St. Louis Circuit (District) Attorney Gabe Gore, appointed by Missouri Governor Mike Parson in May to clean up the mess left behind following the unlamented departure of Soros-backed Kim Gardner, gave an update Tuesday on how the cleanup is going. He said:
There’s no type of crime that we are looking the other way on. We are enforcing the laws.
We don’t accept the notion that as a citizen of the city of St. Louis you have to accept a certain amount of property crime, or what people would refer to as petty crime, as a cost of living in the city.
That cost of living borne by the citizens of the Gateway City under Gardner’s six-year reign was enormous, and much isn’t restorable. There were 264 homicides in the city in 2020 — the fourth year of her dominion — an increase of 36 percent over the year before. Property crime soared, and at her departure last May it was four times the national average. The murder rate was eight times the national average. The website Neighborhood Scout declared St. Louis to be one of the most crime-ridden cities in the nation.
And no wonder. Following her progressive ideology — equity comes before justice, no matter the social cost — she and her office’s bevy of progressive attorneys delayed prosecuting cases, even in cases of first degree murder. She refused to let some 60 police officers even bring cases to her office, putting them on her “exclusion list.”
By the time she was forced from office in May she had let the backlog of pending cases grow to more than 6,700, with 250 of them being homicides.
Gore has been, by all measures, doing a remarkable job of restoring law and order in his city since June. He has doubled the number of attorneys in his office, including many with previous experience as prosecutors. In six months he has reduced the backlog of 6,700 cases to around 4,200, and has attacked with vigor the homicide cases. Since June 1 his office has charged 45 percent more cases than Gardner’s office did during the same period a year earlier.
In addition, his office is reevaluating 24 killings that Gardner’s office did not charge “but that the homicide division believes have merit.”
He has enlisted the help of the U.S. Attorney’s office and a number of private attorneys to cut through the swath of cases. He is handling the most grievous offenses first, and expects to have completed the full review of the remaining cases no later than March 2024.
Some of the damage done by Gardner cannot be repaired. The case of Janae Edmondson, a teenage athlete with hopeful prospects, was likely the tipping point that ended Gardner’s six-year reign of terror.
The details are from the petition filed by the state’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey back in February this year that led to her hasty departure in May:
Janae Edmonson [sic], a teenage athlete, was walking back to her hotel in downtown St. Louis on Saturday, February 18. Ms. Edmonson [sic], who was in town for a volleyball tournament, had just verbally committed to play sports for a college in Tennessee.
As Ms. Edmonson [sic] and her family walked down the sidewalk, a speeding car driven by Daniel Riley crashed into another car and struck Ms. Edmonson [sic], severing one of her legs and maiming the other.
Her father, thanks to his quick thinking and military service, applied two belts as tourniquets as he watched the life drain from her face.
Thankfully, Ms. Edmonson [sic] survived, although both of her legs were amputated.
The petition failed to mention that Janae was an outstanding student-athlete at Smyrna High School in Tennessee. She was a member of the National Honor Society, participated in several sports, and played the violin in the school’s music program, all the while being double-enrolled in college-level courses.
And just who is this Daniel Riley? He was out on bail, thanks to Gardner’s “enlightened” view of law enforcement in the Gateway City. From Bailey’s petition:
Daniel Riley never should have been driving that car. In 2020, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office charged Riley with First Degree Robbery and Armed Criminal Action for stealing a firearm from [a] victim at gunpoint.
The Circuit Attorney [Gardner] dismissed and refiled that case on July 18, 2022, but not before Riley—who was out on bond—earned 54 separate violations for failing to comply with the pre-trial bond conditions.
After the Circuit Attorney refiled the case, Riley earned 50 more violations. The Circuit Attorney never filed a motion to revoke Riley’s bond.
For this reason alone Gardner should be reprimanded severely and removed from office. The petition continued:
Ms. Edmonson’s [sic] injuries are the direct result of years of willful neglect from Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner. As the Circuit Attorney, [Gardner] is morally, ethically, and legally responsible for the conduct of her office.
Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore is to be congratulated for the progress he and his staff have made in just six months. But they have their work cut out for them. The ugly mess left behind by Gardner will take years to clean up. And some of the damage she inflicted is irreparable.
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