Escaped convict Richard Matt has been killed by authorities
But unfortunately his accomplice Sweat is still at large.
I actually didn’t think they’d ever find the pair, but I guess the search was massive and they got some tips. There is little question that these men were/are extremely dangerous psychopaths. Here is the way it went down at the end for Matt:
According to officials, dogs picked up a scent around 2 a.m. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who said he was briefed on the incident, said that law enforcement were contacted by a woman who got a knock at her door, he told ABC station WABC-TV.
She didn’t answer the door, but instead called police, Schumer said. That’s when dogs picked up the scent and began to close in from the north and west.
Some time before 2 p.m. Friday, a person pulling a camper near Duane, N.Y., heard a sound and later discovered after pulling into a campsite that there was a bullet hole in it, state police said.
After that, a tactical team was deployed to a nearby cabin.
Inside, they noticed the smell of gun powder. While searching the grounds, investigators noticed movement and heard coughing, state police said.
Customs and Border Protection agents “verbally challenged him [Matt] and told him to put up his hands,” but he “didn’t comply,” State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said at a Friday evening news conference.
He was shot and a 20 gauge shotgun was recovered from him.
Reading that story, it’s a reflection on news events of the last year or so that one of my thoughts was good thing he wasn’t black, or they’d be arresting the border patrol guy who shot him. I’m not being facetious, either.
Schumer will be on the scene AFTER the second guy is killed.
Neo said:
“…good thing he wasn’t black, or they’d be arresting the border patrol guy who shot him.”
Hear, hear.
BAA-DAA-BING…Like Dat!!
Permanent solution to a temporary problem. Now, for the other slimebag….
If they want, they can pop the other guys as well. I think after a while, there’s a point you reach where society simply suspends the process normally afforded to human beings turned dangerous animals and then finally treats those people as just that. These two fall into that category.
Neo: “good thing he wasn’t black, or they’d be arresting the border patrol guy who shot him. I’m not being facetious, either.”
Agreed. Further, all kinds of nuts would have been out in full force comparing this manhunt to bounty hunters of pre-civil war days who chased after runaway slaves.
Several of the race-baiters would have been calling for the death of cops who dared to go after “innocent victims of racist America.”
Obama, the great race-healer of America, would be proclaiming that one or both of the men looked like what he son would have looked like.
Lastly, their pictures would be on t-shirts for sale on Amazon.
On a more serious note (actually I was being serious above) I do wonder why the news media didn’t talk about the real victims that these men had killed or their families; or even more, those who might have been in danger because their testimony helped put them behind bars. I know that if I had testified in court to send a murderer away and he was now out I’d be scared – but, we didn’t hear a peep out of the MS about such folks.
I have had a very hard time finding a precise description of what happened here.
I realize no one wants to hear this, and it is a little hard to be heard over the gleeful cheering, but there is possibly an issue which ought to concern us all.
The accounts I have read – – except one – – have described the killing as a result of Matt refusing to put his hands up. He died in a hail of fire.
There was a police name attached to this information in the sources I read.
Only the NY Post said Matt “gripped a shotgun” but that assertion was attributed to an unnamed police source. Why unnamed? The other stories in which the shotgun is mentioned, do so in an elliptical way.
If Matt gripped a shotgun and refused to put it down, he deserved to be shot.
But if he was killed solely because he did not immediately put up his hands, he was (arguably) murdered by federal agents.
This is not an anti-police post. We need the police. There are many good or great officers. And we are all better off without Matt.
It is more complicated than the usual terms used in these types of discussions. It gets confused because of the unfair and unjust attacks on police by the race-baiters and others. Plus, “conservatives” often seem to equate law enforcement with the military, when in fact they are very separate institutions.
Just because law enforcement is unfairly and unjustly attacked does not mean there are not valid and even urgent concerns with the state of law enforcement.
Among other things, I ask people to consider this: do you suppose that the left has successfully marched through so many disparate and even seemingly incompatible American institutions (such as the mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic seminaries) but have left law enforcement alone?
Again, I realize no one is interested in this, no one is asking for or wants answers where a despicable bad man is taken off our hands.
I do not want to offend anybody. I simply want to be reasonably clear on the facts so I am not cheering for murder, regardless of the deceased.
I do not want to be cheering for my own destruction, a circumstance which I think is a genuine concern.
Tonawanda:
I actually wonder what happened, as well. Here’s another description:
I assume that the “verbal challenge” was something like “put your hands up or we’ll shoot.”
