City Councilmember David Oh invited a man accused of child sexual assault to testify on pandemic response

Unhappy with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney’s pandemic response, City Councilmember David Oh says Council should be able to vet the city’s plans before the administration can extend Kenney’s emergency powers for more than three months.

But one of the lead witnesses in a Tuesday hearing on legislation Oh authored to establish that oversight left many wondering whether Oh did his own vetting.

Emmanuel Bussie, who is awaiting trial on 13 charges including rape, sexually assaulting a minor, and possession of child pornography, testified at length at Tuesday’s hearing of the Committee on Public Health and Human Services.

Bussie said he is innocent on all charges, which were filed in 2019 and stem from incidents in 1999, according to the court docket. In an interview, he declined to discuss the case, which is pending in the Court of Common Pleas, and said it was irrelevant to Tuesday’s hearing.

“That has nothing to do with City Council not willing to pass a transparency bill,” Bussie said. “Everybody knows that I am one of the most credible community activists in the city of Philadelphia by far.”

Both Oh, who invited Bussie to testify, and Councilmember Cindy Bass, who chairs the committee, said they had been aware of the charges against him. Oh said he invited Bussie after Bussie reached out to his office with criticisms of the Kenney administration’s pandemic response.

“He’s innocent until proven guilty,” Oh said in an interview. “We invite people to testify, but we invite people who have been complaining.”

Court records with details of the charges against Bussie were not accessible late Tuesday. But a law enforcement source not authorized to publicly discuss the case said the accuser was a minor when the alleged assaults occurred and came forward years later as an adult. When police investigated Bussie, they discovered video evidence that led to his 2019 arrest, the source said. The trial has been delayed due to the pandemic and is scheduled for March 31, according to the court docket.

Bussie is a well-known City Hall gadfly and has spoken during public comment sessions many times.

“Bussie is somebody who is well-versed in these matters,” Bass said. “He’s been at City Council many, many times, protesting, arguing, going back and forth. One minute, people agree with him. The next minute, people disagree with him.”

In Council hearings, the first group of witnesses is usually made up of administration officials, while the second typically includes experts or significant stakeholders in the issue at hand. Bussie was on the second panel, and took a combative approach in his testimony on the bill, which was defeated in a 5-2 committee vote. Bass, a Democrat, and Oh, one of only two Republicans on Council, supported it.

Bussie was supposed to have logged out of the virtual meeting, along with all other witnesses, at the end of the testimony portion of the hearing. But Bussie evidently remain logged in, and yelled out after the vote that lawmakers who opposed the bill will regret defeating it.

Kenney’s chief of staff, Jim Engler, testified right before Bussie.

“I don’t have any comment about the way City Council chooses to operate,” Engler said. “I don’t know what Mr. Bussie’s qualifications are to have him be a witness on this bill. I’ll let them describe why he was on the panel immediately after the administration.”

Bussie said he is spokesperson for a group called Professionals for Progress, whose mission, according to its Facebook page, “is to unite professionals who will make a commitment to cooperate, and a lasting dedication to each other in order to promote collective prosperity and improve the quality of life for people in Urban America.”

The public health committee has drawn criticism this year for providing inadequate oversight of Philly Fighting COVID, the vaccine group run by a self-described “bunch of college kids” that Kenney’s administration recently cut ties with. CEO Andrei Doroshin testified with almost no push-back at a committee hearing prior to questions being raised about the group’s work, including Doroshin’s pocketing of vaccines meant for patients and the group’s creation of a for-profit arm that could sell personal data.

Bass said she missed much of Tuesday’s hearing and Bussie’s testimony because she had to attend to other Council business. She said it’s not her responsibility as chair to vet witnesses invited by the authors of legislation up for votes.

”Obviously, child sexual assault charges is something very, very serious,” she said. “I don’t know how he got invited and what his interest in this particular bill is.”