They say forgiveness helps the victim more than the offender, but this case feels like the latter is winning.
A former cop from the wealthy St. Louis suburb who claimed it was an accident when she shot a woman in 2019, is getting off scot-free after a mediation session cleared the way for all criminal charges against her to be dropped.
Wonders, it appears, will never cease, nor will ways for cops to get away with shooting Black people.
The story began when the former cop, Julia Crews, arrived at a grocery store where a Black woman, Ashley Fountain Hall, and another woman were accused of stealing.
Store workers held Hall down in the parking lot until police arrived.
Crews, who is white, said she intended to deploy her Taser to restrain Hall, who is Black, but mistakenly pulled out her service firearm and shot Hall in the back. Crews resigned after the shooting.
Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell’s office said Crews and Hall agreed to participate in a restorative justice mediation conducted through a videoconference. In the restorative justice process, the victim and the offender work together toward a resolution, typically with the help of a facilitator.
Once again, there’s a lot to unpack. This isn’t the first time a white cop shot a Black person and used, ‘I thought it was a Taser’, as a defense. Former Brooklyn Center, Minn., cop Kimberly Potter is about to be tried for killing Daunte Wright, a Black man she shot back in April. Like Crews, Potter swore she meant to reach for her taser instead of her gun, even though cops are supposed to carry handguns on the opposite side of the body from a Taser, and despite the fact that guns and Tasers look and weigh different than guns.
Seems like a difficult mistake to make for somebody who’s supposed to be trained to use weapons and who has the power of life and death in their hands by profession.
Meanwhile, Hall’s recovery continues. She received a $2 million settlement for her injuries from the shooting, according to the Associated Press. But she told KSDK News that she still struggles with the aftermath.