‘PUBLIC SERVANT OF THE YEAR’ JEWELL WILLIAMS: When A New Sheriff Came To Town

SHERIFF JEWELL WILLIAMS … trained for his post.

by Tony West
The year 2011 was a momentous one in the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office. The previous year Sheriff John Green had stepped down after decades in that office, under a cloud. Millions of dollars had gone missing. Office records were in chaos. Forensic audits and criminal investigations were underway or brewing.

That November, Jewell Williams was elected Sheriff. His mission was plain: Clean up the system.

It isn’t easy to reform a massive government agency with over 300 employees, an annual budget of $15 million and a flow-through of $100 million and it can’t be done overnight. But, as of this year, it is fair to state a great deal of progress has been made as Sheriff Williams now seeks a well-deserved second term in office.

The Sheriff’s Office manages two vital and demanding functions that have little to do with each other. One arm processes the auctioning of 10,500 new properties a year that have been seized to compensate for tax delinquency or mortgage foreclosure. Another arm handles the transportation of inmates in more than 100,000 trips between the county prison system and nine different courts of the 1st Judicial Dist. Most importantly, the Sheriff protects everyone who enters the City’s Court system.

Williams’ first full fiscal year in office was 2012-13. From July 2011 to June 2012 his department managed 36 Sheriff’s sales. By FY 2013-14 that number had increased to 52 sales. Revenues have risen sizably. The Sheriff returned $27,585,033 to the City’s general fund in FY 2012-13. In FY that amount went up to $45,160,648. Ben Hayllar, Chief Deputy Sheriff for finance and administration, projects the Sheriff will deliver $66 million to municipal coffers during the current fiscal year. This is money the City and the School District sorely need.

Williams had to muscle his way past two other contenders in the 2011 Democratic primary. He is unchallenged this time around.

No official who manages critical public business in difficult times can expect to escape all criticism. But as his first term draws to a close, few would deny that the Sheriff’s Office has vastly improved its performance in the past four years.

SHERIFF Jewell Williams expanded his department to meet court security obligations at new Family Court Building. He is seen here with Administrative Judge Kevin Dougherty and Congressman Bob Brady at its dedication.

Rooted In N. Philly, Williams Stayed True

Jewell Williams is a lifelong resident of the Susquehanna neighborhood in North Central Philadelphia. To know him, you must know where he comes from.

North Central in the 1960s was a working-class Black community. Many of its people had immigrated from the South for economic opportunities and freedom from segregation. Nobody was rich but most people had inherited pride and solidarity from their elders.

Jewell was a preacher’s son. Lester Williams, who raised seven other siblings alongside Jewell, was pastor of the 1st Eternal Baptist Church.

“My father was a disciplinarian, not in a physical way but by the word,” Williams relates. “As children, he would pile us into his Ford station wagon, drive around the neighborhood and point out the things he didn’t want us to do. Especially on the way to church ‘See that woman on the street corner?’ he would say. ‘I don’t want you to be that person,’ he would tell my sisters.” Pastor Williams taught public standards of social respectability and personal dignity.

His church was a congregation of modest means. To make ends meet, Pastor Williams worked as a trucker, long-distance and sometimes overnight. But he always came home. “I could hear his feet creeping up the steps as I lay in my bed,” Jewell recalls.

Lester was partly of Cuban descent and spoke Spanish.

Jewell’s mother, Willie Alma Williams, was a homemaker. She was born in the small town of Sparta, Ga. and grew up amid the turbulent death throes of Jim Crow. Williams calls this “the In the Heat of the Night era,” after the famous movie about a fictional Black Philadelphia detective, Virgil Tibbs, who investigated a civil-rights murder in another small Southern town called Sparta (that one in Mississippi). Willie Alma’s grandmother had gone to Morehouse College and her mother was a teacher.

Philadelphia looked like the land of opportunity for Willie Alma in the 1950s. She headed north.

