# Court Upholds Missouri Trooper Firing



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

*PETER SHINKLE*
_St. Louis Post-Dispatch_










A state appeals court has upheld the firing of a Missouri state trooper for his role in the case of Florissant police officer convicted of conspiring to make a false arrest of a woman.

The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld the termination of 19-year veteran Trooper Charles L. Pleasant, finding that he deserved it for failing to report suspicious comments by the Florissant officer. The ruling on Tuesday reversed a lower court order that had reinstated the trooper.

Pleasant said on Wednesday he was considering an appeal.

The former Florissant officer, James Cox, pleaded guilty in 2004 of conspiring with St. Louis developer William S. Stallings to make two bogus arrests of Stallings' former girlfriend, Christine Lambert. Cox resigned and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.

In a series of calls, Cox asked Pleasant to make one of the arrests. Cox said the target was likely to have drugs and called her a "meth whore," the court said. In the third call, Cox referred to planting drugs by saying, "Can we make sure she's got drugs on her when she's stopped?"

Pleasant responded, "We don't do that (expletive)," the court said. He later told investigators he thought Cox was joking.

Even so, the court decided Tuesday to uphold Pleasant's firing, saying it would not overrule a Highway Patrol board that found Pleasant's own reply showed he did not take Cox's comment as a joke and ought to have reported it.

Pleasant passed Cox's information about the possible drug suspect to another trooper, who stopped the car identified by Cox one day in February 2004. As part of a sting, it was an FBI agent driving, not Lambert, and no drugs were found, the court said.


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