When I moved into the Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District in the spring of 2024, I wasn’t sure what kind of environment I was moving into. Sure, I had been jogging in the apartment district’s titular park for a year at that point and I felt comfortable enough. But of course, spending an hour a day in a well-maintained public park is a different ballgame than spending days at a time in a nearby neighborhood.
Palmer Park is situated directly east of the Detroit Golf Club — so close that on a map, they look like two halves of one park — and South of the affluent Palmer Woods Neighborhood. It also forms the border of the hard-knock Woodward and McNichols corridor.
But a place is more than just a set of coordinates. When I moved in, what I heard regularly were kids playing basketball at the park. I saw people lounging on their balconies. I smelled the aroma of many a summer cookout. I saw people living amongst the beautiful architecture of the Apartment District.
The opulence of the art deco designs belied the low rent of the area. More than 40 beautifully designed apartment buildings constructed from the early 1920s through the late 1950s populate the labyrinthine streets. I had been living in the Palmer Park Historic Apartment District for four months when I was taking my trash out one early July day and saw the street next to mine cordoned off with police tape. Police cars and news cars packed the street while residents lined the sidewalk. I soon learned from a neighbor what all the hubbub was about: Someone had been shot.
It wasn’t until the evening news came on that I learned a tenant at 17655 Manderson Road had been shot and killed by a court officer during an eviction. As the months passed, we got more information — the victim was 44-year-old Sherman Lee Butler, and he had been having a mental health crisis at the time. A crisis intervention team had been called and was on the way when the court officer and a group of Detroit Police Officers entered Butler’s apartment.
It felt like an execution, and I wasn’t the only one in the neighborhood who felt that way. After Detroit’s Finest stated that they wouldn’t release bodycam footage of the killing, 40 protesters marched from 6th District Court to DPD headquarters.
Over the months, as pressure mounted for accountability, the block where Sherman Butler was killed changed. Where I once spotted families coming and going, I saw boarded-up windows and trash piles; 17655 Manderson, 1000 Whitmore and 17725 Manderson had all seemingly been cleared out. How could such a stark transformation happen so fast?
In December, DPD finally released bodycam footage and declined to pursue charges against the court officer.
BODY CAMERA FOOTAGE:
In the video, Butler is visible for only a portion of the exchange, captured lying in bed. A grainy, zoomed-in still image presented by the police department is purported to show he “held a box cutter to his neck with his right hand and a spike ball in his left hand.” Evidence photos of a box cutter and a spiked item were also presented.
After talking to Butler for seven minutes, trying to calm him down, eventually, the bailiff turns to an officer and quietly asks, “How you want to handle without blasting his ass? That’s the only way, because the steel thing, that brush-like thing he’s got, is steel … is still spikes. It’s up to you.”
“We’ll Tase his ass, it’ll drop him,” the officer responds.
The officer’s Taser deployment did not subdue Butler. Instead, he stands, stepping around the bed with writhing movements.
The bailiff then fires at least six shots and Butler collapses on the ground. Asked by an officer where he’s been shot, he responds “everywhere.” He was pronounced dead shortly after.
The bodycam footage only made me more convinced that Butler’s death was preventable.
Beyond that, I was struck by the condition of his apartment, notably the writing on the walls. I wondered how anyone could let their living conditions get that bad. I wanted to find out what it was like living in those apartments.
Past residents of 1000 Whitmore, the boarded-up building next to the one Sherman lived in, speak fondly of their time at the corner apartment, highlighting it as a beacon of community and a friendly threshold into the city of Detroit.
Aaron Schillinger, an East Coast native, had been working on his documentary, “Boblo Boats: A Detroit Ferry Tale” for five years when, in June 2020, he decided to move to the city he had spent so much time filming.
“I found the large, spacious lobby so unique when I first moved there. […] It was a great place to chat with fellow residents, and there was even an understanding that if you wanted to give away something, you would just set it in a specific part of the lobby.”