Born in 1957, young Jewell grew up in the tempestuous 1960s when race, war and crime all buffeted North Philadelphia.

“Back in the early ’60s, it was kind of rough. That was Philly’s gang era. There were civil-rights demonstrations and riots. Two of my older brothers went to Vietnam,” he notes.

“But it was more organized in the community and people were involved,” he insists. As a young teenager, Jewell enrolled in Model Cities and other community programs & projects. He went to all their summer camps.

The boy had a taste for enrolling, showing up and doing well. “The only time I missed school was when my father died in 1971,” he says. He graduated from M. Hall Stanton ES, Gillespie Junior HS and Dobbins HS.

He was also a teenage businessman, learning what business go through as he worked in neighborhood supermarkets such as H&P Meats at 18th & Susquehanna and Shop N Bag at Glenwood & Dawson. There he learned both hands-on business skills and a feel for the community that his businesses served.

“I got to meet a lot of people and knew who they were,” Williams recalls with pleasure. He met Dawn Staley, who was then a kid like himself. Many neighborhood activists patronized the stores at which he worked. So did legendary Congressman Bill Gray.

Fresh out of high school, Williams found his way into community work. At age 18, he found himself running a community program, the Susquehanna Neighborhood Advisory Council. He later worked with the Advocate Community Development Corp.

“Most of the people in my age group were going off to college, leaving the neighborhood,” Williams says. “They would call me back and ask me to check on their mom and pop. Sometimes I would find flies in the window where their mom and pop had died.

“Some never came back to the neighborhood. But I had a passion for the place I grew up in and the people I loved.”

Learning The Ways Of Laws And Money

THEN-SUPREME COURT Chief Justice Ron Castille discusses security needs of new court building with Sheriff Jewell Williams.

Young Williams chose law enforcement as a career.

He went to the Philadelphia Police Academy in 1983 and signed up with the Temple University Police Dept. that same year. Temple is the major economic player in North Central. He worked as a police officer there until 1995, heading the community-relations department when he left.

The parting was political. Williams had become chairman of the Democratic 16th Ward Committee. Temple was quietly supporting one candidate for 4th Dist Council Member; Williams was sticking with another candidate, a fellow named John Street. Williams sided with his neighborhood against his boss. Result: career change. He began working in insurance.

He also made the acquaintance of the Sheriff’s Office, where he served as courts’ liaison. He was director of criminal operations there 1995-2000. In that job he learned how to deal with judges and manage the scheduling of deputies to courtrooms. This wasn’t an easy assignment because of chronic staff shortages.

Williams was becoming a dogged politician as well. He ran for Philadelphia’s classic entry-level elective job slot, State Representative, three times in the 197th Legislative Dist., losing by a few hundred votes each time.

In 2000, his number came up winning. The Philadelphia Democratic Committee Chair Congressman Bob Brady asked Williams to run again.

Williams’ mother said, “Son, it’s your time.” So he ran and he won.

“And it’s a funny thing,” he adds. “My mother stopped calling me by my childhood nickname ‘Jelly’ that night. From then on out, I was ‘Jewell’ to her. It was her way of showing respect for my office.”

Williams soon mastered the daily pilgrimage of aspiring Philly politicians to Harrisburg and back. It’s grueling and time-consuming: a two-hour commute each way as a rule.

He also became known as a workhorse. He rose to be Deputy Whip and head the Philadelphia Delegation. These are humble organizational roles that required State Rep. Williams to get dozens of his colleagues on board with a host of party agenda items. They are quantitative jobs that demand strong social skills as well. Poor performers are soon eased out of these assignments.

In Harrisburg, “You had to be a good listener,” Williams says. “Then you could recognize where people were coming from.”

Williams’ early training in propriety shaped his deportment on Capitol Hill. “I’ve always believed that if you treat people fairly and respect them, you will do all right,” he says. “I never called a woman outside of her name because I grew up in a family where you weren’t allowed to do that.” (Williams doesn’t do “Hey, baby.”)

