Isadore’s needless death remembered

Ten years ago, a Pine Bluff man needlessly lost his life and the news spread internationally.

CNN: 107-year-old man killed in police shootout, authorities say

NBC News: 107-year-old man shot and killed by Arkansas police

NPR: How does a 107-year-old die in a police shootout? The New York Times: Arkansas: Man, 107, killed resisting swat team

The list of stories extends as long as one cares to scroll. As many will recall, we are referring to Monroe Isadore, who would, however unlikely, be 117 this year.

In September 2013, Isadore was shot after police were called to a home he rented. He was agitated and would not leave when a relative came to the house wanting to move him to an apartment. Police said he had a gun and pointed it at the homeowner. Then when police got there, Isadore was said to have fired the gun at a door. That was all it took. Members of a SWAT team were called. When they arrived, he was said to have fired two more shots. At that, the team kicked in the door and shot him.

Then-council member Thelma Walker, now deceased, had a hard time gathering herself to speak, so moved was she by a video of what happened.

“I saw the film. Isadore was sitting on the bed up against the wall,” Walker said, as reported by The Commercial, her voice shaking. “He didn’t know what was happening. He shot one time and the next thing they came in and shot half of his head off.”

The element we recall was that no one was said to have done anything wrong. A special prosecutor cleared the police of any wrongdoing, saying they had acted within the scope of their jobs. And a federal lawsuit, filed by Isadore’s family, was dismissed.

Despite all that, we will always believe that everything about what happened that day was wrong. That thought was brought home when, on Thursday night, television news carried live the FBI’s efforts to capture the man they believed responsible for the mass shooting in Maine.

If the reporter said it once, he said it a dozen or more times: Authorities had time on their side so they could be patient in how they entered the man’s house, and rushing inside a house was the last thing they wanted to do.

And we couldn’t help thinking, well, unless you’ve surrounded a house in Pine Bluff and a 107-year-old man is holed up. If that’s the case, the rules of engagement say it’s OK to burst in and kill the man.

No, the man inside the Maine house had not fired a weapon, but then that guy wasn’t 107 either.

What would you do if you were faced with a grumpy, confused 107-year-old man or a grumpy, confused 97-year-old man or a grumpy, confused 87-year-old man, or just anyone who was grumpy and confused and armed? Maybe not crash through the door but let the situation calm down? Maybe let the person fall asleep? Maybe use more tear gas? Maybe just cordon off the area and try reasoning with the person? Maybe just wait awhile and then wait some more?

In any number of ways, the average person would have tried to deal with the situation without using lethal force, and yet, because Isadore fired a shot, in the Police World handbook, that equals taking the man out.

And the police were so proud of how their officers reacted that they gave them medals. Do you remember that sordid part? It was as if to say, not only did we do the right thing, but we were brave in doing it. It was a nauseating time.

Thankfully, the City Council recaptured a bit of sanity on the issue by unanimously demanding that the officers who received the medals of “valor” return them.

Said Wanda Neal, then-president of the NAACP: “I’m also very pleased with the outcome of this vote and for those medals to be taken back. I think it is so wrong to award officers who have taken a 107-year-old’s life.”

We hope the Police Department, actually the police writ large, have progressed since then and use this incident in their training and because of that, they would see that shooting Isadore was not their only option. We hope the outcry would be deafening if something like this were to ever happen again. We hope that in the aftermath of such a horrendous incident, the powers that be would not be so callous and insensitive as to give out medals. Nothing that man could have done from inside the walls of that house should have equaled the taking of his life. We hope everyone remembers that.