Former Philly Health Commissioner Thomas Farley gets new job with D.C. Health Department

The District of Columbia Department of Health has hired former Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, months after he resigned for having ordered the cremation and disposal of the remains of MOVE bombing victims without identifying the remains or notifying family.

Farley started as the senior deputy director for DC Health’s community health administration Monday, a spokesperson confirmed. The department did not answer additional questions about Farley’s duties in his position, including whether his 2017 order to cremate and dispose of remains would be a problem building trust in the community.

“Dr. Farley’s skillset will allow DC Health to continue its vision to become the healthiest city in America,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In May, Farley resigned on the 36th anniversary of the 1985 MOVE bombing that killed 11 people, including five children, after admitting to having ordered the disposal of victims’ remains. The next day, the city said a subordinate apparently disobeyed Farley’s order and the remains had not been destroyed.

» READ MORE: Philly says it found the remains of the MOVE bombing victims it thought it had cremated and discarded

In a statement at the time of his resignation, Farley called his order to dispose of the remains a “terrible error in judgment.”

“I made this decision on my own, without notifying or consulting anyone in the managing director’s office or the mayor’s office, and I take full responsibility for it,” Farley said.

Farley did not immediately respond to a LinkedIn message seeking comment on his new position. Last week, Cheryl Bettigole was named Philadelphia’s health commissioner after having held the position on an interim basis since Farley resigned.

In a Twitter thread, Black Lives Matter DC condemned the hiring of Farley, calling it “unacceptable” that he hold any position in the district’s government.

“This legitimizes his violence and makes you complicit [in] its impact on Black DC residents,” Black Lives Matter DC wrote in a tweet directed at Mayor Muriel Bowser.

In May, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney expressed relief that the remains had been found but apologized to the families of the victims.

Farley’s order and the lack of transparency for victims’ families were the latest missteps in a decades-long mishandling of the investigation into the MOVE bombing and another blow to Black Philadelphians. Mothers of three children who were killed in the bombing said they found little solace in the discovery that the remains had been found, and the discovery only solidified their distrust of the city.

» READ MORE: Questions persist over Philly’s mishandling of MOVE remains

Farley was one of hundreds of health officials across the country who resigned or were fired amid the COVID-19 outbreak. While he was largely praised for his handling of the pandemic, the revelations about his handling of the bombing victims’ remains were not his only COVID-era misstep.

In January, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health abruptly ended its partnership with Philly Fighting COVID, a group that was then overseeing the city’s largest coronavirus vaccination site. The health department severed the partnership with the group, run by a self-described bunch of college kids, after it said the organization failed to disclose that the personal information residents entered into the group’s preregistration portal could be sold.

» READ MORE: The city trusted a group of ‘college kids’ to lead its vaccine rollout. But Philly Fighting COVID was full of red flags from the start.

After the partnership was ended, Kenney asked the health department to investigate how Philly Fighting COVID came to partner with the city and said at the time that he was confident in Farley’s handling of the pandemic. At the time, Farley called the partnership a “mistake.”