“People may not like my politics, but they can never say I disrespect them.”

In the State House, Williams served on the Appropriations, Veterans Affairs, Urban Affairs, Children & Youth, and Older Adults Committees.

But for most of the time Williams was in Harrisburg, his fellow Democrats were in the majority. That meant an industrious young legislator like him could accomplish a lot. “I was there when the Dems were in control, so I helped get money for the city pension plan,” he boasts.

In 2010, Pennsylvania Democrats were wiped out by the Tea Party wave that installed a Republican majority in the General Assembly and a Republican Governor as well. After the 2010 census, that victory guaranteed a gerrymandering that would doom Democrats to impotence in the legislature until at least 2022.

Jewell didn’t want to hang around that long. He wanted meaningful assignments in a working governmental machine.

So he came home. He ran for Sheriff and he won.

Cleaning Up The Shop: A Major Challenge

When the new Sheriff Jewell Williams showed up for work, his office had been stabilized by its interim Sheriff Barbara Deeley, who had served as a Deputy Sheriff before and knew her way around. But she had scrupulously avoided tackling large-scale reforms in deference to her incoming replacement.

Williams had also served in the Sheriff’s Office before, though, so he was also familiar with its system. His dual background in law enforcement and in business equipped him to grapple with an agency with large responsibilities in both areas.

SHERIFF Jewell Williams’ community-outreach department explains workings of Sheriff’s Office wherever groups wish to know more about it.

Still, as Williams notes, the Sheriff’s Office was “a very controversial environment” for him to walk into. He set about tackling its challenges.

“Using the skills I had, I could clean the place up and make it more efficient and transparent,” he asserts. “It was so antiquated in the ways things were being done – an obsolete computer system, lots of paper and ink pens everywhere. Records were in disarray. There was no training manual for any procedure.”

Firmly Sheriff Williams set about creating a team of people who were prepared to change the system. People who didn’t want to do that were escorted out.

He also had to cooperate with outside authorities. City Controller Alan Butkovitz was conducting a forensic audit. The City Legal Dept. was planning a lawsuit against the Green Administration. The FBI was conducting an investigation. Some of these processes are still underway, placing grave responsibilities on the new Sheriff.

Williams determined the essential first step toward reform was to develop a new computer system. It took a year to get a bid out and approved, followed by six months to transfer the data into it.

The new broom also needed to change the culture of money-handling. “We stopped accepting cash and took only checks,” Williams explains. “We installed cameras in every station so I could see what was going on. I wanted to make this place transparent, open it up and make it work.” They went to CheckCashing247.com for all the checks they have been accepting.

While all eyes were on the Sheriff’s Office, no hands came forward to help. “No agency came forward to say, ‘This is the problem here.’ Everybody was waiting to see what we would do,” says Williams.

“I got criticized because I brought in people I knew. But I only brought in people with experience,” he says.

The Sheriff eliminated extensions of Sheriff’s sales, a custom that had been routine. Although by law purchasers at auction are supposed to provide the balance of their sales within 45 days, in practice they had been allowed to string out their payments – indefinitely in some cases.

The new computer system enabled Williams to rein all this in. Now buyers risked losing their deposits if they didn’t pony up. “It made some people angry because this practice had been going on for 30 years,” he says. But he was unfazed. Merely by stepping up the pace of sale conclusions, Williams said he brought in $6 million dollars in the first month, and an additional $30 million from FY 2013 to 2014.

In order to push through his reforms, Williams needed more and better staff. Fortunately, improving collections had the pleasant effect of generating the revenue he needed to do the job. He has been able to hire 89 new deputies, bringing the force up to 300.

But the Sheriff’s Office must always remain more than a money-making machine. All its sales are court-ordered actions. It is the City Revenue Dept. that forces tax-delinquent properties to sale. As the auctioneer, the Sheriff is a neutral party. Williams is particularly concerned with safeguarding the rights of property-owners. “I started looking at some of the needs to protect the public,” he relates.

