The elected chief prosecutor of St. Louis, a woman of color elected in 2016 on a reform platform, has faced intense pushback from the day she took office. Now Kim Gardner, the first African American to serve in the post, is suing the city and its police union under a federal law passed during Reconstruction to combat white supremacist vigilantism. Progressive prosecutors elected in other cities are rallying around Gardner, but can the suit succeed?
Read MoreA crime summit held recently in St. Louis was a virtual who's-who of high ranking city and state government officials. Conspicuously absent from the gathering were the progressive, African American district attorneys of St. Louis and Kansas City, who were excluded despite having been elected to the top law enforcement post in Missouri's two largest cities. We look at the latest in a trend of anti-democratic attacks on reformist elected prosecutors.
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