Alleged Cop-Killer May Be Anti-Government Extremist

Source: Ogden Standard-Examiner

In the latest twist to a deadly shootout that stunned the residents of Ogden, Utah, a recently revealed search warrant affidavit provides evidence that suggests the defendant, Matthew David Stewart, 37, may have been an anti-government extremist.

The shootout began on January 4, 2012, after police launched a raid on Stewart’s residence to execute a search warrant—an informant had alleged he was growing marijuana (16 plants were reportedly later found).  According to police, Stewart hid, opening fire on officers as they searched his residence.  Six officers were hit, some more than once, and Ogden police officer Jared Francom was wounded fatally.  Stewart allegedly continued firing as the officers fled the residence.  Police eventually wounded and subdued him in a backyard shed. 

Stewart was charged with aggravated murder, seven counts of attempted aggravated murder, and production of a controlled substance in a “drug free zone,” along with a dangerous weapons enhancement.

In March, authorities released an affidavit explaining the results of the search.  According to the affidavit, Stewart’s former girlfriend said that Stewart was “into” conspiracy theories and that he believed the federal government had no right to collect taxes (the primary belief of the anti-government extremist tax protest movement).  She claimed that he had not paid his own federal or state taxes since 2005 and that, if he were “forced” to pay taxes, he would “kill IRS employees.”  According to the girlfriend, Stewart claimed that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was “misunderstood.”

The affidavit further claimed that police recovered “computer-generated documents” related to anti-government extremism, anti-police Web sites, Oklahoma City bombing Web sites, instructions for making potassium chloride (used in explosives), and a map to the closest IRS building (where Stewart once worked as a security guard), among other items.  According to the affidavit, police also discovered “what appeared to be the makings of a bomb,” which were later removed and detonated by the bomb squad. 

Last summer, according to police, Stewart had allegedly told someone that if police ever raided him, he would “go out in a blaze of glory and shoot to kill.”  After the release of the affidavit, a neighbor of Stewart’s told a local television station that Stewart had allegedly talked about moving to Montana and “get[ting] myself a compound.”

Officer Francom was the first police officer to have been killed by a suspected domestic extremist since May 2010, when two West Memphis, Arkansas, officers were killed by anti-government “sovereign citizens.”  Since 2000, 27 police officers have been killed in the United States by domestic extremists. 

Denver-area Shooting Latest in String of Extremist-Related Violent Confrontations with Police

 Police investigating a stolen vehicle in the Denver suburb of Englewood on February 23, 2012, unexpectedly found themselves facing an armed white supremacist with a history of violence—an encounter that eventually turned fatal. 

Jeremiah Barnum’s Colorado Department of Corrections photo

Source: Denver Westword

Earlier that day, Englewood police took two suspects into custody in connection with an allegedly stolen vehicle. Two officers remained behind to finish up paperwork, when they allegedly spotted a vehicle parked nearby whose driver was a “known associate” of the arrested suspects. The driver, later identified as Jeremiah Barnum, a long-time white supremacist with a history of violence, allegedly threatened police, who reportedly noticed that he had a “weapon” in his waistband (a gun was later found in the car). According to officers, Barnum “made a move like he was reaching for a gun” and the officers opened fire, wounding Barnum fatally.  An investigation into the shooting is pending.

In 1997, Barnum had briefly been infamous in Denver, after he and another white supremacist, Nathan Thill, were arrested for the brutal hate crime murder of an African immigrant, Oumar Dia. Thill eventually pleaded guilty in return for a sentence of life without parole. Barnum was initially convicted of murder, but his conviction was overturned by a judge. He eventually pleaded guilty to accessory to murder and received a 12-year sentence. During his stint in prison, he frequently appeared on lists of “Aryan Prisoners of War” circulated by white supremacists to get support for imprisoned fellow racists. He also became a member of the 211 Crew, a Colorado-based racist prison gang (Thill also became a 211 Crew member).

This shooting incident was merely the latest in a long string of confrontations across the country in which shots were fired between police and adherents of extremist movements.  Since 2009, ADL has identified some 24 such incidents, most of them related to white supremacists or anti-government extremists. 

The bulk of the incidents involved actual shootouts or exchanges of fire between police and extremists, while a handful of incidents were officer-involved shootings—typically after extremists attempted to draw weapons on the officers (or, in one instance, actually attempted to fire at police, only to have the gun jam). Six police officers have died in such confrontations, as well as a number of extremists, while others have been wounded or injured.