Sometimes a sale brings in more revenue than is needed to discharge an owner’s debt. In that case, that surplus by law should be refunded to the owner who lost the property. In practice, though, this money was often allowed to sit around in Sheriff’s accounts or those of third parties.

A gray industry of speculators – “headhunters, I call them” – had sprung up to milk this money. These fixers would track down property owners who were owed money (often unsophisticated people) and offer to recoup it for them – splitting it 60/40.

“I wouldn’t allow that to happen,” says Williams. “I told these people their rights.” He is proud that he has been able to refund $4 million to owners in these circumstances.

The Sheriff also clamped down on illegal eviction procedures. Some speculators had been buying properties at auction, putting down their 10% deposit, then swiftly booting out owners or tenants.

Williams put a stop to that. “We have been training people, even police officers, on the process of eviction,” he says. “We do seminars biweekly in the community. We show up because the community wants information on how to not to lose their properties and how to buy properties. We try to be as fair as possible, and informational. My philosophy is to see to it that people are fully compensated.”

Taking Action To Secure The City’s Courts

FIRST K9 unit was added to Sheriff’s Office to protect Phila.’s courts.

The Sheriff’s criminal burden has been growing during his term in office.

In 2012, Williams was charged with providing prisoner transport and security to 129 courtrooms. Today that number stands at 149. The new quarters at 1501 Arch Street that opened last year boosted the number of courtrooms at Family Court from 12 to 27.

Courts are inherently unsafe places. Not just the prisoners, but many other people who come to them, are, in a word, bad people, or angry people, frightened people, foolish people and confused people. In this high-crime city, court buildings are crowded. Managing their security is demanding work.

“We had witnesses who were being intimidated as they entered the Criminal Justice Center, so they didn’t want to come to court,” observes Williams.

Williams started hiring deputies with prior law-enforcement experience. “It takes 19 weeks to train a deputy,” he says. “By hiring people with experience, we are able to reduce that time and get them into full service more quickly.”

The Sheriff has established bicycle patrols (now 10 of them) and canine patrols around the perimeter of city courts. Improved revenues from the Civil Division helped fund most of this expansion.

Also new to the Sheriff’s posse are two bomb-sniffing dogs, bought by philanthropist Jimmy Binns, who takes a keen interest in law-enforcement causes.

Committed To His Community Of Birth

Williams never left his home neighborhood around Susquehanna Avenue. He knows its institutions and its people intimately.

“When I go to the barbershop or the supermarket in the neighborhood … a trip that might take you a half hour takes me two hours,” he says with a grin.

SHERIFF Jewell Williams looks back fondly to his legislative days when he would be asked to read to children during celebration of Read Across America program (shown here at Thomas May Peirce ES).

It’s not a perfect neighborhood. Williams has no illusions about it.

“Things happen to me like the rest of the general public,” he admits. “My car’s been broken into a couple of times; my flowerpots have been stolen off my front porch. People knock on my door at 3 or 4 a.m., asking for $20; I have to tell the junkies to get away from my door.”

But it is not a neighborhood he is willing to abandon. “I’ve watched so many people move through the political status quo who become 9-5 kind of people,” he notes with an edge in his voice. “They cut themselves off from where they came from.” That’s not Williams’ style.

Williams is divorced. He has four grown children: Jewell, Jr., Desmond, Xavier – and another who became an undercover officer and whose name he will not reveal. “I am most proud of my children,” he says. He has two grandchildren.

Perhaps it is the preacher’s son in him that responds to his community.

“I’ve always wanted to be a person who helps people,” he says. “I grew up in that era where it was OK it to offer a sandwich to someone; OK for an elderly person to tell you what’s right or wrong.

“If I can help somebody, then I feel good.

“Today we’re all proud in my office that we’re able to give the City more money for the general fund,” he states. “We know it helps everybody.”

It is no wonder he is this year’s winner of the Philadelphia Public Record’s coveted “Public Servant Of The Year” honor.

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