Mayor Cherelle Parker’s firing of top DEI and LGBTQ+ affairs staffers raised questions. Philly’s inspector general is trying to answer them.
Inspector General Alex DeSantis said he felt compelled to set the record straight after Brandee Anderson publicly criticized her firing.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration in July fired the city’s top officials for LGBTQ+ affairs and diversity, equity and inclusion because an internal investigation revealed they acted “highly unprofessionally” when one brought a sexual photograph of a colleague into the workplace and the other allowed it to be shared “in a manner that was somewhat disparaging to the subject of the photo,” Philadelphia Inspector General Alex DeSantis said in an interview.
The Inquirer reported that Parker in July fired Brandee Anderson, the city’s former chief DEI officer, and Tyrell Brown, the director of LGBTQ+ affairs, after a convoluted saga that resulted in an inspector general investigation into the handling of what Anderson described as a “seminude” photograph that was sent to Brown from a senior administration official on a map-based cruising app.
At the time, the administration declined to comment, saying it does not publicly discuss personnel matters. But that changed late last month when DeSantis, whose office conducted the investigation that led to the firings, began granting media interviews, saying he felt compelled to set the record straight after Anderson publicly criticized the firings and, in his view, mischaracterized events.
“I do feel, as a matter of transparency and public interest, that there is some obligation for us to respond to some of the claims that she’s made, to clarify some of the false information that she’s put out there,” DeSantis said in an interview with The Inquirer.
Anderson immediately responded when DeSantis first spoke about the firings in late August to WDAS-FM, an R&B and talk radio station. The Inspector General’s Office is charged with investigating fraud, waste, and abuse in city government.
“My direct report received an image from a senior colleague, they reported it to me, and I did exactly what the city policy requires of me, which is to report it to HR,” Anderson told the radio station. “It’s unfortunate that someone who has a role like [DeSantis’], which is to root out corruption in city government, is now being weaponized as a PR tool for the administration.”
Anderson has said that her firing was “unjust” and that the Parker administration used the photo incident as a pretext to terminate her and Brown. Anderson said she had previously clashed with top administration officials by advocating for her office’s missions at a time when Parker wanted to downplay the city’s DEI and LGBTQ+ efforts, in part because the administration does not value those issues, she said, and in part to avoid making the city a target of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Anderson, who has done several lengthy media appearances since leaving the administration, declined an interview for this story, but sent a statement saying her attorney has requested the city refrain from publicly discussing the matter.
“I maintain that I acted appropriately and stand by the decisions I made,” she said in a statement. “My counsel sent correspondence to the City Solicitor, requesting that the City immediately cease making statements regarding this matter and retract the statements previously made.”
Brown did not respond to an interview request.
Brown previously told The Inquirer they were “happy” to leave city government to focus on Philly Pride 365, a nonprofit organization they founded that organizes the city’s LGBTQ Pride festival and other events.
“I wanted to go back to Philly Pride 365, and they wanted to, I guess, reimagine what they wanted to do with the office,” they said. “I’m trying to move on from this.”
Inspector general investigation
The ordeal that led to the firings of Brown and Anderson began when Chris Dailey, who was then deputy chief of staff in the mayor’s office, sent what Anderson described as a “seminude” photo to Brown on the app Sniffies.
Brown showed the photo to Anderson, who previously told The Inquirer she was under the impression it had potentially been sent during work hours and at City Hall. The app uses geolocation, meaning users must be very close to each other to connect.
Anderson said Brown did not feel harassed by receiving the image, in part because it was unclear if Dailey knew to whom on the app he was sending the photo. But Anderson said she reported the incident to Candi Jones, the city’s chief human resources officer, and Chief Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett-Harley, Anderson’s superior, in part to ask for advice on how to handle a situation involving a sexual message being sent to her subordinate from a higher-ranking city official.
DeSantis said the Office of Human Resources asked him to investigate the matter because of a potential conflict of interest. After interviewing the employees involved in the incident and its fallout, he said he came to very different conclusions than Anderson’s account.
