Roger Murphy warned young people not to go into law enforcement, saying ‘it’s not worth it’
“I just basically sat there, couldn’t really do anything. So I just said, I’m sitting here collecting dust and just collecting a paycheck and not doing anything. So what good am I here for the citizens? So I said, ‘Well, I’m going to retire to turn my papers in,'” Murphy told Fox News Digital.
“It was just frustrating. No one goes into law enforcement to get rich. I mean, you’re just not going to. You go into it because you have a calling,” he added.
It is unknown how many officers are on the list, but estimates have run as high as 75, with some believing it is much higher. Gardner has refused to share the exact number. Officers are gagged from speaking out if they are placed on the list.
“You’re given a direct order not to discuss this. So that’s a fireable offense,” Murphy said.
Officers who are currently at the DA office are terrified to speak out due to retaliation, Murphy said. About 819 officers have left the department around when Gardner took office in 2017, according to the St. Louis Police Pension Board. The department lost an average of 119 officers each year between 2017 and 2019. In 2020, 129 officers left the force, with an additional 174 leaving in 2021.
Gardner’s office will even decline to prosecute cases brought forward by some officers on the exclusion list if they were considered essential witnesses and the case could not move forward without their testimony. Some officers who have been placed on the list are victims of shootings, according to KSDK. A local police union told the outlet that it was concerned whether those excluded officers would be able to see justice if they are prohibited from being essential witnesses in criminal cases.
The district attorneys’ office has said it places officers on the list – which was created in 2018 – that are believed for one reason or another to be untrustworthy and biased.
“This was a political effort by her, had nothing to do with bias,” Murphy said. “If it was true, if it was biased, then take me in front a judge, show proof that I’m biased – and she hasn’t done that,” he said. “If I’m biased, why did you have to have a secret list, you know? Because I’m not biased. Why was an order given out not to talk about it? No transparency.”
Murphy continued, “I’m here 26 and a half years. Open all my cases up. Bring it forward. Why are you not reopening these cases? And the simple answer is because she’s lying. And it was a political stunt because she wanted less policemen on the force, less arrests, and it made arrests go down.”
A Fox News Digital investigation found that Gardner was implementing policies that would shrink the criminal justice system’s footprint in St. Louis in coordination with the Soros-linked Vera Institute of Justice. The private organization appeared to pay its own way to influence the district attorney’s office. A Vera representative said that no taxpayer dollars were used.
In order to enter into a partnership with Vera and get its support, DA offices must commit to reducing racial disparities by at least 20%.
According to Murphy, two social media posts on his personal Facebook caused his exclusion. One was critical of Gardner’s soft-on-crime approach. “It got to the point where if you criticized our prosecutor here in the city of Saint Louis, she blackballed you.”
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