Missouri AG Bailey hasn’t filled vacancies for partnership aimed at curbing violent crime in KC

Four years after then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt unveiled an initiative where state prosecutors could prosecute cases in federal court to combat violent crime in Kansas City, Springfield and St. Louis, the partnership is now a shell of its former self.

At its peak, four attorneys from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office were deputized as assistant U.S. attorneys to prosecute cases for the Western District of Missouri — three in Kansas City, one in Springfield.

Now, just one state prosecutor, who will be leaving soon, remains working with federal prosecutors in Kansas City. And Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who was appointed to complete Schmitt’s term after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, has made no indication he plans to fill the vacant positions, the U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore’s office told The Star.

“Over the past year, as the cross-designated attorneys working in our office as Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys left their positions, those vacancies have not been filled by the Missouri Attorney General,” said Don Ledford, the spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City, referring to attorneys who can practice in both state and federal courts.

Ledford said the sole remaining cross-designated attorney will conclude his time in the office in the near future and federal prosecutors “have not received any indication from the MO AG’s office the vacancy will be filled.”

Asked when Bailey plans to fill the positions, Madeline Sieren, a spokesperson for the attorney general, signaled that the federal-state partnership, the Safer Streets Initiative, may be on the way out in favor of a new state-led taskforce.

Bailey “has asked the General Assembly for a repurposing of funds as we believe it is a more prudent use of resources to stand up a violent crime taskforce within our office that will focus on enforcing state law to combat violent crime,” Sieren said in a statement.

If Bailey’s office plans to stop working with federal prosecutors in Kansas City, it would further weaken the initiative. The partnership had already been severed in St. Louis amid an ongoing feud between the Biden administration and Missouri Republicans over a 2021 state law that declared certain federal gun laws “invalid” if they don’t have a state-level equivalent.

Last year, the attorney general’s office, under Schmitt, announced that federal prosecutors in St. Louis had stopped working cases as part of the partnership because the Biden administration was suing the state over the 2021 gun law. Federal officials in Kansas City, at the time, said they were taking a different approach and keeping the partnership intact.

A federal judge earlier this month sided with the Biden administration and overturned the law. Bailey, who has used the attorney general’s office to take on the federal government similarly to Schmitt, has since appealed that decision.

The law, which was passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed by Gov. Mike Parson, had sown confusion among Missouri law enforcement, who questioned how much they could cooperate with federal officials.

Schmitt, when he was attorney general, had previously touted the Safer Streets initiative as a way to “add prosecutorial firepower to the U.S. attorney’s office” in a 2021 column in the Joplin Globe.

Schmitt wrote that the partnership had led to more than 500 chargers against more than 250 defendants, calling it “a huge accomplishment in the fight against violent crime.”

The freshman Missouri senator’s office declined to comment Thursday on the program’s reduced staffing.

Ledford, the U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson, told The Star that federal officials were committed to working with state and local law enforcement. He said he did not know exactly when the cross-designated attorneys began rotating out, but said it was happening before January — which is when Bailey was appointed attorney general.

“Our office has not expressed a desire to withdraw from the Safer Streets Initiative, nor have we received any official notification from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office regarding the termination of its Safer Streets Initiative,” Ledford said.