ST. LOUIS — After a violent summer in St. Louis, tension is building between police and the woman in charge of prosecuting crimes.
The St. Louis Police Officer’s Association is calling for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to lose her job, and she’s firing back.
"This is a dangerous, dangerous situation she's putting the police officers and the public in and we're calling for an end to it,” spokesman Jeff Roorda said.
He's referring to Gardner's one-word tweet last week, after a deadly officer-involved shooting that started when officers approached a driver with marijuana.
Alderman Megan Green tweeted the interaction never should have happened, and Gardner retweeted it, writing “exactly.”
Gardner's policy is that she won't prosecute cases that involve less than 100 grams of marijuana.
"It was a tweet, and I’m not gonna go into - it's an open investigation. It would be improper for me to comment on an open investigation,” she said. "I did not comment on an open investigation by saying a tweet and one word."
That one word added fuel Roorda's fire.
"He's irrelevant to me because it's not about Kim Gardner. It's about the people of the city of St. Louis," Gardner said.
We asked Gardner what she’ll do to bridge the divide and get justice for crime victims in the city.
She said of the 15 child murders this summer, police have brought her two cases, and one is still under investigation.
"It's to continue to do the work that we're doing 365 days a year. We're going to continue to work with police,” she said.
But Gardner said she and St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell were left out of a crime meeting Tuesday with the governor, the mayor, and the police chief.
The mayor's spokesman told 5 On Your Side it was not meant to be a comprehensive meeting, but the governor's staff invited more people at the last minute.
