ST. LOUIS, Missouri — The recent rise in gun violence in St. Louis comes during a breakdown in a partnership between the Attorney General's Office and federal law enforcement.
Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, said the Safer Streets program he launched in 2019 was a success.
"I thought it was a pretty unique partnership," he said. "It was the first of its kind in the country."
According to a news release Schmitt's office released before he was sworn in as a U.S. senator, state lawyers who were deputized as assistant U.S. attorneys brought 709 charges against 419 defendants, resulting in guilty pleas or jail time for 190 suspects over a three-year span.
Two years later, the program has languished without staff under incumbent Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
"We do not currently have any Safer Streets prosecutors working in our office," the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Western District of Missouri said in an email. "The MO Attorney General did not replace those positions when they became vacant."
The last staff vacated their posts in mid-2023. On the Eastern District side, prosecutors in the Attorney General's Office severed their partnership with the feds at some point in 2022.
The abrupt end of the task force has become a political issue in the Republican primary race for attorney general.
"I think ending Eric Schmitt's Safer Streets program was a terrible idea," GOP candidate Will Scharf said at a recent forum. "We need to be prosecuting much more violent crime, not less violent crime."
Bailey skipped out on the St. Louis forum hosted by the Federalist Society, but in text messages on Wednesday, a spokesperson for his office blamed the rift on President Joe Biden.
"Missouri will not allow Joe Biden to trample on our Second Amendment rights," Madeline Sieren said.
Her statement references an ongoing lawsuit where local police and federal law enforcement challenged the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a GOP plan to fine police who seek to enforce federal gun laws in Missouri.
"The Second Amendment Preservation Act is an absolute travesty," Democratic primary candidate Elad Gross said. "It has destroyed a lot of partnerships between law enforcement and federal agents and dealing with violent crime. It actually says we will defund police departments that work with federal agents to deal with violent crime. That law has been put on pause because it is unconstitutional and federal courts, but our attorney general keeps wasting our money trying to defend a really stupid law that hurts Missouri families."
5 On Your Side asked Bailey if he would revive the Safer Streets program, even if it meant dropping the pending suit.
"Attorney General Bailey can walk and chew gum at the same time," Sieren said. "His office has increased prosecution at the state level by 133% since Biden's corrupt DOJ ended the Safer Streets program."
That explanation doesn't appear to add up. Not only did the Safer Streets program continue after Bailey took office and well after the legal battle over the Second Amendment Preservation Act began, but financial records suggest the funding for the program is still available.
State budget documents from this year show the Attorney General's Office requested another annual allotment of $938,940 from state legislators to pay prosecutors' salaries in the Safer Streets program. When the House and Senate approved the final budget plan, they appropriated the same amount to be used "for a Violent Crimes Task Force."
Bailey's office has not announced the formation of any violent crimes task force, nor is there any mention of one on his government website.
When Schmitt announced the formation of the program in 2019, he said, "Given the kind of violent crime rates in St. Louis and other metro areas, this kind of dedication of resources is absolutely necessary.
"When someone sticks a gun in someone's face and tries to steal their car or does worse than that, they need to know that if they do that, they're going to be apprehended. And the state and our federal partners are going to use all the resources available at our disposal to put them in jail for a very long time."
"Andrew Bailey, our current attorney general, has been given resources to go after violent crime in Missouri really coordinate a lot of those efforts," Gross said. "He hasn't done it."
Would Schmitt like to see the program continue?
"Yeah, we tried to keep it," he said. "The Biden administration backed away. So yeah, I think it was a good thing. I stand by that. I think anything you can do to be working together is a smart thing to do."
Who does Schmitt prefer in the GOP primary?
"I've got a great relationship with both of them," he replied. "Will Scharf is a personal friend. I think Will would do a great job. But I've endorsed, previously, Andrew Bailey."
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