Black and Blue

Brad Kessler, the lawyer hired by J.R.'s mother, is a former St. Louis public defender and one of the more prominent criminal defense lawyers in town. I have known him as a friend for the past 10 years. He acknowledges that the cops "were not up there just to shoot anyone who's on the street." He has a theory about what may have happened: It wasn't J.R. firing at the police; it was other police officers at the other end of the block. "They catch J.R. in a crossfire," says Kessler. "The police had already started shooting from Harris, west down Carter, so it is clear that they're taking fire, but the only people they're taking fire from are the police that are down that way, and then they start shooting back. There's no reason that the police should be shooting at each other, and it's clear that that's what's happening; it's clear that they're directly in each other's line of fire."

He and Dan Diemer, another lawyer working with him on this case, have interviewed 11 witnesses, most of whom have agreed to testify in court if necessary. But Kessler and Diemer have been given no information from the police department, nor are they entitled to any of it yet. On May 18, a hearing will be held at which J.R. will either be certified as an adult and prosecuted or remanded to juvenile court.

Moss accuses Kessler of discouraging the witnesses from talking to the police. "Here's the bottom line," says Moss. "He has talked to them; he doesn't want them to talk to the police or me. This is just getting his case together." Kessler's business cards are all over the neighborhood, says Moss, and some people have told investigators that Kessler told them they don't have to talk to the police.

"I didn't produce them, you know -- these are people who came to us," Kessler responds. "We went up there, a couple of white guys walking around, and people, most of whom realized we weren't police, coming up to us telling us what happened. This is not a situation where we paid people. These aren't our people. I can't tell them not to talk to police. I don't represent them. I don't control them.

"Of course, what do you expect the police to say? They've created a situation, and they need another scapegoat," Kessler says. "They've already made J.R. a scapegoat; now I have to be a scapegoat for why they can't do an investigation. But they've created a problem way before this case. They created a situation where these people won't come to them. They created a situation where these people don't trust the police. I didn't create that."

All the parties -- Kessler, Moss, Lauer, the witnesses -- agree on one thing: In many neighborhoods, particularly those where poor African-Americans live, a huge rift gapes between the cops and the community. And the chasm spreads wider each time blacks are injured or killed by men in blue. Among the more publicized incidents in the metro area are the alleged beating by city police that resulted in the death of burglary suspect Julius Thurman in April 2000; the deaths of drug suspect Earl Murray and his friend Ronald Beasley in a hail of gunfire from undercover cops at a Berkeley Jack in the Box last June; and the death of Annette Green of Wellston, killed in February by St. Louis County cops executing a search warrant at her home.

Despite the fact that in some incidents, such as J.R.'s shooting, the officers and the victims have both been African-American and in some others the victims have been white, the issue has taken on a decidedly racial tone, perhaps with good reason. The racism isn't between individuals -- a cop and a suspect -- as much as it is between police departments and African-Americans in general.

The official actions so far are not very heartening: Two weeks after J.R.'s shooting, in a somewhat odd gesture, St. Louis Police Board president Eddie Roth announced that he is stepping down as president in July and that the Rev. Maurice Nutt will take over. Roth is white, Nutt black. Roth candidly told reporters that with Francis Slay as the new mayor, Jim Shrewsbury as the new aldermanic president and Roth as police-board president, "all of the visible leadership is white. We're interested in uniting the community." Roth and the board also knew that three of the four candidates to replace Chief Ron Henderson were white. It was announced on Friday that Henderson, who is black, will be succeeded by Lt. Col. Joseph Mokwa, who is white. And, following in the footsteps of St. Louis County, the city police board will formally look into setting up a citizens' review board to investigate allegations against police officers.

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Prosecutors know too well the problems that result when residents of a neighborhood don't trust police. Moss, who spent 30 years as a prosecutor before going into private practice, says he regularly dealt with witnesses who wouldn't talk.