Eight Violent Clashes in Three Months Have Many Searching for Answers
Jeremy Kohler, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Eight times in the past three months, St. Louis police officers have been shot at or drawn into gunbattles. What’s behind this unusual run of violence? No one knows for sure. Kids on the corner say shooters are defending their turf. Police point to brazen street criminals who seem capable of anything. A Post-Dispatch reporter spent two recent afternoons assessing the mood in some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.
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Four men standing in the 2000 block of East De Soto Avenue wear the same steely grimace. Lips drawn tight. Wide eyes shifting to assess potential danger as a stranger approaches.
Three men have been fatally shot in the past 13 months on this row of ramshackle cottages in the city’s College Hill neighborhood. Fights and gunshots are regular events. And these men relish the block’s fearsome reputation. “Everything you read in the papers,” brags a teen in a blue, hooded sweatshirt, “happens here.”
This year, St. Louis police officers have been seen more and more in College Hill, telling people to disperse, go home. The increased patrols here and in Jeff-Vander-Lou, Fairground, O’Fallon and The Ville have led to a drop in homicides and assaults in those neighborhoods this year, the department says.
But the police presence is not welcomed by all.
The men on the street complain they’ve been frisked and hassled, wrongfully detained. What gives cops the right to tell them they can’t be outside -- at any hour, they ask. They hear people on the news wondering why so many people are shooting at St. Louis police lately.
“They probably shoot to save their (behinds),” said one of the men, 29. “All (the police are) trying to do is keep us down. They don’t trust me. They treat everyone like a criminal.”
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This mentality -- shared by young men who grew up in a culture of violence and drugs -- is part of what fuels a spate of violence against St. Louis police. Officers have been involved in eight shootings in three months. The trend spurred Chief Joe Mokwa last month to order the city’s 1,100 officers to wear bulletproof vests, something formerly optional.
Mokwa insists that the city hasn’t turned on the police; it’s just the bad guys who, lately, appear capable of anything. Blowing away a security guard outside a bank. Spraying bullets across an interstate highway at rush hour to wipe out a rival.
Why are so many people suddenly shooting at St. Louis cops? Maybe it’s an aberration, Mokwa says. Perhaps it’s due in part to police being more aggressive in problem neighborhoods, he says.
“People want police intervention,” Mokwa said. “They want more police and more visibility. They don’t understand why young men can stand on corners selling drugs.”
Is more intervention good? Opinions are mixed among beat cops, at least some of whom feel they are being placed in dangerous neighborhoods like lightning rods.
Some gripe that they’re no longer allowed to pursue stolen cars, for fear of injuring someone in a chase. They can’t shake down loiterers, for fear of being accused of rough tactics. They can’t shoot someone, for fear of being accused of brutality -- or racism.
Veteran officers feel trapped between wary citizens watching over the department’s shoulder and street criminals who are learning and adapting to the limitations placed on officers.
“In St. Louis, you can steal a $ 20,000 car and not worry about being chased,” an anonymous person posted recently on an Internet bulletin board for St. Louis police officers. It’s true. This year, Mokwa ordered officers not to chase cars unless they were involved in violent crimes, out of fear of injuring innocent people.
More from the Web site: “All of the younger mopes are learning what they can get away with. . . . When was the last time you saw (city leaders) applaud a cop for shooting at a thug when everybody knows it was the right thing to do?”
The frustration is felt at every level, right up to the chief’s office. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the procession of thugs. Mokwa envisions little spring-loaded doors throughout the city. Police arrest a bad guy and -- boing -- another one pops up where the last one was standing.
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About two dozen people who live in the city’s highest-crime neighborhoods, interviewed over two afternoons, seemed equally frustrated with the criminals and police.
Criminals take away their safety, bring down property values, give the city its reputation as one of the nation’s most dangerous. Police represent the face of a government many feel has failed them.
Drug dealers and gangs have waged turf wars for decades, and many of today’s offenders are their children or grandchildren. At least these days police seem to be inserting themselves into the fray, said a 23-year-old man who lives in the city’s Walnut Park neighborhood.
“I feel unsafe going through my neighborhood, even though I have been there for 21 years,” he said. He recounted a recent confrontation with a man loitering on his property. Get off, he told the man, who wouldn’t budge.
“People decide they do what they want to do,” the property owner said. It’s not a surprise that they’re shooting at police; they have no morals, he said.
A 37-year-old man, interviewed as he stood outside a food pantry near Warne and West Florissant avenues, said he’s seen a younger generation raised on violence. He said he saw a 13-year-old with an assault rifle earlier in the week.
