Bob McCulloch (prosecutor)

After attending law school at Saint Louis University, McCulloch served as a clerk for Missouri Appeals Court judge Joseph G. Stewart. McCulloch was an assistant prosecuting attorney from 1978 to 1985. He worked in private practice until 1991, when he was elected to the post of prosecuting attorney.[6] McCulloch was president of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and a board member of the National District Attorneys Association.[1]

Just after he first took office in the early 1990s, McCulloch prosecuted Axl Rose of the band Guns N' Roses on charges related to the Riverport Riot in which 40 concert attendees and 25 police officers were injured.[7] McCulloch charged Rose with misdemeanor assault and property damage for allegedly hitting a security guard, hurting three concertgoers and damaging a dressing room at Riverport Amphitheatre.[7] McCulloch made headlines when he pursued Rose across the country to serve an arrest warrant in the case before Rose finally turned himself in and agreed to a plea deal.[7]

In 2000, in the so-called "Jack in the Box" case, two undercover officers, a police officer and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officer, shot and killed two unarmed black men in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant in Berkeley, Missouri. In 2001, the officers told a grand jury convened by McCulloch that the suspects tried to escape arrest and then drove toward them; the jury declined to indict.[4][7] McCulloch told the public that every witness had testified to confirm this version, but St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist Michael Sorkin reviewed the previously secret grand jury tapes, released to him by McCulloch, and found that McCulloch's statement was untrue: only three of 13 officers testified that the car was moving forward.[8] A subsequent federal investigation found that the men were unarmed and that their car had not moved forward when the officers fired 21 shots; nevertheless, federal investigators decided that the shooting was justified because the officers feared for their safety.[4][7] McCulloch also drew controversy when he said of the victims: "These guys were bums."[7] The two men killed, Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley, had prior felony convictions on drug and assault charges.[7]

In 2013, McCulloch publicly switched his longtime allegiance from fellow Democrat and St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley to support Dooley's challenger in the Democratic primary for county executive, Steve Stenger, stating that Dooley oversaw too much corruption in the county.[9] Stenger won over Dooley in the August 5, 2014, primary by a landslide.[10]

As of July 2017, McCulloch still refused to enforce fare-evasion tickets[11][12] issued for non-paying riders on MetroLink (St. Louis), despite growing concerns over safety and security on MetroLink and MetroBus facilities.[13] According to McCulloch, “Only peace officers are capable of writing a summons or making an arrest for a misdemeanor violation, and the MetroLink employees, no matter what they call them, are not and cannot be peace officers.”[14] At the time it was reported that St. Louis County officers, whose tickets McCulloch would presumably enforce, had been caught neglecting assigned MetroLink patrols.[15][16][17]

In May 2018, McCulloch's office filed charges on a dismissed restraining order that was filed against a woman protesting a city police officer whom she claimed had raped her.[18] In the Democratic primary on August 7, McCulloch in an upset lost handily to Wesley Bell who ran on a criminal justice reform platform. During that campaign, McCulloch claimed that his office does not file bail bonds for misdemeanors; however, an ACLU of Missouri report showed this to be false.[19][20] On August 16, McCulloch as an invited speaker at an Oregon prosecutors conference made several remarks considered so unprofessional and characterized by some as "racially insensitive" that several walked out and subsequently boycotted a later keynote speech, including the entire staff of one district attorney office.[21]

After the August 9, 2014, shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, McCulloch announced that rather than making a decision about whether to arrest Wilson, he would bring the case before a grand jury,[4] leaving to jurors the decision of what charges might be brought, if any.[22] His spokesman acknowledged that it was unusual that the prosecutor was not asking the grand jury to endorse a specific charge.[22] It was also unusual to present a case to a grand jury before the police investigation was over.[5][23]

Cornell Brooks, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), called for a special prosecutor to replace McCulloch in the case, saying that was needed to restore credibility with Ferguson's black community.[7][24][25]

On November 24, McCulloch reported in a press conference that the grand jury reached a decision in the case and elected "not to indict Wilson".[26] Immediately after the announcement, McCulloch said that he appointed prosecutors in his office to handle the case, rather than himself, because "he was 'fully aware of unfounded but growing concern that the investigation might not be fair.'"[27]

In his 23 years on the job, this was the fifth time McCulloch presented evidence to a grand jury in a shooting by police; in each case, the grand jury came back without an indictment.[28]

McCulloch is the son of a St. Louis City K-9 police officer who was killed in the line of duty while searching for a fleeing kidnapper in the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex when McCulloch was 12 years old. When he was in high school at Augustinian Academy, McCulloch lost a leg to cancer.[7]

McCulloch and his wife Carolyn have four children.[35]

His son, Matthew McCulloch, a St. Louis County police officer, is suspected of shooting into the air at a children's trunk or treat event on Sunday, October 16, 2023 in Kirkwood, Missouri.[36]