Capitol Officer Crystal Griner

Capitol Officer Crystal Griner (1984- ), law enforcement official. Griner grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland, a mid-sized town near Baltimore. She attended Mount Hebron High School, where she was a member of the National Honors Society and an award-winning member of the softball and basketball teams. “She played inside for us,” her high school coach later recalled, “like a Charles Barkley-type player because she wasn’t big. She was tough.” Her athletic and academic accomplishments came in spite of the fact that her mother died of cancer right before the start of her senior year. After high school, she attended Hood College in Maryland, where as a freshman she finished near the top of the team in scoring and helped the Cougars reach the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament. In 2006 she graduated from Hood with a degree in biology. 

After completing her degree, Griner joined the United States Capitol Police, the law enforcement agency given the responsibility of protecting members of Congress.  As a member of the Capitol Police, Griner was assigned to protect Representative Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican who for many years had helped lead efforts against marriage equality and other LGBT civil rights concerns and in 2002 spoke at a white supremacist convention, although he later stated that he had not been aware of the convention’s purpose and that he condemned it. Although U.S. representatives do not automatically receive police protection at all times, Scalise was entitled to such protection due to his role as House Majority Whip: the representative who is elected by other members of his party to coordinate ideas for legislation and encourage support for it. One of the other officers assigned to Scalise is also African American, while the third is Latino. In 2015, Griner married her girlfriend in Maryland, which had legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court made it legal throughout the country over the objections of Scalise and many other Republican lawmakers. On 14 June 2017 Scalise, several dozen of his colleagues, and their aides were at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia, to practice for the Congressional Baseball Game, an annual charity event that pits congresspersons from the two major political parties against each other. Griner and her two colleagues were stationed behind near the field while the Republicans practiced. Also present was James Hodgkinson, a downstate Illinois resident who had a history of confrontations with police, including an arrest for domestic assault, and of writing anti-Trump and anti-Republican statements on social media and to newspapers. After Hodgkinson learned that the people on the field were Republicans, he began shooting at them with a rifle and handgun. Scalise and two others were hit almost immediately. Griner and one of the other officers ran onto the field to protect the people there, and all three began returning fire at Hodgkinson, as did members of the Alexandria police department upon their arrival. As they did so, several of the congressmen provided medical aid to the wounded. Griner was hit in the ankle during the ten-minute shootout, during which as many as 100 shots were exchanged. It ended when an Alexandria police officer shot Hodgkinson, who later died of his injuries. 

The actions of Griner and the other officers had kept Hodgkinson pinned down behind the dugout and drawn his fire away from the civilians. Senator Rand Paul observed that “Our lives were saved by the Capitol Police. Had they not been there I think it would have been a massacre.” Her high school basketball coach stated “She put it all on the line as a player, just like she put her life on the line protecting others. She was mentally and physically tough as a player. And those qualities are why she’s now a hero.” Griner, Scalise, and the other injured parties were taken to local hospitals, and all are expected to make full recoveries. Because Griner and her wife were legally married, the wife was able to take an active role in the recovery process in ways that had previously been barred to same-sex couples. While in the hospital, Griner and her wife were visited by the Trumps and by Vice President Mike Pence, who like Scalise and many of the others whose lives were saved strongly opposes LGBT rights. One week after the shooting, Griner threw out the first pitch at the Congressional Women’s Softball Game, which raises money for breast cancer research, from a wheelchair. The soft-spoken officer has no social media presence and has made no public statements about these events, but the actress Martha Plimpton tweeted “A queer Black woman saved Steve Scalise’s life, so let’s send her & him our best wishes & hope his voting record changes from here on out.” The Congressional Baseball Game was also played as scheduled, drawing double the usual crowd and raising more than $1 million for charity.

©David Brodnax, Sr.