“Little cats don’t even know how to read this sign -- Our Lady of Perpetual Help Food Pantry -- but they can load a pistol, and they know all the gang symbols,” he said. “They have a fear of police, and when someone is scared of someone, that’d make them hurt them quicker.”
At the same time, police seem compassionless toward young men and slow to respond to a neighborhood’s problems, said the man from Walnut Park. Police recently took 45 minutes to respond to gunshots at his grandmother’s home, he said. And they held him overnight on suspicion of a crime he didn’t commit, then didn’t apologize when they released him, he said.
“Some of the police don’t give a (expletive) about us young black males, and they’ll tell you,” he said.
Not true, says Mokwa. He points to the hundreds of hours per year police officers spend at neighborhood meetings or volunteering with groups such as the Police Athletic League.
Said Mokwa: “The expectations out there are almost impossible to satiate. People need all kinds of resources beyond the reach of law enforcement.”
He points to neighborhood and block meetings that police regularly attend. People in poor neighborhoods have concerns about crime. But then the talk turns to the trash that wasn’t picked up, the trees that need pruning. Police can’t solve all those problems, he said.
“In a lot of cases, we are the only (government) representative to these places,” he said.
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Officer Christine Fernandez says she knows firsthand that she has the support of the community she patrols. She found out the hard way, from compassionate help that poured out after she was shot.
Fernandez was the first officer on the scene of a two-car crash at Union and Bircher boulevards on Oct. 14. Witnesses pointed to one of the drivers, Kenneth J. Tate Jr., 25, walking away from the scene.
“I just yelled up, ‘Hey, are you OK? Do you need help?’” Fernandez recalled in an interview last week.
Tate then pulled a 9 mm handgun from his waistband and fired four shots at Fernandez, striking her in the groin, officials said. Her left thigh snapped as she collapsed. She fired 12 shots at Tate, hitting him in the left foot and both legs.
Doctors inserted a titanium rod into Fernandez’s femur, screwed into her hip and her knee. She’s resting at her home in the city’s Carondelet neighborhood and hopes to return to light duty in six to eight weeks, and ultimately to her patrol in Walnut Park.
Mokwa said Tate appeared dazed or drunk at the hospital after the shooting.
That’s the way Tate seemed on a recent day at the Workhouse, when he didn’t seem to understand a reporter’s question: Why did he shoot? He responded with mumbles and silence.
What’s important to police is that witnesses helped Fernandez. One used the radio in Fernandez’s squad car to call for help. Some later appeared at the North Patrol Bureau to tell police how Tate pulled his weapon without being provoked.
“I sincerely hope that the good people out there haven’t lost faith in us,” Fernandez said. “We need their support to do our jobs. That is what we rely on, is their support.
“I hope they understand some of the things we’re dealing with right now. It puts a lot on a person. We’re just normal people doing a job every day.”
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Recent shootings involving police
July 22: A St. Louis police officer wounded a man who authorities say reached for a weapon in his waistband during a confrontation in the 3900 block of McRee Avenue. Maurice Hoskins, 26, was shot in the right arm and abdomen by Officer William Moore. Hoskins denies that he was armed.
Aug. 13: Terrell Cooper, 22, was shot three times by police and survived. Police say two officers shot at Cooper when he tried to run them down.
Sept. 2: An officer fatally shot Stanley Parker, 17, who police say was with a group of men who exchanged gunfire with the officer near O’Fallon Park. Parker was found with a gun, investigators said, but it had not been fired.
Sept. 13: An off-duty detective fatally shot a suspect after witnessing a carjacking, police say. Authorities say Cornelius “Katt” Davis crashed into three cars, then tried to carjack a vehicle occupied by a family. As the detective and suspect struggled, Davis was shot in the side.
Sept. 20: Elliott Smith, 25, was shot several times by Officer Stanley Davis. The officer said Smith fired at him first. Smith was charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
Sept. 24: A man who shot at Officer Sean Wade after a traffic stop in Tower Grove Park was wounded in the leg when Wade returned fire, authorities said. Police say the officer may have been saved when the gun fired by Jerome Tate, wanted for a parole violation, jammed after one shot because it was loaded with the wrong caliber ammunition. Tate denies that he was armed.
Oct. 5: A police officer investigating reports of a suspicious person approached a man walking in the 4500 block of West Pine Boulevard. The man shot at the officer, striking the steering wheel of the patrol car. The suspect, Maurice Poindexter, told police that he simply was concerned that police wanted to question him, detectives said.
Oct. 14: Officer Christine Fernandez was shot in the groin, allegedly by Kenneth Tate Jr., 25, after a two-car crash. Witnesses told police that the shooting was unprovoked.