In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, militarized SWAT cops decorated themselves with “Medals of Valor” for killing 107-year-old Monroe Isadore, who reportedly supported his local cops during his enduring decades of living.
Now Pine Bluff Police are defying an order to return their death medals.
Even after the Pine Bluff City Council voted unanimously to rescind them.
“I don’t understand the rationale,” said Councilwoman Thelma Walker, who proposed the medals be rescinded, in a conversation with [__KATV__](http://katv.com/news/local/awards-given-to-pb-officers-for-shooting-death-of-107-year-old-still-not-returned).
“I don’t understand why anyone would want a medal, who can you show it to? Oh. I have a medal of valor….Well, were you in the war? No. I killed a 107-year-old man…. You know, who would want that?”
Pine Bluff City Council voted unanimously and issued an order to rescind the medals.
Pine Bluff Police Department responded to the order to rescind by lawyering up and running to the [__Fraternal Order of Police__](https://www.fop.net/), the largest police union in the country, hiring legal representation to “weigh out the officers’ options”.
Because, apparently the morbid-minded officers don’t want to give up their trophies, celebrating Isadore’s death.
According to his family, Isadore loved and supported Pine Bluff police.
“For that to be who shot and killed him, that doesn’t sit right with me,” said Paula Aguilar Isadore’s youngest daughter. “We won’t believe that a 107-year-old man needed to be gunned down when he had hearing issues that the police knew about, they knew of his age, they knew he had lots of children.”
But Pine Bluff cops were the ones kicking down the door and bum-rushing the room Isadore had holed himself up in even though nobody else was in the house except him.
Aguilar says she’s unhappy with the investigation into her father’s death, and doesn’t buy the Pine Bluff Police Department’s official findings.
She thinks her dad was confused after Pine Bluff cops tear-gassed the hard-of-hearing, elderly man.
They then flash banged the old man. With a grenade.
Aguilar believes that’s what ended up confusing and incapacitating her father.
Then, after they stunned Isadore with a flash grenade, a Pine Bluff SWAT Team rushed inside the room he was in, and shot him 32 times, [__according to witnesses.__](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/09/09/220643744/how-does-a-107-year-old-die-in-a-police-shootout-details-emerge)
The city of approximately 45,ooo citizens assigned two special prosecutors to investigate the officers who entered the room to kill Isadore to determine if they should be criminally charge, stating, “There was only one person in that house that was acting inappropriately and that was Mr. Isadore when he fired five shots at police.”
Councilwoman Walker said the medals glorifying the death of Isadore were “unconscionable and reprehensible, and should not be sanctioned by the City of Pine Bluff.”
The Arkansas cops say they approached the bedroom where Isadore was hiding and announced themselves when he shot at them, according to [__Arkansas Matters__](http://www.arkansasmatters.com/lifestyle/keeponamazing). Backup was called in. And then a SWAT team.
That’s when police sent in their military-style SWAT Team, invading the elderly man’s room where they claim he had “barricaded himself” inside and refused to come out, according to the official SWAT police report.
Which would be the last thing 107-year-old Monroe Isadore ever did.
The word “[__valor__](https://www.google.com/#q=valor)” comes from French and Latin, defined as: great courage in the face of danger, especially in battle.
**UPDATE:** The Pine Bluff police officers [__eventually agreed to return the medals.__](http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/aug/17/arkansas-officers-turn-medals-valor-received-after/?f=news-arkansas)
