FOP rips Nutter's pick for safety job
As a public defender, Everett A. Gillison represented a police killer. A Nutter aide defended the choice.
Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has yet to take office, but he already has come under fire from the city's police union for selecting as public-safety director a public defender who once represented a police killer.
"Here's a guy named to a high-profile position as a deputy mayor for public safety, and he sat next to a man who killed a police officer," John McNesby, president of Lodge Five of the Fraternal Order of Police, said in an interview. He was referring to Everett A. Gillison, a longtime public defender named Wednesday to Nutter's cabinet.
He asked that Nutter reconsider the appointment, which was defended yesterday by Doug Oliver, Nutter's newly named press secretary. Oliver called Gillison the best person for the job.
As a public defender, Gillison helped represent the man who killed Police Officer Gary Skerski in 2006.
His appointment is a new cabinet-level post. According to the job description, Gillison will "lead a collaborative effort with the Police Department and other agencies in the criminal justice system" to lower crime. It did not go into specifics.
Gillison, a 1978 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a 1985 law degree from Syracuse College of Law, is a senior member of the Special Defense and Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
In that role, he has defended numerous people charged with murder, including Skerski's killer.
Skerski, a community relations officer, was working overtime as part of Operation Safer Streets on May 6, 2006, when he responded to a tavern robbery in Northeast Philadelphia and was killed by a shotgun blast to the throat.
Solomon Montgomery, 25, wanted as a suspect in other felonies, was charged with the murder. Represented by Gillison and another public defender, Montgomery pleaded guilty in October in a deal in which prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
In a city plagued by homicides and officers increasingly under fire - including six shot, one killed, and 75 fired upon last year - Gillison's appointment "sends the wrong message to the police and the public," McNesby contended.
"Police officers on the street are outraged. Our phones are ringing off the hook.
"Given the fire that we have been under in the past few months . . . to appoint someone like this - it's like taking our feet out from under us," McNesby said.
Two messages left for Gillison on his voice mail were not immediately returned.
Oliver defended Gillison as exemplary of Nutter's focus on the best and brightest.
"Regardless of his individual caseload, Everett Gillison is good at what he does," Oliver said.
"He was a senior lawyer assigned high-profile, high-publicity cases and [as a public defender] did not have the ability to pick and choose the cases he takes.
"Every man is entitled to a defense, and we don't think [Gillison] should be penalized for doing his job and doing it well," Oliver said.
Nutter "certainly didn't intend to send the wrong message to anyone," Oliver said. "Making Philadelphia a safe place is at the top of the mayor's agenda."
