In 2011, after months of complaints from residents concerning the division’s SWAT group—damaged TVs, lacking money, misplaced electronics, even a stolen pornographic video—the Kansas Metropolis, Kansas, Police Division launched an undercover sting with assist from the FBI to root out the division’s mendacity and stealing cops. They known as it Operation Sticky Fingers.
On January 6, Selective Crime Prevalence Discount Enforcement Unit officers served a search warrant at a rented home, rigorously staged with 1000’s of {dollars}’ value of electronics, weed, and money, unaware that the home was wired with hidden cameras embedded into an alarm clock and smoke detector, recording their each transfer. The ruse labored. Cameras captured three officers stealing video video games, an Apple iPod, headphones, and $640 in money. All three have been fired and charged federally with conspiracy, deprivation of civil rights, and theft of presidency property.
In interviews with investigators, nevertheless, the three implicated cops singled out a fourth SCORE officer, not captured by the hidden cameras: Jeff Gardner, a person who KCKPD investigators discovered had just lately punched his girlfriend within the jaw so exhausting that she wanted medical consideration.
Based on his fellow officers, Gardner had a historical past of smashing TVs throughout raids, stealing video video games, and even one time swiping a bag of crab legs. “You possibly can’t catch me except you catch me on video,” an officer instructed prosecutors that he recalled Gardner as soon as saying.
With solely the phrase of those three discredited officers, prosecutors declined to press expenses. However in a memo to then-chief Rick Armstrong, the district lawyer warned that any future police work involving Gardner—whether or not detective work, arrests, or testimony—must be seen with deep suspicion. “It might be extremely unlikely we might file a case that’s based mostly in important half on his testimony,” the memo concluded.
The memo positioned Gardner on the division’s extremely secret Veracity Disclosure Checklist, generally often called a Giglio Checklist, which refers to Giglio v. United States, a 1972 resolution which established that the prosecution should disclose any data that may query the credibility of its witnesses. In KCKPD’s case, this can be a roster of officers whose credibility could also be so compromised that the division believes their involvement in prison instances, whether or not by testimony, arrests, or investigative work, may jeopardize prosecutions.
However, 15 years later, Gardner nonetheless works at KCKPD. He’s amongst 62 present and former officers who engaged in misconduct so damaging to their credibility that, if known as to testify, it could should be reported to the courts.
Gardner didn’t reply to a request for remark.
