Opinion: Kirkwood racism boils over into violence

From WikiLou

Before we talk about last night's violence, let us assess Kirkwood itself. Kirkwood is 91% white, and 7% black. It has the same type of St. Louis-area police, with their same types of abuses. Until last night, the growing disparity between White Kirkwood, and Black Kirkwood was never mentioned by the media, or openly acknowledged by the community. This is despite the killing of white Kirkwood police officer, William McEntee, by a black man in 2005, and the following death sentence for Kevin Johnson that was handed down 1 week ago today.^[1] That police killing is an entirely different story, but related to the maltreatment of a dying young black boy by the local police. After this event, "No tears for McEntee" appeared in spray-paint in Kirkwood.

The point is: Kirkwood has a race problem, and it's not getting better.

It would be easy to chalk off last night's shootings as one man's beef with the Kirkwood government. Honestly, that is what I thought when I first started reading about it and watching the news. Then I saw Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton's brother speak to a channel 4 reporter. First of all, simply seeing that he was black, and realizing that the shooter was black, immediately made me suspect there was more to the issue. The words that he spoke made it very clear that my suspicions were correct. "The only way that I can put it in a context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people that were of the government that was putting torment and strife into his life. And he had spoke on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied him all access to the rights of protection, and therefore he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue." (see video of the interview with him here) He explained this very calmly, and seemed to both sympathize with, and accept his brother's chosen course of action. The white reporter was baffled. She was further amazed when black residents approached her to tell her how good of a man Charles Thornton was. He owned his own construction business, volunteered to help children in his spare time, and was well known as a genuinely nice guy by the people in his neighborhood. These residents declined to be on camera, but said that what the city had done to Mr. Thornton was awful. No one had made the shooter out to be crazy, angry, or otherwise unstable. In fact, he was an asset to the community. Again, the reporter was dumbfounded.

So what pushed him so far? It started when Charles Thornton left town for three days. Owning his own construction business, he had 7 vehicles which he parked in the area around his home. He received no complaints about the vehicles in the past, but when he returned from his three day trip, he found 21 parking tickets (one on each vehicle for each day he was gone). He felt he was being targeted for no real reason. He'd caused no harm to anyone. If his vehicles caused a problem, couldn't they have simply mentioned it to him without hundreds of dollars worth of tickets? Well, the Kirkwood Police had found an easy target to bring in some revenue, and they took advantage of the situation. Following this, the Kirkwood police found reasons to give Thornton over 150 citations, which cost him thousands in fines.

After the first tickiting incident, Mr. Thornton became involved in his local politics. He started attending City Council meetings, and found a lot going on in his community that he disagreed with. When he became an outspoken opponent of many of the City's plans, he was often cut off while speaking, or otherwise ignored. When he brought up the race disparity in Kirkwood, he was silenced. He called the attitude of the City Council a "plantation mentality", and for that he was removed from a meeting. Eventually was arrested twice for speaking out, and a court order barred him from speaking in future Council meetings. He sued the City of Kirkwood, with the claim that his first amendment right to free speech was being violated. A federal judge threw out the case in late January.

With all legal options for justice exhausted, Charles Thornton decided to go to war. He told his family "To God be the glory", and said that he loved them. He took a stolen .44 magnum revolver and headed to City Hall.^[2] Outside he killed one police officer, and took the officer's .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol. He continued into the City Council meeting with both firearms, shouted "All we want is justice!", and killed another officer. Then he approached the dais and killed three Kirkwood officials. He critically wounded the mayor, and wounded a Suburban Journals reporter in the hand with a presumed unintended ricochet. After this, police from the neighboring police department swarmed into the chambers and killed Thornton.

There we many ways this incident could have been prevented. Lets make a list

The police department could have been courteous and asked Thornton to move his vehicles rather than simply placing hundreds of dollars worth of tickets on them.
The police department could have restrained themselves from issuing over 130 more citations to Mr. Thornton as their own form of punishment for fighting the first tickets.
The City Council could have addressed Thornton's concerns about their plans and policies, as they would have any other citizen that attended their meetings.
The City Council could have addressed Thornton's feelings that he was being disenfranchised because of the color of his skin rather than having him arrested and banned from speaking.

Basically, the white administration in Kirkwood could have treated this man as a person, just as we all hope to be treated. Instead, the administration used all its legal authority to harass, silence, and belittle Charles Thornton.

Now, what will Kirkwood do about their growing racial divide? The answer is nothing. They'll make it out to be one crazy man on a mission of vengeance. They'll install some metal detectors at City Hall. They'll station more police at the Council meetings. And they'll try their best to make everyone "feel safe" while not addressing the real problems that have turned their town into a warzone on more than one occasion.

To read the full story of the shooting from a neutral point of view, please see the Wikipedia page here.