Missouri AG Moves to Fire St. Louis Prosecutor

Federalism allows cities and states to adopt widely varying policies regarding crime and justice, so long as the policies comply with the U.S. Constitution.  When elected officials implement policies that result in increased crime or perceived injustice, the voters usually get the last word.  This happened last year in San Francisco, when voters recalled progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin for failing to aggressively prosecute criminals.  Boudin was among several dozen district attorneys, states attorneys and circuit attorneys whose campaigns were bankrolled by progressive billionaire George Soros.  Before Soros began doing this, even big city district attorney campaigns would rarely raise more than $500,000 from thousands of contributors.  To elect pro-criminal progressives to these offices Soros often contributes $500,000 to over $1,000,000 to their campaigns, essentially buying the election.

After contributing $67,000 to elect progressive Kim Gardner Circuit Attorney of St. Louis County in 2016, Soros gave another $116,000 to re-elect her in 2020.  This is chump change compared to the $1.3 million to he gave to buy Larry Krasner the District Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, the $2 million he gave to elect Kim Foxx States Attorney in Chicago, and the $4.7 million he gave to elect George Gascon District Attorney of Los Angeles.  While prosecutions have declined and crime has increased dramatically in these places, voters have kept Fox, Krasner and Gascon in office, apparently failing to connect their soft-on-crime policies with the decline of public safety in their communities.

Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, which are democrat-controlled cities in democrat-controlled states, St. Louis is a democrat-controlled city in a republican-controlled state.  Because of this, the state Attorney General can exercise his  constitutional authority over local prosecution offices when it comes to enforcing state law.  Yesterday Missouri Attorney General Andrew Baily moved to fire Kim Gardner for failing to prosecute criminals and enforce the law against offenders released on bail.  Brianna Herlihy of Fox News reports that the Attorney General’s announcement came on the heels of a weekend accident in St. Louis caused by a habitual offender Gardner allowed to repeatedly violate his bail conditions without any consequences.  The offender, Daniel Riley had violated bail at least 50 times while awaiting trial for armed robbery, when he rammed his car at high speed into 16-year-old Janae Edmondson and another car, pinning her between both vehicles.  Riley was driving without a license.  The girl, who was in town for a volleyball tournament, lost both legs due to the accident.

The Attorney General cited a pattern of Garner’s failure to file charges against offenders, failure to take action on the cases of offenders she has charged, failure to inform crime victims about their cases, and failure to revoke bail for violators so police can arrest them and put them in jail.  Had she revoked Riley’s bail, he would have been in jail instead of permanently disabling a 16-year-old girl.

Like her Soros-bankrolled counterparts, Gardner campaigned on the promise not to prosecute so-called low-level crimes, including theft and drug dealing, in order to eliminate racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions and sentencing.  This has not worked anywhere it has been tried.  Along with increased crime, the racial disparities are still there.