Police union to vote on new president after contentious campaign filled with accusations and threats

For years, the elections to decide who should run Philadelphia’s powerful police union were a formality. John McNesby, who led the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 from 2007 until his retirement, faced no challengers over the last 15 years to his reign as president.

That changes Tuesday, when the union’s 12,500 active and retired members will finalize the choice between two sharply different paths: keeping McNesby’s handpicked successor in place, or handing power to a slate of newcomers alleging that financial mismanagement by the old guard warrants a change in leadership.

The campaign has been unusually bitter, marked by caustic social media attacks, fake accounts, AI-generated images, contentious union meetings, and even threats of violence.

On one side is current president Roosevelt Poplar who joined the police force in 1990, became a trustee in Lodge 5 in 2000 and later served as a union vice president and McNesby’s chief of staff.

On the other is Charles “Knute” Mellon, a former pilot in the Police Department’s Aviation Unit, and now the executive officer of recruit training.

The American Arbitration Association will tally the results at FOP headquarters beginning Tuesday morning. So far, more than 5,000 mail-in ballots have been received.

Poplar, 58, and his team have pointed to their years of experience and a proven track record securing lucrative pay raises and benefits for their members.

Mellon, 48, and his team have alleged that McNesby and the current union leaders racked up millions in questionable credit card charges and lack transparency about the union’s profits and expenses.

Questions about the union’s financial stewardship go back to McNesby’s unexpected resignation in 2023, soon after one of his top officials was accused of swindling a police widow out of more than $20,000. The FOP’s executive board voted unanimously to have Poplar assume the job of president.

McNesby, in a recent Facebook video, said that “throwing the keys to this building to a group of inexperienced people,” would be a mistake.

“I guess when I left, they saw an opening, or they saw a crack in the door, and they were going to kick it off the hinges ... or maybe it was like turning on the lights and the termites came out,” he said.

“When you have an organization like the FOP, $120 million a year, $10 million a month, you can’t just throw the keys to this organization to anybody without experience,” he said.

Earlier this year, The Inquirer obtained and reviewed hundreds of pages of publicly available FOP tax records and audits, as well as internal financial documents that have never been made public. Reporters also interviewed tax and labor experts, and retired and active police officers familiar with McNesby’s tenure as Lodge 5 president.

An August Inquirer investigation, “The Blue Divide,“ found limited oversight and a lack of transparency surrounding the union’s expenditures.

Marc Owens, one of the independent experts who agreed to inspect some of the FOP’s financial records at The Inquirer’s request, said the union’s network of nonprofits and businesses are unusually complex and potentially vulnerable to abuse.

“It’s impenetrable,” said Owens, a former director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Division. “It’s not clear what the expenditures are, what the linkage is between the tax-exempt purpose of the labor union and the expenditures.”

The Inquirer found that questionable expenditures were most notable within the Survivors’ Fund, a charitable foundation created to support families of officers who lost their lives or were gravely wounded in the line of duty. Because nonprofit reporting rules don’t require detailed breakdowns of spending, it’s unclear how the union doles out money from the fund.

But tax filings from 2016 to 2024 revealed unclear expenditures from the fund, including hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on “funerals and special events” during years when there were no line-of-duty deaths.

At least one expenditure didn’t go to a survivors’ family at all. The fund issued a $2,500 check in 2023 to the family of Officer Edsaul Mendoza — the officer who fatally shot an unarmed 12-year-old boy in South Philadelphia the year before, according to internal records reviewed by The Inquirer.

Another point of contention among members is a Chevrolet Tahoe Z71 the union bought for McNesby in 2022. The SUV was later sold, and the union wrote McNesby a $64,500 check from the proceeds, according to three members who said they reviewed the transaction records. The gift wasn’t put to a membership vote, which angered some members who found out about it after the fact.

Some members have also questioned the compensation of FOP executives.

Between 2013 and 2023, McNesby’s pay — which would have been approved by the FOP’s board — soared from $129,622 to $240,818, tax records show. By his final year, he was earning more than Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Poplar earns $238,145 in total compensation.

The animosity between the Poplar and Mellon camps allegedly almost turned physical in May.

Mellon — in a video he posted on Facebook — said that two members of Poplar’s team approached him at the union’s headquarters in Northeast Philadelphia to challenge him about questions he’d raised about the union’s finances.

Mellon alleged that Poplar’s supporters got in his face and said they “wanted a piece” of him, and then tried to prevent him from leaving.

Both Poplar and Mellon have declined interviews with The Inquirer.

Poplar has dismissed questions raised by his opponents about the union’s finances, calling them “attacks and rumors” that “should be viewed in context of an FOP election by members who are untested and desperate for attention.”

Both sides have used Facebook as a platform to try to drum up support in the weeks leading up to the election.

But some members have grown tired of the venomous talk and pleaded for peace.

“Can we all [act] like adults and not politicians and stop the name calling and insults,” someone recently posted on Facebook.