ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - It has been slightly over a year since Gabe Gore was named St. Louis Circuit Attorney, replacing controversial predecessor Kim Gardner.
Last week, Gore talked to KMOX, looking back on his first year, while also looking ahead at challenges the Circuit Attorney's Office still faces, from some staffing issues still, a massive backlog of cases his office is still working through, specifically with homicides and much more.
Gore joined KMOX's Total Information A.M. Thursday to discuss similar topics, but along the conversation, he also discussed his office's relationship with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, calling it 'going very well'.
"When I was appointed Circuit Attorney, I knew that in order for our office to be successful, I knew we were going to have to have a relationship with the St. Louis Metro Police Department that was based on mutual respect, professionalism, and collaboration. That is relationship that is vital to our work."
Gore says his relationship with St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy is going great, with both meeting up with each other regularly, beginning since Gore was sworn in.
"Really from the first week, when I was sworn in, Chief Tracy was there," said Gore. "He worked to move his schedule around to be there because it occurred on short notice. We met that week for a couple of hours, and we have been meeting regularly since, so that relationship is going great."
Gore says the re-opening of the St. Louis City Municipal Court's warrant office has led to St. Louis Metropolitan Police Officers working better alongside the Assistants Circuit Attorneys in Gore's Office.
"They are working and collaborating on a daily basis in the warrant office and it has been a very productive relationship," said Gore.
The relationship between the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and the Circuit Attorney's office became rather strained when Gardner was in charge, from the closing of the warrant office which led to Gore discovering there were 6,700 applications of warrants being found to have not been reviewed.
Along that, Gardner had an exclusion list, where if an officer's name was on that list, prosecutors would not consider the cases they worked on, and she publicly accused the police department of not handing over evidence to her prosecutors in a timely manner after two cases fell apart, forcing Tracy to go on to a defensive within his first 100 days on the job back in 2023.