James Pence and Chad Morris, the married couple who own Bar:PM, a gay bar in south St. Louis, settled their lawsuits over a 2023 police crash into their building for $4.2 million on Wednesday, Oct. 28. The deal came on the third day of Pence’s civil trial against two officers. It also ends a separate suit Morris filed against former officer Ramelle Wallace, St. Louis Magazine reported.
“Officers can make mistakes,” Pence told reporters Wednesday, according to a St. Louis circuit court news summary. “That’s not the problem here. The mistake is how they handled it.”
The state attorney general’s office defended Wallace at trial, but the city is the one paying, the magazine reported. Javad Khazaeli, who represented both men, said the City Counselor’s office didn’t take the case seriously until the last minute. “It wasn’t until they were a few days away from getting hammered by a jury that they took this seriously,” he said.
The Night a St. Louis Police SUV Crashed Into Bar:PM
The SUV hit 7109 S. Broadway, in the Carondelet neighborhood, at about 12:25 a.m. on Dec. 18, 2023, the court summary said. It had been speeding through red lights with no lights or sirens. Pence was asleep in his apartment upstairs. (Bar:PM isn’t the only gay bar story this fall. Pasadena’s The Boulevard planned its last night for Halloween, and Baltimore’s Leon’s reopened Sept. 30 after its owner died. Neither one involved a cop car.)
Watch First Alert 4’s report on the Bar:PM settlement.
Zachary Thompson, a probationary officer, was behind the wheel. He first claimed he’d swerved to miss a dog, and he told that story to the owners, to Wallace and to an off-duty officer, St. Louis Magazine reported. There was no dog. Another officer later said Thompson got distracted trying to turn his radio dial, St. Louis Public Radio reported, and video showed the SUV running a red light.
At trial, Thompson admitted lying three times on video that night. He’d been dazed, with an airbag in his face, when one of the owners accused him of a hate crime. “Dude? How is this a hate crime?” Thompson replied.
Ramelle Wallace Cuffed James Pence 22 Seconds After Arriving
Wallace showed up smoking a cigar. Just 22 seconds later, Pence was in handcuffs, the magazine reported. He was never charged, St. Louis Public Radio reported last year.
Pence, cuffed, told the officer, “Go back to your little van.”
“Make me,” Wallace replied. Body camera video showed him telling Pence as he cuffed him, “You’re not going to act a fool.”
Testifying Tuesday, Oct. 27, Wallace said he’d worried Pence was trying to whip bystanders into a riot and might have a weapon. Pence’s lawyer Jack Waldron pointed out that Wallace never patted him down and smoked a cigar the whole time. Asked about an Internal Affairs probe into Morris’s arrest, Wallace said the city was engaged in a “witch hunt.”
“I don’t get in trouble,” he testified. Then he quickly added, “A lot.”
Jurors also saw video of a 2023 fight at the city jail. Wallace admitted throwing the first punch, though he denied starting it.
“This was about the worst police record I’d ever seen in my life,” Khazaeli told First Alert 4. Wallace is now an officer with the North County Police Cooperative, the station reported, citing state public safety records.
“Anybody that’s seen the videos from that night knows there was never more than six or seven citizens on the scene in any way, at any given time,” Pence said after the settlement, according to St. Louis Magazine.
Chad Morris Faced an Assault Charge Until Halloween 2025
Prosecutors accused Morris of hitting an officer who responded to the crash, and they charged him with felony assault and resisting arrest. The assault count was later reduced to a misdemeanor, and the resisting charge was dropped in September 2024, First Alert 4 reported. Circuit Judge Rochelle Woodiest threw out the rest on Oct. 31, 2025, after defense lawyers listed evidence the state never turned over, including text messages from every officer who responded to the crash.
“This has been a very long two years, and it should have ended a long time ago,” Morris said the day before the ruling.
Morris sued that December. His suit says Wallace repeatedly punched him in the face, St. Louis Public Radio reported. “They kept my guy under charges until Halloween,” Khazaeli said then.
Who Pays the $4.2 Million Settlement, and When?
“We settled our case with the St. Louis Police Department and, specifically, former Officer Ramelle Wallace for $4.2 million for both of my clients,” Khazaeli said, First Alert 4 reported. At a news conference, he added, “We have one tool, and that’s the court system, and we have 4.2 million pieces of evidence to show that what they did was wrong.”
“I hope that the city will put all these bad cops behind us and focus on the good officers,” Pence said, according to the magazine.
The city will pay Pence and Morris $1 million within 30 days of executing the agreement, then $1 million a year for the next three years, St. Louis Magazine reported. The magazine said the remaining $200,000 would be paid at the beginning of fiscal year 2030.