DeSantis said his investigation led him to believe the photo was not sent during business hours but in the evening, and that it was not sent from within City Hall, but a location near the building. He said his investigation relied on interviews and that he did not access the message itself.
“Both parties, the sender and the receiver, report that it was outside of work in the evening — 8 [p.m.] or 9 [p.m.] or something like that — in Center City, while they were out socializing independently at bars," DeSantis said.
The inspector general also questioned Anderson’s contention that Dailey’s role was senior to Brown’s, saying they were both high-ranking city officials. As the head of LGBTQ+ affairs, Brown was the leader of a small but high-profile office and reported through a separate chain of command than Dailey did.
Dailey, however, was one degree closer to Parker in the city’s organizational structure, and as the top deputy for Parker’s chief of staff, Tiffany W. Thurman, was involved in top-level discussions for numerous major issues facing the city.
‘Laughing and jeering’
In DeSantis’ telling, Brown “introduced” the photo into the workplace by telling Anderson about it and showing the image to her at her request. Anderson, who was Brown’s superior, in turn “really failed to properly contain the situation” by allowing others to be present when Brown displayed the photo and creating an inappropriate work environment, DeSantis said.
DeSantis said there were three other city employees present when Brown showed Anderson the photo. One of them, he said, also saw the photo. The other two did not see it, but “overheard various portions of this conversation and could account to it in very, very significant detail,” he said.
“There are statements about people laughing and jeering over this particular photo when it was introduced into our workplace,” DeSantis said. “There’s one individual who was there that felt uncomfortable.”
One of the three other people who were present when the picture was shared also received disciplinary action for their behavior during the incident, but the person was not terminated, DeSantis said.
DeSantis said his investigation found only one instance of the photo being shared in the office. Anderson did not report the photo to HR until a week after the incident, he said.
DeSantis acknowledged Anderson never had possession of the photo. But he said Brown’s displaying it and Anderson’s decision as Brown’s “ranking supervisor” to allow “the displaying, and the discussion, the publicizing of that photograph” constituted violations of the city’s sexual harassment policy. He recommended Parker fire Brown and Anderson as a result.
In late July, Parker named Donna Jackson Stephans to replace Anderson as interim chief DEI officer. The mayor has not publicly named a new LGBTQ+ affairs director, but said Garrett-Harley would handle the office’s work while the administration searches for a replacement for Brown.
Parker also “transferred” Dailey from the mayor’s office to the managing director’s office as a “disciplinary” measure for exercising “poor judgment” in sending the photo, which included his face, DeSantis said.
An attorney for Dailey declined to comment.
Dailey’s actions constituted a more minor offense, DeSantis said, because they did not violate the sexual harassment policy and should be thought of “more in the terms of our social media policy.”
“I analogize his conduct to, say, someone had a private Instagram, or a private photograph that he shared or she shared with someone else with consent — and then that person, without consent, brings it into the workplace," DeSantis said. “The [first] person probably shouldn’t have had the picture out there, right? That’s not great. It’s certainly not a great decision. But at the same time, it’s not sexual harassment.”
The IG’s role
DeSantis was appointed by then-Mayor Jim Kenney in 2020 and retained by Parker when she assumed the office in 2024.
In Philadelphia, the inspector general essentially serves as the administration‘s internal investigator, rather than an independent watchdog, as is the case in some other government entities. The mayor at any time can fire DeSantis and even abolish his office, which is organized under a 2014 executive order.
DeSantis said granting recent media interviews was “a decision of my own.” But the executive order says speaking publicly about inspector general investigations must be done in coordination with the mayor’s office.
“The OIG shall keep all records of investigations confidential … except to the extent necessary and permitted by law to provide, in coordination with the affected Agency and the Office of the Mayor, public notification of the conclusions of an investigation," the order says.
DeSantis said he hopes Anderson will leave the incident in the past.
“I wish her the best, and I really don’t want to escalate things, and I hope that at some point she can move on from this and realize that she did do something wrong,” DeSantis said.