A neighbor that Schillinger grew close to was Sarah Grieve, who became a researcher for the documentary.
“I [moved to] 1000 Whitmore in 2017,” Grieve said. “I was honestly nervous back then — as someone new to the city, I didn’t know what to expect. The city still felt dangerous. But 1000 Whitmore changed that for me. It gave me a real sense of safety and stability, enough that it eventually inspired me to buy a home of my own just a few miles away in Highland Park.”
Grieve notes that while there were issues like cockroaches, the sense of community more than made up for it. She spoke highly of Lilly, the building manager from 2008 through 2020.
“I’d [put together] a very nice Christmas tree for when [tenants] would walk in the building, it was beautiful,” Lily reflects. The way she speaks of her tenants is reminiscent of a doting grandmother. In fact, she says that they were like family. She declined to give her last name over fear of retribution by the building owners.
Unfortunately, family doesn’t always last forever.
Around 2021, the previous owners of the buildings on Whitmore sold them to Urban Communities Palmer Park, an Arizona-based company. Compared to the previous owners having five buildings in the area, UC Palmer Park touted 28, including 17655 Manderson where Butler lived. Whereas the previous owners insisted that building managers live in the buildings they managed, UC Palmer Park required them to all work away from the apartments in a central office.
I looked at property records from UC Palmer Park, specifically its dealings with the Historic District Commission. The HDC has the ability to reject proposed renovations to a historic building if it finds they compromise the building’s historic character.
UC Palmer Park proposed many changes to its buildings, while the HDC approved changes like window replacements, they rejected UC Palmer Park’s request to tear down courtyard walls. The property managers had concerns that people from the park would congregate around there. The HDC notes that UC Palmer Park wasn’t very communicative when it came to questions and requests.
What does this have to do with Butler’s death? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps no environment, no matter how welcoming, no community, no matter how strong, nor any building manager, no matter how attentive, could have prevented his death. All the same, I’m left wondering “what if.”
This questionable death and the closing of these beautiful buildings has me questioning a neighborhood I have grown to love. And worrying about what happens next.
The 1000 Whitmore I’ve heard described in the past starkly contrasts with the one I’ve pieced together from records. While the district is still lively, I’d be lying if I didn’t say a shadow didn’t hang about it following Butler’s death. In 2023, UC Palmer Park had a pending lawsuit and lien on its properties due to excessive unpaid charges from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department, according to public records. On March 1, 17655 Manderson was forfeited to Wayne County Treasury due to unpaid property taxes. As of this writing, a court-ordered receiver is attempting to sell all UC Palmer Park’s former properties. Neither the court-ordered receiver, Frank R. Simon, nor UC Palmer Park could be reached for comment.
Perhaps the seizure of 1000 Whitmore and several of its neighboring buildings is a blessing in disguise. These apartments, as they stand today, are shells of their former glory. They stand at a precipice – they can either be ushered into a new era where they help residents thrive like they once did, or they can continue to deteriorate as countless buildings unfortunately have in the city. It all depends on whether or not potential owners value these buildings’ cultural character and the potential communities they can attract.
I think it important to not that the company listed on Sherman Butler’s eviction was NOT the owner of the property, nor were they licensed Real Estate Brokers and should not have been practicing property management. The property management company, PointeStar did not have a real estate broker’s license either or a DBA. Judge Monique Sharpe had the opportunity to address that in court. Because 36th District is pro landlord and an eviction court, she did not. Another contributor to Sherman Butler’s death was the total incompetence of the Detroit Police and 36th District Court Bailiff Craig Gregory. Police disregarding EVERYTHING that they had been trained to do. The mental health unit refusing to respond to dispatch and sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot enjoying chicken nuggets when they should have been at Sherman Butler’s apartment. The OCI report reads like a bad TV drama. https://detroitisdifferent.com/facts-about-the-shooting-death-of-sherman-lee-butler-victoria-camille-of-cpta-speaks/ Kym Worthy should be ashamed of herself for not prosecuting that bailiff.