Kimberly Gardner, first African American circuit court attorney in St Louis, accuses city and police union of conspiring to remove her from office

A top prosecutor has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St Louis and its police union citing a nearly 150-year-old law used to combat the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.

Top US prosecutors are coming to the defense of Kimberly Gardner, whose suit aims to combat what she calls a “broad campaign of collusive [mis]conduct” to remove her from office. Some officers within the St Louis police department are also speaking out in support.

Gardner is the first African American circuit court attorney in St Louis history, part of a 2016 nationwide wave of elected prosecutors who ran progressive platforms promoting criminal justice reform and police accountability.

The Ku Klux Klan Act, passed by Congress in 1871, allows the federal government to aggressively pursue vigilante hate groups, including the KKK, that invoked racial terror in communities of color throughout the US, particularly in the south. In the suit, Gardner argues the law applies to institutions as well.

“[It] was adopted to address precisely this scenario: a racially-motivated conspiracy to deny the civil rights of racial minorities by obstructing a government official’s efforts to ensure equal justice under law for all,” the complaint states. “The stakes are high. This case cries out for federal enforcement.”

The lawsuit alleges the city and its police union, conspired to remove her from office, obstructing her efforts at “rebuild[ing] trust in the criminal justice system among communities of color”.

The St Louis Police Officers Association (SLPOA), a co-defendant in the suit, fired back calling the allegations a “frantic ploy” and “last act of a desperate woman”. The union cites a court-ordered deposition into Gardner’s hiring of an investigator who faces perjury and evidence tampering charges.

SLPOA (@SLPOA) Here is our full statement in response to the frivolous lawsuit filed by @stlcao. Kim Gardner is scheduled to be deposed be special prosecutors this week in the criminal perjury case against her investigator William Tisaby. This lawsuit is not a coincidence. #ResignKim pic.twitter.com/qOHWrc349s

Six black, female prosecutors representing Missouri, Maryland, Florida, Virginia and Massachusetts joined Gardner on the city’s courthouse steps for a press conference on Tuesday, calling her lawsuit critical in the fight against police unions and other interest groups that block criminal justice reform.

“We will not stand idly by any longer while the keepers of the status quo try to tear [her] down,” Marilyn Mosby, state attorney for Baltimore.

Gardner was elected amid racial turmoil in the city, including police shootings of black men. The 2014 shooting death of Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot by a white police officer in the nearby suburb of Ferguson, thrust the metro area’s tensions into the national spotlight. The St Louis police department has since faced accusations of racial profiling and discrimination. A 2017 report by the Ethical Society of Police (Esop), a union representing more than 300 St Louis officers of color found that African Americans were more often stopped or searched by police.

Heather Taylor, a sergeant with the SLPD and Esop president, supports the lawsuit and says Gardner has been targeted with racist and sexist imagery and other bullying, claiming it’s been the association’s mission to either force or vote her out.

“The pictures and memes they made of her were vile,” she said “If this is how they act publicly, we can only imagine what they say and do in private. We’re officers; it’s simply not OK.”

Taylor said racism within the police department and officers’ association is undeniable.

“We’re not going to advocate for everything she says or does,” Taylor said. “But one thing we’ve never been afraid of is to address the culture of racism in our department. There are actual white supremacists in our ranks. Any efforts to combat this are impeded by the [SLPOA] and their actions.”

What may sound like conspiracy, isn’t new. The FBI has warned about increasing white supremacy in law enforcement going as far back as 2006, following high-profile investigations exposing KKK affiliations of several police departments nationwide.

Gardner’s platform for reform includes overturning previous convictions facing accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. She has also ended prosecution for low-level marijuana charges and created an “exclusion list” of police officers not deemed credible witnesses. Sgt Taylor says that has earned her some enemies within the department, but she challenges the SLPOA’s claim of representing the department’s 1,300 officers in their dissent.

“That is absolute nonsense,” she said. “If that were true we wouldn’t have white officers promoted in years when no black ones were, we wouldn’t have filed lawsuits on our members’ behalf for racial discrimination in promotions. Black officers wouldn’t be punished more harshly for violations than white ones.”

The anti-Klan law is rarely used against companies or organizations, and was last invoked after the 2017 alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A protester filed an anti-Klan lawsuit against the rally’s organizers after nationalist groups fought with counter-protesters before an attendee deliberately ran his car through the crowd, killing one.

A spokesman for St Louis’s mayor, Lyda Krewson, called the allegations “meritless”, adding the city “fully expects to be vindicated once this case is adjudicated in a court of law”.