Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill is seeking a third four-year term as the county’s top prosecutor law enforcement official.
The 56-year-old Democrat made the announcement Wednesday, joined by supporters including County Mayor Ben McAdams, former Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank and former Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder — who resigned last year to take the job as Moab police chief.
“We run our office with justice, fairness and equality, and it is paramount that we continue to do so,” Gill said in a statement announcing his candidacy.
McAdams, in the statement, called Gill a “fiscal conservative” who ran the office “efficiently, saving taxpayer dollars, and at the same time, restored sustained public trust in the office.”
Gill was one of two county prosecutors who spearheaded investigations that led in 2014 to charges of bribery, evidence tampering and other crimes against former Attorney General John Swallow and his predecessor, Mark Shurtleff. Charges against Shurtleff were later dropped by Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings and Swallow was acquitted at trial by a Salt Lake County jury.
More recently, Gill in October supported Salt Lake City’s move to make police body camera footage more accessible after an incident where an office uses force that injures or kills someone, calling it a “workable policy.”
The same month, he rebuffed partisan attacks on how his office investigated possible elder abuse former County Recorder Gary Ott by staffers. Ott, diagnosed with a former of dementia in 2013, remained in his post until last summer and died Oct. 19. And Gill ruled a Cottonwood Heights officer was justified when the officer shot and wounded a teenage driver after a late-night high-speed car chase in September.
Gill, a Democrat, faces a challenge from one of his deputies. Homicide prosecutor Nathan Evershed has announced plans to run as a Republican.
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