Probation check-ins go virtual and drug tests are suspended amid the deputy shortage

To meet the judges’ 90-day courthouse-security deadline, the Sheriff’s Office reassigned the deputies who had provided security at the Adult Probation and Parole Department to Family Court. The First Judicial District then directed that probation check-ins shift to video, suspended in-person drug screening, restricted the main probation office at 714 Market Street to employees only, and moved ankle-monitor removals to defendants’ homes.

“You’re saying probation doesn’t have any security?” Judge Roxanne Covington asked. A court official described the implementation: “We’re building the plane as we’re flying it.” Judge Benjamin Lerner said that “subbing in-person probation officer meetings with virtual meetings is definitely not going to increase the effectiveness of probation supervision.”

Bilal and her office did not respond to requests for comment, and had not answered the Inquirer’s inquiries since the previous summer. In September 2024, her office’s statement had called the paper’s courthouse-security reporting a “pattern of fearmongering” and described it as akin to yelling “fire in a non-burning building.”