However, I would have liked him to have been taken alive if that would have led to their gaining information from him about (a) the details of the escape; and (b) the location of Sweat.
However, I think they had to assume he was armed and more than willing to kill them all. This guy was not the ordinary suspect.
This report goes even further:
If that is true, I don’t think they had to wait for him to fire the weapon.
Even if the shotgun wasn’t in his hands, if it was right next to him and he refused to put his hands up, I don’t see that they had any alternative but to shoot. Police are not required to be shot before they can shoot, whether the suspect be black or white. A violent murderer escaped con with a shotgun beside him, who refuses to put up his hands when told to, is a person who can grab that gun and fire, and is evincing a likelihood of doing so.
Neo re: arresting the white officer for shooting if the perp was black, our radio guy here in NE Howie Carr likes to say, “Officer if you are charging me with a crime just treat me like an illegal alien please “
It doesn’t change whether the LEOs got a kill on sight order from the politicians. Or if pressure was brought to bear.
The Post article I cited said in one paragraph that Matt “gripped” a shotgun according to an unnamed police source. It was a one or two sentence paragraph.
The very next paragraph had D’Amico stating that Matt was shot because he failed to raise his hands upon demand. Why would an unnamed officer be quoted when a named officer could have given the same detail?
The Daily News article you cite, neo, had D’Amico stating that Matt was told to “drop the weapon” and did not comply. Strange.
The NBC article you cite, neo, says that D’Amico stated (consistent with other articles I read) that Matt was killed solely for refusing to put up his hands, and that the shotgun was (it is implied although unclear) found “nearby” but not having been in his hands.
It is not stated in any article I have read whether D’Amico saw what happened or was conveying what he was told.
Apparently, more than one federal officer shot Matt.
I note that part of the information we are given is about the smell of gunpowder in proximity to somewhere.
If Matt had a shotgun in his hands, or within reachable grasp, he should have been killed if he did not raise his hands upon demand.
The significance of numerous federal agents firing simultaneously when Matt did not comply – – absent an explicit word or action on Matt’s part – – involves a few other facts I would like to know, as a citizen. Are we entitled to those? Does anybody really care? (I do).
The DEA, ATF, Border Patrol, Customs, ICE, Homeland Security and so on (SPCA, DEC, etc) are wealthy law enforcement agencies with vast power. They propagandize daily through PSA’s in ways that people do not even recognize.
Heck (going a little astray here) the SPCA is a 501(c)(3) organization which explicitly raises funds from their law enforcement (look at any website). How corrupt is that?
But the colored ribbons are cheered daily by “conservatives” and the general populace. See, the SPCA takes the brave, courageous, rare position that hurting animals is wrong. What is not to cheer? (and to feel good about oneself). We are a colored ribbon society bravely confronting the masses of animal torturers, wife beaters, polluters, smokers, pedophiles, drunk drivers who kill, kill, kill, racists, bigots, religious bigots, islamophobes, I am losing my breath.
I truly do not mean offense, and am not disdaining folks I like a lot and who give me comfort.
I am suggesting (and hope I am wrong, or am missing something) that the leftist dysfunction of America is actually deeper than thought.
Murdering to popular acclaim someone who pisses all of us off, is a leftist, Marxist, nihilist, anti-human act. It is the hatred for Goldstein we (the colored ribbon conscious) are all supposed to vehemently express.
Free men lose nothing with sobriety, and consistent expectation of the highest ethical behavior by government agents, behavior including unambiguous, corroborated explanation of killing.
The Rule of Law is not as easy as it sounds. It is meaningless, literally, if invoked only depending on our cartoon emotions.
Tonawanda:
I agree that there is a contradiction in the facts as reported. I assume that more clarity will emerge as time goes on, although it’s by no means certain that it will.
But unless police are lying through their teeth, either Matt had a gun next to him or he had one in his hands but not pointed at them. If it were pointed at them I am fairly certain they would not have waited a moment; they would have fired. So we are left with the other two alternatives. If it were in his hand or hands but pointed at the ground, for example, I can imagine them saying to drop it, and if he didn’t comply immediately then shooting him.
I have no problem with that scenario—this was a very dangerous psychopathic killer. In his previous history, among other things, we have:
This was no ordinary prisoner or even ordinary murderer. This was a guy officers couldn’t afford to give any chances to whatsoever. And if the gun had merely been next to him, the same holds true. There was no reason to give him a chance to grab it. He either cooperates—hands up at the order—or not.
