ST. LOUIS • St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said that her office has dismissed 91 criminal cases associated with four St. Louis police officers indicted Thursday on federal charges.
A federal indictment handed down Thursday accuses officers Dustin Boone, Randy Hays and Christopher Myers of assaulting an undercover colleague during protests last year and covering it up, and Officer Bailey Colletta of lying to a federal grand jury investigating the incident.
The indictment also contains text messages in which several of the officers expressed “disdain” for protesters and “excitement about using unjustified force against them and going undetected while doing so.”
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In a statement after the indictment, Gardner called the allegations “disheartening,” and said “we have been forced to dismiss 91 cases involving these four officers.” Gardner said her office would continue to review “cases where these officers’ testimony or involvement is fundamental.”
U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen declined to comment when asked to tally federal cases that had to be dismissed, but federal prosecutors typically take a similar approach to cases that can’t go forward without an officer’s testimony.
Jensen’s office dismissed a gun case on Nov. 26 investigated by Myers after the defendant’s lawyer said she would take the case to trial and subpoena Myers.
In a Nov. 19 hearing, lawyer Kristy Ridings said Myers and other officers involved in the case were on a list of officers who were no longer being used to prosecute cases, apparently a reference an “exclusion list” generated by city prosecutors earlier this year.
That list, of 28 officers whom the office would no longer use while pursuing criminal charges, had led to the dismissal of just 12 felony cases as of mid-September. Most of those charges involved drugs or guns.
The disclosure of the existence of the list by the Post-Dispatch in August prompted furious complaints from the St. Louis Police Officers Association.
Business Manager Jeff Roorda has said some officers were on it because they asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in police shooting cases in which police conduct was still being reviewed. He said the list was “dangerous” to both police and public safety.
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