Thaddeus McCarroll died because of delusions – his and ours.
The 23-year-old sprinted toward police with a knife in one hand and a Bible in the other and was shot dead early on Saturday, April 18 by members of St. Louis County Police Tactical Unit. They took over from Jennings Precinct cops who had answered a frantic call from his mother that McCarroll had locked her out of her Jennings home and was inside, waving a Samurai sword and muttering about black revolution and being on a mission.
The Tactical Unit had negotiated with McCarroll for about an hour when, in a scene captured on police body cameras, a negotiator said, “Do me a favor and drop the knife and come over here.” McCarroll moved toward police, was hit in the leg with a rubber bullet, and yet sprinted toward officers. They opened fire with real bullets, and McCarroll dropped, shot dead.
The 9200 block of Riverdale Drive on Jennings, just northwest of the Halls Ferry/Riverview traffic circle, is defiantly middle-class in a high-crime area, a row of owner-occupied red brick bungalows with well-trimmed lawns. The neighbors, and the protestors who’ve marched on the block since the shooting are angry, very angry, that the troubled young man who lived with his mom and did odd jobs around the neighborhood wasn’t tackled or Tased, but riddled with slugs.
The men who would have actually had to do the tacking or Tasing defended their actions. County Police Chief Jon Belmar praised the negotiators and the use of the single non-lethal round as proof his people did everything they could before using deadly force, saying, “This individual made the decision to refuse those attempts, and charge at officers with a deadly weapon.”
But why weren’t numerous rubber bullets used? Why not use a Taser? Why not use several officers in body armor to gang-tackle a man only armed with a knife? Why was only one non-lethal round fired before deadly force was unleashed?
All are excellent questions, and all miss the point.
McCarroll’s mission for black revolution – or whatever it was – was clearly delusional. But so was our response – and by “our,” I mean taxpayers, voters, elected officials and police commanders. We’ve decided that armed force, in the persons of quasi-military police responses, is the best way to deal with problems ranging from unemployment and racism to homelessness and mental illness.
You can’t make a cake with a screwdriver, or build a house with a spoon, and yet we, as a matter of policy, have insisted we use exactly the wrong tools for precisely the wrong jobs.
Former County Police Chief Tim Fitch, who has said attacks on police officers increased because of Ferguson, and Atlantic magazine writer and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, a leading critic of the white policing of black America, agree that the police were never designed to do what’s being asked of them.
Shortly after McCarroll died holding the knife and the Bible, Fitch said on Twitter: “To those with the ‘why’ questions about the overnight Jennings shooting: The Myth of Police Reform.” He linked to an essay in The Atlantic in which Coates wrote, “There are many problems with expecting people trained in law enforcement to be social workers. In the black community, there is a problem of legitimacy.”
The neighbors along Riverwood Drive certainly doubt the legitimacy of the police. In a wonderful report for stlamerican.com by Kenya Vaughn, neighbors were outspoken about how the police opened fire unnecessarily, yet almost none wanted their names used, fearing what they claimed would be police retaliation. As one put it, “If we give our names, we’re jeopardizing our lives.”
Whether precaution or paranoia, that fear shows how wide the gulf has become between the mostly white officers and the mostly black community they patrol. The same conclusion, for vastly different reasons, came from the heads of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Fraternal Order of Police, testifying before a Presidential Commission on police violence in January. They said social forces beyond police control, ranging from poverty to homelessness, are making law enforcement more difficult than ever.
None of those are law enforcement problems, but we’ve made them into just that by ignoring systematic reform in everything from alleviating poverty to treating mental illness. We’ve turned everything into a police problem. Thaddeus McCarroll died because of that delusion.
Charles Jaco is a journalist, novelist and author who has worked for NBC News, CNN, Fox 2, KMOX and KTRS.
