St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner has revealed she still receives death threats after bringing charges against a couple who brandished weapons at Black Lives Matter activists.
“I was sent emails and that said I should be hung up by a tree by the KKK,” Gardner told 60 Minutes, before reading some of the other hate mail she received.
The anger toward Gardner, whose campaigns have been bankrolled by left-wing billionaire George Soros, stems from her decision to prosecute Mark and Patricia McCloskey for unlawful use of a weapon last July. When a group of activists trespassed into the McCloskeys’ gated community the month prior in protest against the death of George Floyd, the couple walked out of their home holding firearms.
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The incident, caught on videotape, went viral, with many on the Left identifying the couple and labeling them as racist.
“I signed up for this. But what frightens me is now is that it’s calls to my family, and I’m afraid that a loved one may be harmed because I took this job,” Gardner said.
The McCloskey prosecution drew controversy, with many alleging political bias from Gardner. Republicans in the state rallied to their defense, including Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who wrote an amicus brief arguing: “Missouri’s statutes specifically authorize Missouri citizens to use firearms to deter assailants and protect themselves, their families, and homes from threatening or violent intruders.”
Following the release of evidence that Gardner was campaigning for reelection off her decision to prosecute the two, a judge removed her from the case. Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, vowed to pardon the McCloskeys if they’re found guilty.
During her interview, Gardner also complained about conduct from the St. Louis police union, alleging that it regularly sabotaged any efforts of reform.
“But what we have is the police union, who basically injects fear and misinformation in the police department,” she said.
Gardner’s remarks reference a long-standing feud between her office and St. Louis law enforcement. At the beginning of last year, Gardner filed a lawsuit against the city and the police union under the obscure Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, alleging that police officers were engaged in a racist conspiracy to stop her restorative justice policies.
Months later, that lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge who wrote that Gardner’s accusations “can be described as a conglomeration of unrelated claims and conclusion statements supported by very few facts, which do not plead any recognizable cause of actions.”
In response to Gardner’s claims on 60 Minutes, a spokesman for the St. Louis Police Officers Association said Gardner isn’t “a partner with law enforcement.”
“Well, we don’t shoot … we shoot back. I mean, we live in a very violent city,” he said when asked about the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor. “And I don’t think it should surprise anybody that sometimes the police, who are trying to disrupt that violence, become the victim of that violence.”
Under Gardner’s tenure, St. Louis has seen a dramatic spike in homicides. Since she took office in 2017, homicides have steadily risen to a near all-time record. In 2020, 262 people were murdered in the city, up from 194 in 2019.
The murder rate in the city, at 87 per 100,000, is the highest in half a century. According to one study, crime in St. Louis cost each resident there nearly $9,500 for a total of $2.8 billion in 2019.
Gardner’s office oversaw thousands of fewer prosecutions in her first term, due in part to her policy of not charging individuals for a variety of low-level offenses.
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Despite that uptick in crime and strained relations with law enforcement, Gardner vowed to continue fighting for what she sees as social and racial justice.
“It’s about the will of the people. And the people of St. Louis overwhelmingly voted me in to do my job to reform a system that we all know is beyond repair. It needs to be dismantled and rebuilt,” she told 60 Minutes. “We as law enforcement have to hear the cries for help in the community and deliver. And that’s why I’m not going to back down. That’s why I’m not going kiss to the ring of the status quo to keep it a certain way.”
