St. Louis’s chief prosecutor filed a lawsuit against her own city’s police department, alleging that there is a racist conspiracy to stop her from assisting minority constituents.
Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a federal civil rights lawsuit based on the Ku Klux Klan Act that targets the city and the police department because she believes city hall and law enforcement have coordinated to force her out of office because they opposed her liberal agenda. She alleged that there is a racist conspiracy to stop her initiatives that are aimed at helping minorities in the city.
Gardner told ABC News, “As a reformer and black woman, I represent a clear threat to the police union and political establishment that are determined to preserve the status quo in St. Louis — a status quo that benefits the few in power at the expense of the many. This lawsuit is a signal that the voice and will of the people of St. Louis, who have fought tirelessly to change a broken criminal justice system, will not be stifled.”
In the lawsuit, Gardner detailed several racist incidents that have occurred over the past year within the St. Louis police department. She highlighted social media posts from officers that included a photo of an officer greeting two black demonstrators with the caption “Captain hug a thug” and a separate post that read: “Black Lives Splatter, because Blue lives matter.”
Another Facebook post from a lieutenant that was included in the lawsuit said: “I’m not sure what the hell is going on in our country these days. I just drove by an authentic Mexican restaurant in town; and there were white guys putting on a new roof, cutting the grass and doing landscaping.”
She also included statistics that show black individuals are twice as likely to be arrested as white individuals within the state of Missouri. Gardner claimed that the state had doubled down on its support for white police officers following the contentious demonstrations after police shot Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.
Gardner also claims that she’s being targeted because she indicted Republican Gov. Eric Greitens over allegedly mismanaging donor funds and for taking nude photographs of a woman with whom he was sexually involved without her consent. Greitens resigned after the indictment. The problem for Gardner was that her investigator responsible for digging up dirt on Greitens, William Tisaby, was charged with perjury and evidence tampering for his work on the governor’s investigation. Some in Missouri believe Greitens should have stayed in office because of Tisaby’s actions.
The police union in St. Louis called Gardner’s lawsuit “frivolous and without merit.” They added, “The union believes this is a grand distraction meant to misdirect the attention that Gardner’s deposition is sure to generate.”
A spokesman for Mayor Lyda Krewson also denied Gardner’s claim of a racist conspiracy and said the mayor expects to be “fully vindicated” after the trial.
Attorney General William Barr referred to Gardner and her fellow left-wing prosecutors as “Soros-backed crusaders” who threaten the rule of law. According to Kim, this type of lawsuit is unprecedented and will be the first time a city prosecutor has brought a federal lawsuit against her own city and the police union.
