http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-30-police-shot_N.htm
| Police fatally shoot Wash. suspect |
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By Marisol Bello and Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
SEATTLE — A sheriff's spokesman in Washington state says Seattle police have fatally shot the man suspected of gunning down four police officers.
Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says Maurice Clemmons was shot and killed early Tuesday in a Seattle neighborhood. Authorities suspected Clemmons of killing the four officers at a coffee shop Sunday morning in Lakewood, a suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle.
Troyer says Seattle police found Clemmons after Pierce County authorities supplied addresses of possible hiding spots.
Police have said they aren't sure what prompted Clemmons to shoot the officers as they did paperwork on their laptops. Clemmons was described as increasingly erratic in the past few months.
Police looked for a gunman who may have been shot in the abdomen during a struggle with one of the dying officers, said Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer. Maurice Clemmons, 37, has eluded police with the help of a network of friends and family, Troyer said.
EARLIER: Police suspect not in Wash. house
The hunt intensified Monday in a search that stretched 40 miles along the Puget Sound from Tacoma to Seattle.
As police searched door-to-door in Seattle neighborhoods for Clemmons, law enforcement officials complained that the felon with a history of violence should not have been on the street at all. Clemmons was released early from an Arkansas prison in 2000 by then-governor Mike Huckabee.
He violated parole a year later when he was convicted of robbery and was sent back to prison. He served enough time to be released on early parole in 2004.
At the time of Sunday's shooting, he was free on bail while facing charges of assaulting a police officer and raping a child.
"It's a tragedy," said Larry Jegley, Pulaski County, Ark., prosecutor, whose office prosecuted the 17-year-old Clemmons in 1989 and 1990 on a series of robberies, burglaries and thefts. Clemmons was sentenced to 108 years in prison.
Jegley, a Democrat, said that during Huckabee's 10 years in office, the Republican governor granted clemency too often.
"I can safely say that if what police are saying is true, Clemmons would not have killed four police officers if he were locked up in Arkansas," Jegley said. "I don't think he should have gotten his sentence commuted. I thought he was dangerous and violent." Without clemency, Clemmons' earliest release date would have been 2021, Jegley said.
Huckabee, who cited Clemmons' youth in commuting his sentence, did not return calls seeking comment.
Appearing on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor on Monday night, Huckabee defended his decision, saying a unanimous parole board and the judge overseeing Clemmons' case agreed to the reduced sentence. "I'm responsible for that," he said. He blamed Arkansas prosecutors and Washington state judges for not keeping Clemmons locked up despite an escalating pattern of violence.
It was the second time Huckabee supported early release of an inmate who later committed more violent offenses.
In 1999, Huckabee supported the early release of Wayne DuMond, who was serving time for the abduction and rape of a high school cheerleader. Two years later, DuMond was convicted of killing a Missouri woman. He died in prison in 2005.
Huckabee, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is ranked a leading contender for 2012. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 found that 71% of Republicans would vote for him over Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin.
In Seattle and Tacoma on Monday, police had no idea where Clemmons might be. A tip Sunday launched an overnight standoff at a Seattle home involving explosions, tear gas and a camera-wielding robot. When a SWAT team stormed in Monday morning, no one was there.
Tips also led to searches near the University of Washington and a city park. Seattle police later issued a statement saying they believed he was no longer in the city.
The four officers — Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42 — were shot and killed Sunday morning as they worked on their laptops in a Tacoma-area coffee shop before the start of their shift.
Investigators gave no motive for the officers to be gunned down. Court documents quoted family members as saying Clemmons had been acting erratically and called himself Jesus.
In Lakewood, a Tacoma suburb where the four officers had served since the creation of the police department in 2004, family, police and city officials mourned.
"They were good people and good officers, and we will miss them very much," Police Chief Bret Farrar said, choking up as he spoke.
Mayor Douglas Richardson called the killings an act of "complete cowardice."
"Nov. 29 was a horrific day in Lakewood, but let there be no mistake of our resolve," he said.
Police union President Brian Wurts said Renninger, a married father of three who was originally from Pennsylvania, was one of the toughest cops he knew.
He called Owens, a divorced father of a daughter, a "laid-back, dirt-bike-riding surfer-hair" type.
Richards was a married father of three and a drummer in a band, Wurts said.
Griswold, married and the mother of two, came from a family with a long history in law enforcement, said Officer Jennifer DeRuwe, spokeswoman for the Spokane Police Department, where Griswold's sister Tiffiny Ryan works as a records specialist.
"Tiffiny said Tina always wanted to be a police officer," DeRuwe said. "When they would drive in the car, Tina and her dad would rattle off license plate numbers using the phonetic alphabet that police use and see who could do it fastest. ... Tina told Tiffiny, 'If something happens, know I died doing what I love.' "
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