When Your Name Is a Number

Last year, the phrase '85 Shots' hung in the thick summer air.

by Brian Howard

Punch "85 Shots" into Google. You don't even need the quotes. The top results for the fairly innocuous pairing recall one of the darkest days in Philadelphia law enforcement.

On Sunday, July 8, 2007, Philadelphia police fired 85 rounds at Steven "Butter" Miller at the corner of Tasker and Taney streets where he lived, hitting him between 17 and 21 times, and killing him.

The story, like any where a shocking amount of force is used to bring down a single man, buzzed in the minds of an entire city well after the shots ceased ringing out.

This was not an Amadou Diallo moment. Diallo had the misfortune of resembling a serial rapist the police were looking for, had no record and was simply reaching for his wallet when NYPD officers shot at him 41 times. Miller was, indeed, wielding a gun and, by all accounts, high when misfortune met misunderstanding at the corner of Tasker and Taney last summer.

Still, when the number of shots fired is that high, it's hard to see past it. The phrase "85 Shots" hung in the thick summer air.

Last year, our own Tom Namako and Doron Taussig, just days after the killing, set out to write a story of their own called "85 Shots."

"It came from a line in one of the dailies," says Namako. "Essentially, Miller's brother said he'd reached a 'breaking point.' Doron and I went to Tasker and Taney to find out what that breaking point was."

Their story wasn't about bullets. It was about a man. A man who woke up on Sunday morning, July 8, 2007, and wanted pancakes. Who spent much of the day communing with family and friends. And who, just a half-hour before his untimely death, had called out a friendly hello to his man Tyree before disappearing into his house.

Their story, through the accounts of the friends and family members with whom Miller had spent his last day, painted a moving portrait of a man full of life, struggling with his ambitions and who cared about people who cared about him back. It also depicted a man who made decisions — some that were good, like maintaining a close friendship with Daniel "Scotch" Williams, and some that were bad, like whatever he did in the half-hour between when he entered his house for the last time and when he emerged, vacant-eyed, muttering to himself and brandishing a gun.

If you type "Tasker and Taney" into Google Maps and click on "street view," you can still see the stuffed animal memorial to Miller (it's no longer there in the real world) with a sign you can't quite make out. You can see the wall the bullets hit. You can see crime scene tape crumpled on the ground, streaming off in all directions.

It is a cold, eerie memento. It is unclear when, exactly, the Google photos were taken.

What Taussig and Namako found in revisiting the case, the scene and those closest to Miller, is that it's hard to go back.

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"The first time around, it was so raw in people's minds almost everyone was open," says Namako. "This time around ... people were coping in their own way. His friends on the street left a balloon outside his house, Scotch poured some liquor out, and we had to ask them to not just do those symbolic things, but actually talk about it all over again. It was hard for the friends and family."

Another sad truth is that even in the wake of the most high-profile killings, rough neighborhoods like Wilson Park tend to stay rough.

And another is that no one may ever know what happened in the last half-hour of Miller's life, what made his day and ultimately his life turn on a pivot. Was it beef? Was it a laced blunt? Was it just everything: life, the heat, the street?

The breaking point remains a mystery. As you'll read on p. 20, the hole left by the loss of Steven Miller, a man whose life and death are synonymous with the phrase "85 Shots," is obvious.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)