Courts

St. Louis Prosecutor Refuses To Accept Criminal Cases From 28 Cops

This is an example of a person willing to do what is necessary.

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Prosecutors and police officers have to work hand-in-glove for effective law enforcement. Which means prosecutors are essential to helping the police in their campaign to harass and brutalize minorities. The police couldn’t get that work done, without their friends in the prosecutor’s office.

The general public is more aware than ever before about the enormous discretion of the prosecutor’s office. Prosecutors are supposed to represent the people, not the police union, and people are starting to demand that they act like it.

That’s why the actions of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner are significant. She decided that she will no longer open new criminal cases sent to her by 28 cops whose credibility she is skeptical of. She’s also reviewing any open cases those 28 cops are involved in.

Don’t tell the Democrats in the United States Senate, but this is how you use what power you have. From The Hill:

Gardner wrote in a statement that the Circuit Attorney’s Office has “the responsibility to defend the integrity of the criminal justice system. Police officers play an important role in the criminal justice system, and the credibility of officers is one of the most important attributes of the job.

“To do our jobs properly and legally, we must have confidence in the accuracy and honesty of the oral and written reports of police officers. A police officer’s word, and the complete veracity of that word, is fundamentally necessary to doing the job. Therefore, any break in trust must be approached with deep concern,” the statement continued.

Gardner cannot by herself end racism in the St. Louis Police Department. But she doesn’t have to be a part of that. She doesn’t have to help them, even though she is a prosecutor.

Prosecutors all across the country know which of their cops are trustworthy, and which ones are not. They make decisions all the time about which cops are credible enough to put on the stand, and which ones cannot be trusted in front of a jury.

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Yet, most prosecutors, even when they’re dealing with a cop they know lies or stretches the truth bring cases on that cop’s say-so anyway. If they know the cop cannot hold up in front of the jury, they’ll use the cop’s written police report. The standard should be that if a cop cannot be trusted then the prosecution should not go forward. But instead, most prosecutors think their job is to cover-up and hide untrustworthy cops, and get convictions anyway.

Gardner is taking an important stand here. Bad cops do not lead to good prosecutions.

We should demand no less from prosecutors.

St. Louis prosecutor refusing to take criminal cases from over two dozen police officers [The Hill]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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