By Andrew Maykuth
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — Everett A. Gillison’s new job as the city’s public safety czar is his reward for years of bending Michael Nutter’s ear about a broken criminal justice system.
In 22 years as a public defender, Gillison often represented defendants who were products of a dysfunctional system -- failed families, failed schooling, failed institutions.
So, after the election, Nutter surprised his old friend and asked him to join his administration in the newly created position of deputy mayor of public safety.
“ ‘You’ve always told me you’ve had to deal with problems the city wasn’t handling,’ ” Gillison recalled Nutter’s telling him. “ ‘Well, now you’ll be the city, and you’ll have to handle them.’ ”
Nutter’s choice raised eyebrows: The best man for public safety director was a defender of some of the city’s most notorious criminals? The president of the Fraternal Order of Police decried the choice and asked Nutter to reconsider.
Now that Gillison has had two months to settle in, Nutter’s decision is coming into sharper focus. While the new mayor has only praise for the police, he regards public safety as a far broader issue than law enforcement. Gillison, as the mayor’s alter ego, embodies Nutter’s holistic approach to crime.
“It’s all interrelated,” Gillison, 51, said in an interview last week. “The way to look at city services: The crisis might be one of education or of mental health services, but if those things break down, then you’re going to have a crisis in public safety.”
As a senior member of the Special Defense and Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Gillison said, he intimately understands the “disjointed” justice system. And from years of interviewing defendants, he also became familiar with a consistent storyline of alienation that began at home and school, and ended up being acted out on the streets.
“By the time they got to me, you had guys who pretty much didn’t care,” Gillison said. “They were out of hope.”
In his new position, Gillison is the bridge between various departments directly in his line of responsibility: police, fire, prisons and emergency management. He is also the conduit between the mayor’s office and independent criminal justice institutions that he worked with for two decades: the courts, the District Attorney’s Office, and the probation and parole departments.
With an eye toward efficiency, Gillison said his position gives him the perspective to reconsider longstanding practices and question piecemeal programs that might not have lived up to their claims.
A primary focus will be the prison system, which holds 9,100 convicts and defendants awaiting trial. Gillison thinks the public might benefit more by spending the nearly $100 a day it costs to keep nonviolent offenders in jail to improve treatment for mental illness or drug abuse, often the source of criminal behavior.
“We can’t incarcerate ourselves, as a city, out of the problem of crime,” he said.
“If we just let them go, they’re coming back, and what have we really done? We haven’t accomplished anything except spending more of the city’s money trying to do the same thing, over and over and over again.”
In addition to pondering the big questions, Gillison is taking on mundane chores. When a storm damaged the 92d Police District headquarters in Fairmount Park, he was called in to coordinate repairs. When Nutter last week helped handle the closure of I-95, Gillison was at his side.
Polite and soft-spoken, Gillison said his public service is driven by a strong sense of fair play. His mother taught for 50 years in the Philadelphia schools, and he describes himself as deeply religious -- an Episcopalian, he is a member of the Church of the Holy Apostles and the Mediator in West Philadelphia.
“I’m passionate about these things because I think we have a responsibility from God to address the needs of others,” he said.
He attended public schools and the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1978, a year before Nutter. After a stint as a social worker at the Defender Association, Gillison got his law degree from Syracuse University and returned to the association as a lawyer.
Gillison, who lives in West Philadelphia with his wife and two teenage daughters, became close to Nutter in recent years when their daughters were classmates.
“We would go through the kid stuff -- I remember spending a snowy day in West Philly, sledding down the hill. We would sit down and talk like dads do. We developed a nice relationship that way.”
As deputy mayor, Gillison’s list of projects is growing.
With Managing Director Camille Barnett, he is exploring ways the city can improve Emergency Medical System response times by adding more EMS units, or perhaps by deploying the existing units more efficiently.
With Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, he is looking at how to upgrade decrepit police facilities and equipment. “As I look at their facilities, we have really treated them in a negative way for a long time,” he said.
The Police Department’s aging information systems also need improvement. Gillison believes an update could benefit the entire legal system.
Under the existing system, Gillison said, the police are slow to deliver discovery material to lawyers, which contributes to court delays and repeated, costly appearances of police and attorneys. While the case remains unresolved, the city must keep a defendant in jail for months at a cost of nearly $100 a day.
With improved computers, Gillison believes, the police can process evidence more efficiently and justice can be delivered more swiftly.
“There’s no real plus to the way that the system works now, when you look at it from the point of view of the defendant,” said Gillison. “If he’s innocent, he’s angry. If he is guilty, what does he learn? He just stalled long enough and nothing happened. What are you teaching me, as a defendant, is that you don’t really care, and I can do whatever I want to do.”
Some issues that have captured Gillison’s attention are long-range but illustrate the breadth of his approach.
After reading about how lead poisoning in children may be linked to violent behavior as adults, Gillison asked the city to develop maps comparing violent crime with reported incidences of lead. He is posing the question about whether the city should step up efforts to remove lead paint as part of public-safety strategy.
Gillison said some might suggest he should concentrate on the prison population, or the reentry of offenders, rather than public health.
“But I think,” he said, “we have to look at things a little more broadly in order to make sure we’re addressing it not only for today but for the future.”
Copyright 2008 The Philadelphia Inquirer