On April 23, 2019, Ladue, Mo., police Officer Julia Crews responded to a radio call about a possible shoplifting incident at Schnucks, a supermarket at the Ladue Shopping Center.
Officer Crews, who at the time was a 13-year veteran of the force, is white. The shopping center is relatively upscale and situated in a predominantly white area. Initial reports were that Ashley Fountain Hall, one of two shoplifting suspects, was detained by supermarket employees outside the entrance. Ms. Hall, 33, is Black.
There is a lot of dispute about exactly what occurred initially. Significantly, though, both prosecutors and Officer Crews’ attorney say she shouted a warning as Ms. Hall was attempting to leave the scene, but then pulled out her pistol instead of her Taser and shot Ms. Hall in the back.
According to the testimony of witnesses, Officer Crews was overwhelmed with remorse and “apologized profusely” to Ms. Hall as she administered first aid.
Ms. Hall was in critical condition for several days but, with the exception of the loss of part of her spleen and a severe case of PTSD she will never ditch, she recovered from her wounds, fortunately.
Ms. Crews knew that her days as a police officer were effectively over. While still on the force, she didn’t shrink from taking responsibility for shooting Ms. Hall, but she described it as an accident.
Left unexplained is why an alleged fleeing shoplifter could warrant being shot with a Taser either. Is a frozen steak really worth the risk of taking a person’s life? In what reality does deploying a weapon aimed at a fleeing suspect’s back make any sense?
“I feel like a lot of times when the victim is Black, they don’t get looked at as human,” said Aigner Hall, the shooting victim’s sister. “The lesson should be that no matter what color we are, we are all human. There is only one race, and that’s the human race.”
Ms. Hall’s mother, a very saintly woman named Karen Carter, told the press even as her daughter was fighting for her life that she realized the shooting was a mistake and that she forgave Officer Crews for shooting her daughter. “I’m going to pray for her and pray for my daughter at the same time,” Ms. Carter said.
That’s not a sentiment you see every day from a mother steeped in anguish after an officer has shot her child.
Still, even Ms. Carter, in all of her Christian magnanimity, didn’t lose sight of the need for essential justice. “The punishment is too great for the crime [alleged shoplifting],” she said. “I would rather see my daughter go to court and let the judge be the judge and the officers be the officers.”
On some level, Ms. Crews must have agreed with that sentiment and quit the Ladue police department immediately. She didn’t engage in the usual song and dance about “fearing for her life.” She did what a lot of officers involved in shootings rarely do: She accepted responsibility, even while insisting it was a mistake. She knew there would be consequences for her mistake, and she faced them.
She was booked and charged with second-degree assault. Firing a gun instead of a Taser isn’t something any police force with integrity can chalk up as “consistent with police training,” though many have done just that.
Because shooting someone in the back is an unmitigated disaster and a violation of the social contract cops have to adhere to, Ladue recently settled with Ashley Hall and her family to the tune of $2 million. The city denied any wrongdoing in terms of officer training and has not divulged the conditions of the settlement.
After settling with the family, something very unexpected happened. In response to prompting from prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, Ashley Hall requested that the charges against the former police officer be dropped in exchange for restorative justice mediation. Ms. Hall wanted to look Ms. Crews in the eye and give the officer that courtesy in return.
Ms. Hall wanted to talk about what happened. She wanted to be seen as a human and not some “threat” requiring either electrocution or bullets. She is flesh and blood and very, very fragile, like every other human being. She wanted the former cop and her colleagues still on the force to know that.
We don’t know what was said or what transpired between the two, but both sides appear satisfied by the meeting they had in early November. They came to some understanding that makes it possible for both to go forward with their lives with no bitterness or ill will.
“This was a unique opportunity where the defendant immediately realized she had made a terrible mistake in shooting the victim, and both the defendant and victim reached places where they could see a resolution for this incident outside of the criminal justice process,” Mr. Bell said in an official statement. “In this instance, justice is served by Restorative Justice, and this doesn’t happen without Ashley being 100% onboard.”
The facilitator, Seema Gajwani, agreed and thanked Mr. Bell for seizing the opportunity to introduce restorative justice to the options his office will pursue in the future.
“Too often, the criminal justice system gets in the way of resolution and healing, even though that is what these two women wanted and needed,” Ms. Gajwani said. “Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell made it possible by offering Restorative Justice.”
In states where police unions have a disproportionate amount of power and influence, there’s zero incentive to allow officers involved in bad shootings the dignity of grieving and seeking amends human-to-human with their victims. The decency that former Officer Crews demonstrated sets too scary a precedent in a world where the generosity of a victim like Ashley Hall borders on unprecedented. Cop unions prefer angry alienation to constructive dialogue.
Imagine if restorative justice were a mandatory part of our criminal justice system where appropriate and not just some exotic departure from routine. We might begin to see the glimmers of a justice system that’s more than a series of punitive and draconian laws designed to crush the spirit of everyone who comes into contact with it.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. Twitter @Tony_NormanPG
First Published: November 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m.
Updated: November 26, 2021, 10:39 a.m.
