Clifford Glover would be 54 years old if he were alive today. He’s not. He was shot and killed when he was ten years old.
A majority of Americans now feel estranged from their government, tens of millions of them as a consequence of the rise of Donald Trump and the stranglehold that the right wing of the Republican Party has on Congress. For many, these feelings of hopelessness, anger, and oppression are an unfamiliar experience. For Black America, it’s a reminder that, despite the election of Barack Obama, people of color have never been fully embraced in this country and the power structure has often been aligned against them.
Eloise Glover never recovered emotionally from her son’s death. Under similar circumstances, few parents would. In its aftermath, she sued the City of New York. The case was settled for $100,000, $15,000 of which was paid to the Human Resources Administration in settlement of a $70,000 welfare lien against her. There were attorney’s fees and generous donations to a church group. The money was soon gone. For a while, Mrs. Glover lived in a homeless shelter. She died in 1990 at age 54.
Add Armstead lived his remaining days in relative obscurity and died in 2005 at age 83.
The trial of Thomas Shea served as a prototype for future prosecutions and defenses in cases where unarmed civilians were killed by police officers. Many juries and grand juries still side with the defense in these battles, sometimes appropriately and sometimes not. But it would be wrong to think that nothing good came out of the trial of Thomas Shea. It helped to spread awareness of the inappropriate use of deadly force by police officers and led to significant changes in New York.
In 1973, the year that Shea shot and killed Clifford Glover, there were 371 incidents in which New York City police officers fired their guns at suspects in the line of duty. In 1974, the year after Shea was indicted, that number dropped by 32 percent to 253 incidents with no increase in the number of injuries sustained by police officers. The numbers have remained constant since then. In 2013, New York City police officers fired their guns at suspects on 248 occasions. That said, as evidenced by recent deaths in New York and elsewhere, it’s a matter of record that the use of unjustified force by some law enforcement authorities remains a problem that leads to unnecessary heartbreak and undermines confidence in the criminal justice system.
Thomas Shea moved to Texas and remarried after being dismissed from the New York City Police Department. Recent efforts to locate him were unsuccessful. It’s easy to express outrage at his conduct on April 28, 1973. But it would be wrong to demonize him.
Shea was the product of a flawed system. In a police department where most cops never fire a gun at a suspect in their entire career, Shea shot and wounded three men prior to killing Clifford Glover. In the last of these three incidents, Shea fired his gun twice on a busy street in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, striking a fleeing robbery suspect in the neck. As with the shooting of Clifford Glover, there was an issue as to whether or not the suspect had a gun.
After that shooting, Shea should have been disciplined. He should have been given additional training. And that training should have imparted the message, “There’s a line between the proper use of your weapon and the excessive use of potentially deadly force. You have every right to protect yourself, and you have an obligation to protect the community. But it’s imperative that you exercise better judgment. We will not tolerate your doing something like this again.”
That’s not what happened. Instead, Shea was transferred to the predominantly black 103rd Precinct in South Jamaica, Queens, which was the last place he should have been. This, in itself, was a form of institutionalized racism.
Thomas Demakos left the District Attorney’s office in 1980 and, five years later, became a New York State Supreme Court judge. His career came full circle in 1987, when he presided over the racially charged trial of four men who chased a black man who was in the “wrong neighborhood” onto a highway in Howard Beach where he was struck by a car and killed. Three of the four defendants were convicted of manslaughter.
Jack Evseroff continued practicing law into his early nineties. He did the job he was supposed to do as Thomas Shea’s attorney. But the question remains: “Was justice denied to the Glover family and the community at large by the jury’s verdict in the case of Thomas Shea?”
My own view on this issue has remained unchanged over the years. I believe that Thomas Shea thought he was chasing an armed suspect who had just robbed a taxi driver at gunpoint. Shea might even have been afraid that, at some point, the person he was chasing might turn and fire a shot at him. But I don’t believe that Clifford Glover or Add Armstead had a gun on the morning of April 23, 1973. And it follows from this that I don’t believe Thomas Shea or Walter Scott saw a gun.
Had I been on the jury, I would have voted to convict Shea of manslaughter. The only doubt in my mind on this score is that, like Glanvin Alveranga (whose concerns are voiced on page 127), I’m not certain it was Shea who shot and killed Clifford Glover. Walter Scott also fired his gun on April 23, 1973. And I don’t believe Scott’s testimony regarding the circumstances surrounding his shot. But Shea and Scott testified on multiple occasions that it was Shea who fired the fatal bullet. For me, Shea’s admission moves the case beyond the threshold of “reasonable doubt” on this point.
Black Lives Matter is now in the vanguard of those working to curtail the use of excessive force by law enforcement authorities against members of the black community. Force that is occasioned at times by need and at times by a disregard for life, particularly black life. There is today a greater understanding of, and sensitivity toward, the issues involved than ever before. But there are still times when law enforcement officials cross over the line that separates good police work from the inappropriate use of deadly force. Seeking to justify the unjustifiable won’t solve this pervasive problem.
—Thomas Hauser
New York City, February 2017