SLMPD Murders Man Holding Scissors: Lies, Media Complicity, And The Normalization Of Extrajudicial Executions
UPDATED: This story has been updated to correct a broken link and edited for clarity
On Wednesday, September 25th, Gregory Maxwell of Springfield, Illinois, was murdered by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Mr. Maxwell woke up that morning alive and was dead by evening from police gunfire.
Mr. Gregory “Greg” Maxwell, surviving his father Mick “Mickey” Maxwell by eighteen months, lived his entire life in Springfield, attending Grant Middle School, where his father was a special education teacher, basketball, and track and field coach. Described by a classmate of the same grade who wished to remain anonymous, Greg was a quiet kid, well known about town due to his proximity to his apparently widely beloved father. The classmate described him as a good student, and active in sports. The news of Greg’s death by SLMPD police bullets came as a shock to the former fellow student, who remarked that they couldn’t believe that there wasn’t more hubbub around the murder, given that Greg was the only child of a prominent figure in the Springfield social fabric. Commenting further on their feelings about their hometown, they said, “It’s an awful place. I never want to see Springfield again. That town does something to people.”
Greg, a rare digital ghost in the first social media generation, was apparently prone to mental illness issues. He had one arrest on his record, for unlawful discharge of a firearm, resisting arrest, and unlawful use of a weapon on January 3, 2023. This arrest is apparently his last known photograph available to the public. Maxwell’s only previous encounters with the law, according to Sangamon County casenet, were traffic violations. No drug or alcohol arrests. It’s rational to assume that he was no career criminal, and that he had no history of violence or being involved in altercations.
On September 24, Maxwell checked into the Hampton Inn & Suites of Forest Park. This was independently confirmed with the establishment by this reporter, something that surprisingly no legacy media establishments bothered to do, instead parroting the police spokesperson. He did have a young pit bull puppy with him, this is also confirmed. According to the police department, the man was roaming around the Renaissance Financial building at 5700 Oakland Avenue at around 2:45 pm, though it’s unclear what he was doing. One local station reports that he was “wandering around the Renaissance Financial building holding a puppy.” Another channel states that he was “reportedly walking around the business and other areas throughout the building, sitting in various chairs.” Employees either of the property itself or of the tenant businesses alerted the police to the man’s presence. According to the SLMPD statement by Maj. Jane Bockstruck, two (as yet unnamed) officers responded, one with 4.5 years on the force and one veteran of 15 years.
At this point, the accounts become muddled. Initial reports released the day of the murder claim the man had a knife and began stabbing the dog, at which point the officers discharged a taser to little effect. After which, Maxwell, clearly having what was described by police as a “mental health crisis,” fled to a stairway, where he began to stab himself in the neck. Reportedly, when the officer asked him to drop the knife, the man went from a sitting to a standing position, which made the fully armed and kevlar vested officer “fear for his life,” at which point he drew his firearm and ended the life of 37-year-old Gregory Maxwell. The dog was rushed to the Humane Society of Missouri, and the man was driven to Barnes Jewish Hospital to be pronounced dead, though the original SLMPD post on X (formerly Twitter) claimed the man died at the scene.
Later reporting states that Maxwell did not have a knife, but rather a pair of scissors that he was not reported holding prior to being confronted by police. One report states the man grabbed the scissors, implying that he was completely unarmed until confronted by law enforcement. [This article has been unpublished for undisclosed reasons, the Lincoln County Journal representative stated “I don’t remember that being a story on our website… I don’t recall putting that story up, I’m not seeing it on any of my reports either.” The link has been updated to include the unpublished article that seems to be a reprint of a Post Dispatch piece] All early reports are adamant that the man stabbed the dog. Subsequent stories state that the man “attempted to stab his dog.” Thankfully, the Humane Society reported that the dog was treated for “superficial wounds” and would make a full recovery.
In a statement, a police spokeswoman stated that one of the officers engaged Mr. Maxwell in undescribed “deescalation” before the murder occurred. What form this took will doubtless remain a mystery. One wonders if the usage of a taser on a man in a mental crisis counts as “deescalation.”
One thing all the accounts agree on is that the officer was absolutely terrified for his life, fearing that the injured mentally ill man with a dog in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, would overcome him. The only solution to this problem this officer could manage was to kill the man. There is no mention in any coverage that none of this man’s actions warrant the death penalty, had due process even been applied.
Maybe the officer’s baton was in the shop. Maybe the officer was a bit under the weather that day and couldn’t manage a rough horsin’ around, although ostensibly trained, outfitted, and prepared for just such a thing. We will never know, because none of the journalists reporting on it asked any real questions in the face of yet another extrajudicial police murder with no information except what was fed directly to them by the police department.
“But what’s the big deal?” Someone could say. “The guy was a criminal! He didn’t obey orders! He hurt a puppy! A PUPPY! He definitely deserved it!” This all sounds like something your Fox News-brained uncle might say, and probably would. It’s the current popular attitude in the US. If you’re killed by police, what did YOU do wrong? Any death attributed to the police must be a “suicide by cop” (without mention that either this situation should be rendered impossible in any adequate justice system or that a cop with full body armor shouldn’t be so easily goaded to do such a thing by a man with nothing but a pair of office scissors). Our boys in blue are so handsome and smart, they couldn’t possibly have done something so untoward without good reason. There are rules for this kind of thing! (Are there, though?)
Police killings are old hat now, woven right into the great American background noise with the school shootings, rent increases, wage stagnation, and foreign intervention. It’s not even that interesting to note that more than half of police killings in the USA are unreported and black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence. It’s less interesting to note that up to 40% of police self-report committing domestic violence. Mentioning that cops solve only (and probably less than) 2% of all major crimes? A real snoozer.
None of these attitudes are surprising to the average American. They might even be expected. As a matter of fact it is rare to see someone express an attitude of actual empathy towards the victim of a police murder, and this is the problem. If the attitudes of the police towards us, the unwashed rabble, are ever to change, we have to make them change. There will be no resolution to this ethical contradiction from inside the law enforcement institutions, as proof of this one simply needs to have observed the behavior of the police for the last ten years. Lawmakers are not coming to save us from them, no matter how many minutes they take a knee wearing kente in the visitor center of the inverted toilet congress convenes in. Our trusted institutions have failed us on this issue, and will continue to fail us until broad swathes of the public take their own well being into a higher regard. How this will be accomplished remains a mystery, but it is known that there are organizations that have tried and will continue to try, regardless of how many members tend to die mysteriously.
For our collective humanity, and a cessation of the country’s current headlong descent into fascism, it is imperative that Americans come together with a realistic set of demands and proper organization to put an end to the police’s ability to murder any one of us whenever they should feel like it. Mental illness is not a crime, and does not warrant extrajudicial murder by representatives of the state. Rest in peace, Gregory Maxwell. May his family find some justice in the coming years.
