Matthew Stewart supporters gather to raise money, rebuke police tactics

OGDEN — A group calling itself "Keep the Peace" blames police tactics used in the war on drugs for the home raid and exchange of gunfire Jan. 4 that led to the death of Ogden police officer Jared Francom.

A group of nearly 100 people held a press conference at the Weber County Library Thursday night, calling on the Ogden City Council to withdraw from the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force, and called for the electoral defeat of Weber County Attorney Dee Smith, who is running for Utah attorney general as a Democrat.

The group is also raising funds to help defend Matthew David Stewart, who is charged with capital murder in the shooting death of Francom. He is also charged with shooting and wounding five other officers as the strike force attempted to serve a drug-related search warrant at Stewart's home.

Group organizer Jesse Fruhwirth insists Stewart had never been known to be a violent person.

"Matthew is now facing the death penalty for defending himself in his home," he said.

He killed one officer and wounded five others with a handgun?

That is some serious shooting on his part, even assuming one or two of his bullets hit two officers. Also assuming they were wearing body armor.

About the only *military* circumstance where I have heard of something like that, the shooter was in the rafters, shooting down at soldiers who were entering the room one at a time, all of whom assumed the gunfire was coming horizontally from adjacent rooms.

I can say that after reading the article one thing is certain, the Matthew Stewart is going to do serious jail time and will be lucky if he avoids the death penalty. Not that I don’t believe him that he thought he was defending himself from home invader thugs but that he went after them so aggressively and continued to fire on them while chasing them out the door. If he had not done that he may have had a chance of beating the charges (a very very small chance).

Now on to what I find more interesting which is that this guy did all this with a 9mm handgun! I would have thought that these guys would have been armored up to the max with the ballistic shields and level 3 body armor along with submachine guns (MP5’s or M-4’s) so I’m a little puzzled as to how he managed to not only kill one cop but wound 5 others.

Must have been a real Barney Fife type squad. Or it may be that most SWAT teams train based on the assumption that the victim, uuuuh I mean bad guy, will be relatively static and confused and most likely retreating. The minute they encountered someone that actually charged into the teeth of their raid it rattled them so bad that they lost all discipline and it resulted in a rout with these guy trying to crawl over each other trying to get away. Would be interesting to hear what the truth is but I’ve long given up on expecting that from the government.

I can at least say that Mr. Stewart must be a true Scotsman to have fought so well against those odds and most likely spent considerable time at the range, either that or he was one damn lucky shot.

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