ST. LOUIS — U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen has denied a report that he’d requested a wide-ranging civil rights investigation of the St. Louis police department.

An Oct. 2 Reuters report, printed Monday in the Post-Dispatch, said that Jensen reached out to federal officials in Washington “to push for a pattern or practice case,” an investigation handled by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Reuters’ source, who was only identified as “a government lawyer familiar with the matter,” said Jensen “was shut down pretty hard.”

Jensen rejected that: “That is simply not true. I never requested a pattern and practice investigation of the St. Louis police department,” Jensen told the Post-Dispatch.

“I am proud to work with the St. Louis police department, and when officers engage in criminal misconduct, and we have sufficient evidence, we prosecute those officers,” he said.

Reuters did not respond to questions about the report. The Reuters story used the St. Louis case to illustrate a move away from police reform by the Trump administration. The article said that only one pattern or practice case has been opened in nearly four years, versus at least 20 opened during the Obama administration.