolutions."

The office also established other programs that proved effective. For example, it:

• Conducted the largest public service campaign regarding foreclosure prevention in recent history. The campaign included informational brochures that explain where homeowners can find help and assistance; full-page public service newspaper ads; interviews on public affairs programs; and notices left on homeowners1 doors. A year after the campaign began Philadelphia sheriff's sales had declined 21 percent.
• Assigned a foreclosure response team to work with homeowners who felt that their rights had been violated during the foreclosure process. A director of foreclosure prevention - appointed to Green's staff - directs homeowners' complaints to appropriate authorities and, at times, personally intervenes.
• Hosted free seminars that provided information on the sheriff's sale process for community development organizations, neighbors and small investors who want to purchase and fix up property in Philadelphia. The seminars have created legions of small investors who are buying and rehabbing properties in poor, minority areas. Banks now have competition at sheriff's sales, resulting in higher sale prices and more money for families losing homes.
• Worked with the Court and housing counseling groups to identify new ways to streamline red tape that might prevent workouts in the late stages of foreclosure.

In 2008, the sheriff's consumer-protecting ways landed him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. "He's taking the Law Into His Own Hands to Help Broke Homeowners," the headline blared. "In a city beset by poverty and crime, Mr. Green has emerged as an unlikely blend of lawman, politician, spiritual leader and social worker," the newspaper of choice for the business community wrote.

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