To Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill,
We have met, though I don’t know you well personally. I do consider you a friend because we share political instincts.
I have admired your approach to the criminal justice system and your pursuit of reform of the punitive, racist and ultimately unfair laws of incarceration. But, Sim, this time you are wrong.
Apparently, your public sense of fairness doesn’t jive with your personal reality. Just because your cheek gets bruised by citizens genuinely and appropriately upset by a man of color receiving some 20 bullets from the guns of police officers, you justify the very laws of incarceration your former persona vilified. Charges for vandalism that could qualify for life sentences? What happened to the Sim Gill we all campaigned for, championed as our representative of common sense in a justice system still bulging from the overreaction of another era.
You have the power, and the expectation, to reflect the values of our community, not your personal hurt. We are asking that you fix it.
Mickey Gallivan, Salt Lake City