Police Officer Sought Healing and Justice

Andy Rusticus was the type of police officer for whom his Christian faith and the practices of kindness and restorative justice were important.

Often, while he was on patrol or called to the scene of situations, he would work to defuse things. He also sought to bring healing and give people a break whenever possible.

One time, for instance, he was on patrol when he stopped a teenage driver who had been drinking, said Roland Rusticus, Andy’s father.

“Andy knew that being arrested could have lifelong consequences, so he talked to the young man and gave him a chance to call his parents to take him home instead of being put in jail,” said Roland Rusticus.

Andy Rusticus died in February 2012 of a heart attack while jogging near home. He was training to be a canine officer for the Grand Rapids, Mich. police department at the time.

In memory of their son, Roland Rusticus and his wife, Mary, have set up the Andrew Elliott Rusticus Foundation through which they are sponsoring a restorative justice conference on Oct. 1, 2016, for police agencies and other organizations at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill.

They are doing this, said Roland Rusticus, because their son cared deeply about the principles of restorative justice — a process that seeks to bring reconciliation and healing between offenders and victims. Roland Rusticus and his wife are members of Eastern Ave. CRC in Grand Rapids.

“Andy grew up in a good Christian home and adopted the deepness of the Reformed faith and was able to express that in his work as a police officer,” said Roland Rusticus.

“Andy looked forward to having a career as a good police officer. He was passionate about the cause of restorative justice, and, after he died, we didn’t want that to fade away.”

As a young man, Andy Rusticus wanted to serve in law enforcement like his grandfather, who was a policeman in the Netherlands, and his uncle, who was a homicide detective with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department, which serves the Grand Rapids area.

After high school, Andy went on to study sociology and criminal justice at Trinity, where his teachers remember him for his interest in and commitment to restorative justice.

“Andy was intrigued and encouraged by this model. I saw that it was getting in his mind as he hoped to get a job as a police officer,” said Brad Breems, a professor of sociology emeritus at Trinity.

“When he did become a police officer, he was the one who was most apt to deescalate a situation. He certainly was one of the people who used this approach,” said Breems.

Trinity was working toward offering a major in criminal justice at the time Andy Rusticus was there. He got his degree in sociology but attended criminal justice courses at a community college affiliated with Trinity.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 2009, Andy Rusticus, who was then serving as an officer in a Chicago suburb, spoke about the value of restorative justice.

“If you can explain to people how their actions affected victims and the people around … that’s obviously beneficial to the criminal justice system as a whole because you can educate the offender and the victim and the citizenry in general.”

Trinity started a full-fledged criminal justice program in 2009, but even before that the principles of restorative justice were already woven through various courses at the college, said Robert Rice, a professor of history who taught Andy Rusticus.

“Restorative justice is about forgiveness and mercy,” said Rice. “This process tries to identify and address the issues around fractures in society and between people in order to heal and put things right.”

Restorative justice in the criminal justice system, he said, is not meant to be something that is soft on crime, but to be used as a way to change the criminal to be more open and live a more just life.

“If for no other reason than that the current system isn’t working, restorative justice practices are starting to catch on in law enforcement,” said Rice.

Inspired in part by Christian principles and instituted in the U.S. by Mennonites, restorative justice also has applications in schools where students who are at odds with one another have a chance to sit down, often in a circle, with a mediator who helps them work through their differences.

It is also used in divorce and custody cases, can be used in businesses, and could help bring about reconciliation in such instances as conflict in a church, said Rice.

“Restorative justice offers hope in our world today when so much of what we see is leading to brokenness in society,” said Breems.

In other countries, restorative justice practices are fairly common, but in the U.S. this process is just starting to gain acceptance.

But, said Rice, advocates are confident that it will grow. “As we nibble away at the edges and people see that it works, people will start to increasingly turn to it,” he said.

Featuring a range of speakers, the Oct. 1 conference at Trinity will focus on such topics as use of restorative justice in pretrial and sentencing hearings, reconciliation between victims and offenders, and use of restorative justice in prisons.

“We especially wanted to sponsor the conference as a way to come at restorative justice from a Reformed perspective,” said Roland Rusticus, who owns a radio station in Grand Rapids.

Anyone interested in attending the conference can email Roland Rusticus at [email protected], Brad Breems at brad.breems.trny.edu, or Robert Rice at [email protected].