Attorney General Kim Gardner is headed to court - and this time she’s suing the police.
Known by many as the St. Louis prosecutor who made an “exclusion list” of police officers with questionable records, she’s now facing a very dangerous struggle.
Refusing to accept anyone trying to stop her fight for police accountability, Gardner is suing the city and police union over what she’s denounced as a “racially motivated conspiracy to deny the civil rights of racial minorities.”
The New York Times reports she’s “suing her opponents under a little-used federal law passed in the wake of the Civil War to stem violence by the Ku Klux Klan.” The anti-Klan act was passed in 1871 to prevent white supremacists from obstructing justice and, unfortunately, Gardner has to utilize it.
The issue is underscored by cases like that of Milton Green, a Black cop who was shot by a white fellow officer, and Luther Hall, a Black cop beaten by his fellow officers. Both show why some Black cops are supporting Gardner.
That Kim Gardner is the first Black person elected to her position, and has to sue the city, speaks to how far we may or may not have come on the issues she works around. What’s clear, however, is that, while the changes she represents don’t come easy, they’re absolutely worth fighting for.