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ST. LOUIS — The city’s top prosecutor is not using his predecessor’s “exclusion listâ€� to stop certain ºüÀêÊÓƵ police officers from testifying in criminal cases, and his spokeswoman said he has no list of his own.

“It’s never been something that I’ve considered,� Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore told the Post-Dispatch’s Editorial Board on Wednesday. “It’s never been part of my administration.�

Gore’s predecessor, Kimberly M. Gardner, was criticized for building a list of dozens of officers banned from bringing cases over concerns about the officers’ credibility. When the list was first released in 2018, it contained the names of 28 officers.

By 2020, however, there were roughly 75 officers on the list, or nearly 7% of the department’s force of about 1,100.

Gardner said that in one case, she added 22 officers to the list because they had been identified in a study by the , a national database launched by a group of Philadelphia attorneys that catalogued racist social media posts by current and former police officers.

“A police officer’s word, and the complete veracity of that word, is fundamentally necessary to doing the job,� she said in a statement. “Therefore, any break in trust must be approached with deep concern.�

The creation of the list and subsequent additions sparked outrage from rank-and-file officers and department leadership, exacerbating a fractured relationship between Gardner and the police. Department and union officials said there was no need for such a list because there was already an internal disciplinary process in place for bad officers.

“If these officers are determined to have engaged in misconduct, we have a process,â€� said ºüÀêÊÓƵ Police Officers’ Association business manager Jeff Roorda when Gardner added names to the list in June 2019. “There is no due process in what Kim Gardner did today. It’s just panic at the disco.â€� (Roorda was fired by the union in 2022.)

³Ò²¹°ù»å²Ô±ð°ù’s supporters came to her defense, arguing that her decision should have been “applauded, not attacked.â€� Other prosecutors across the country, including in Houston, Seattle, San Francisco and Santa Clara, California, all created similar lists in order to track information on officers who may not be credible witnesses due to allegations of misconduct.

Gore took over the office after ³Ò²¹°ù»å²Ô±ð°ù’s resignation in May. He said at his swearing-in ceremony that he hadn’t seen the list but pledged to “look at each case individually, apply the law and proceed from there.â€�

Gore said Wednesday he received a copy of the list shortly after he took over, and it was simply a list without any information about the reason each officer was on it.

“It wasn’t a memo, it was a just a list of names,� he said. “No backup, no support.�

One ºüÀêÊÓƵ police detective, told by a supervisor in 2019 that he had been added to ³Ò²¹°ù»å²Ô±ð°ù’s exclusion list, refused to testify in cases even after he was asked by prosecutors to do so, , published in October. That detective, now retired, said he felt his integrity had been questioned, and refused to testify in at least nine murder cases in which he served as lead detective, ProPublica said.