Former Alabama police officer: We were told to make sure Moore didn’t hang around cheerleaders

A retired Alabama police officer said police were told in the 1970s to make sure now-GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore stayed away from high school cheerleaders.

Former Gadsden police officer Faye Gary told MSNBC that the “rumor mill was that he liked young girls.”

“We were advised that he was being suspended from the mall because he would hang around the young girls that worked in the stores and, you know, really got into a place of where they say he was harassing,” former Gadsden police officer Faye Gary told MSNBC on Tuesday.

Several women, most of whom were teenagers at the time, have accused Moore of pursuing and harassing them at the local Gadsden Mall, in Gadsden, Ala, in 1977. Moore was in his 30s at the time.

Several sources told The New Yorker that Moore’s interest in young women at the mall was well-known at the time. A local Alabama reporter has also claimed Moore was banned at some point from the mall because of his actions.

{mosads}“And we were also told to watch him at the ball games, and make sure that he didn’t hang around the cheerleaders,” according to Gary on MSNBC.

Gary was pressed on whether these were just rumors or if she was actually given instructions from her superiors. She didn’t make clear where the instructions came from, but she said the rumor was that Moore “likes young girls.”

Gary said she was a juvenile detective at the time.

“Every day we was looking for a complaint to come in and I didn’t realize it until sometime later that when they said he liked young girls, I just thought he liked young ladies … maybe in their 20s,” she said.

“I had no idea or we had no idea that we were talking about 14-year-olds. But we never got a complaint on it,” she claimed.

Moore has faced sexual misconduct accusations from multiple women. Leigh Corfman accused Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 and he was 32. Beverly Young Nelson said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16.

Moore has denied the allegations and continued running in the Alabama Senate race.

President Trump on Tuesday appeared to throw his support behind Moore, who he has previously endorsed.

“We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” he told reporters Tuesday.

He also blasted the record of Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones. He declined to say if he believes the accusations against Moore, but said Moore denied them.

“He denies it. He totally denies it,” Trump said, noting the alleged incidents took place about 40 years ago. “Roy Moore denies it — that’s all I can say.”