Two weeks ago, the town of Jackson, Georgia was thrown into a tailspin when a police officer claimed she’d been shot in cold blood. However, a two-week investigation by local and state officials has revealed that the officer made the whole thing up. Now she’s the one facing charges.
On September 13, off-duty officer Sherry Hall came on the air with a harrowing tale. She’d encountered a black man sitting along the wood line a few blocks from the town square. Hall claimed that when she approached the man, he shot her in the abdomen. The shot hit her on her bulletproof vest. Despite being staggered by the blast, Hall squeezed off two rounds. She claimed her assailant was a 6-foot, 230-pound bear of a man wearing a green shirt and black jogging pants.
Watch Hall’s account of what happened, via WGCL-TV in Atlanta.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS_K1UQZois
Hall said she was stunned to have been attacked by someone with “such a disregard to human life.” She thought anyone who would sink that low wouldn’t blink at going after “a citizen on the streets.”
Police chief James Morgan praised Hall for being “very professional at all costs.” However, he asked for an independent review by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. At that point, Hall’s story started to unravel. During the first two interviews, GBI investigators spotted a number of inconsistencies in Hall’s story.
For one thing, she claimed that she hadn’t turned on her cruiser’s dashcam or audio recording equipment. However, the GBI managed to recover video and audio footage. Additionally, Hall claimed three shots had been fired, but video and audio footage showed only two shots.
The GBI conducted a third interview, and showed Hall the video. At that point, she stopped cooperating. Later, police got a search warrant for her house, and discovered a second gun there. It had been issued to her on July 1, but Hall hadn’t told investigators about it. Ballistic tests indicated it matched one of the shell casings found at the scene.
On Friday, the GBI and Jackson police obtained warrants for Hall’s arrest on charges of making false statements, tampering with evidence, interference with government property, and violation of her oath of office. Watch more details from WAGA-TV in Atlanta.
GBI special agent Joe Wooten said that all available evidence from the investigation indicates that “there is no, and never was, a suspect shooter at large in Jackson, Georgia.”
So the obvious question–where did the shots come from? Investigators say that no one else fired a gun at the scene. Milam stressed this in his comments; he said that “there is no person out there who needs to be found.” In all likelihood, she accidentally shot herself.
Jackson mayor Kay Pippin said she was “disappointed” that anyone would willfully suggest there was a gunman on the loose. She also pointed out that Jackson was a safe city with very little violent crime.
However, the harshest words came from Butts County sheriff Gary Long. He said that while police officers make mistakes like anyone else, “this is not a mistake, this is criminal.” He was even less restrained in an open letter to county residents, saying that Hall had committed “a criminal act that tarnishes every badge worn across the United States of America.”
Hall checked herself into a private mental health facility; she will be arrested and jailed once she leaves that facility. She had been on paid administrative leave since the shooting, but was fired on the day the warrants were issued. If convicted on all charges, she could get up to 20 years in prison. Long apparently wants her to serve something close to that; he said that if Hall is convicted, he will do everything he can to ensure that she has “many years to think about the shame she has brought” to her city, her county, and her now-former profession. By all rights, the GBI and Butts County should send Hall the bill for the investigation as well.
One thing we can expect is a very detailed analysis of how Hall became a cop in the first place. After all, there is something very wrong when a police officer even thinks about concocting such a massive frame-up. I think back to Antoinette Frank, the New Orleans cop who robbed a Vietnamese restaurant and killed three people there–including one of her fellow officers. It turned out that a psychiatrist who had interviewed her during the hiring process found her “shallow and superficial,” and advised in no uncertain terms that she not be hired.
What Hall did is no different. After all, her lies could have gotten an innocent man either arrested or killed. For that reason, I agree with Long–this woman needs to be locked up for as long as legally possible.