What if they had seen him and shot at him without even seeing a gun? They already knew he probably had one. How much of a chance were they to give this particular guy?
By the way, now that Sweat has been shot and captured alive, we hear that Sweat was apparently running away from police, and had no gun. He was near the border and they shot him because he was running away and they didn’t want him to get to the border. They didn’t kill him. But if they had, would that shooting have been out of line? What else could they have doen if he’d been sighted by them and had refused to halt? I can’t think of anything else they could have done that would have fit the circumstances.
The only thing for Sweat to have done if he didn’t want to be shot was to have put his hands up immediately on order, and lay prone on the ground if ordered to do that as well. Sweat, by the way, is already a cop-killer, so he’s shown his willingness to have killed them if possible.
This was the statement made by the sheriff on the matter prior to locating and capturing Sweat:
This quote also gives you an idea of the sort of guy they were dealing with:
Anyone who had testified against either of these men was at high, high risk. What rule of law do you think was violated here? Do you think they were both cooperating and were shot anyway? Why, then, would Sweat be in custody? Why wouldn’t they have just finished him off when they could? I think it’s pretty certain neither was cooperating (after all, why would they?), and they were shot for that reason.
The relevant legal reasoning for Sweat, by the way, is the fleeing felon rule:
Sweat’s case meets that standard.
However, unlike Sweat, Matt was not actively “fleeing” at the very moment he was shot. But he was extremely dangerous and he’d certainly been fleeing right until that moment, plus he had a gun in his hand or next to him. Unless he cooperated with what police told him to do, his next step was almost certainly (a) to shoot them; or (b) to flee; or (c) both. Were they required to wait till this exceedingly dangerous man picked up the gun? Or were they required to allow him to start running, and maybe succeed in escaping once again (the further he ran, the more difficult he would be to hit)?
I think Matt’s death clearly met the rule of law, which is the “defense-of-life” standard. He was both an escape risk and highly dangerous, and he was not cooperating (cooperation would have lessened both the threat of fleeing and the extent of his dangerousness, at least in the moment), and it was highly likely that he was more than willing to use that gun in the next instant. Otherwise, he would have put his hands up.
I suppose if for some reason you want to think these men were likely to have been killed on sight, while they were in the act of surrendering or before they were even given a chance to do so, I can’t stop you. But that makes no sense. The authorities would have wanted to take Matt in alive, if only to help lead them to Sweat, and to learn more about his accomplices in the prison break. Same for Sweat in terms of information about the accomplices (naturally, they no longer needed him to lead them to Matt). The fact that Sweat is alive is also an indication that they were not trying to kill him, or he’d be dead (as I already wrote, they had plenty of opportunity to finish him off had they wanted to). As a final thought on the subject, consider the nature of these two men. I have very very little doubt that they would never, never have surrendered. This was it, do or die.
Tonawanda:
More from Schimpf:
Matt was an evil man and we are all better off without him. I would be surprised if anyone needs additional information to be convinced of that.
I would not be surprised if the police are lying through their teeth. I am NOT saying they are. I simply am skeptical about what law enforcement says. They are quite capable of lying through their teeth.
The nice thing is, there is no reason not to be skeptical and every reason to be skeptical as a matter of course about law enforcement behavior generally.
Law enforcement is composed of human beings entrusted with great wealth and power by us. We (the people) should routinely expect and get credible explanations in every instance of public concern.
There is no presumption of trustworthiness in law enforcement. As with every other aspect of life, reasonableness is the standard which applies. If law enforcement kills someone, anyone, even a dangerous evil man, and then fails to give a clear explanation of what happened, skepticism is specifically warranted.
True, that Matt would be executed to popular acclaim and great cheering seemed to me a likely possibility. It was not what I wanted to believe, it was what I thought was realistic. And the two (executing and cheering) are not foreclosed from being connected.
I realize that is a possibility most people reject out of hand. If folks want to believe – – to presume – – that law enforcement tells the truth, or does not withhold the truth, that is up to them.
Personally (as I have stated in various ways) I think many folks confuse issues, like Matt being an evil dangerous man with whether he was executed. I realize many people would have no problem with him being executed, but many others would be concerned.
I don’t really care whether any other human being wants a plausible clarification of the actual facts, instead of the contradictory and fishy-sounding stuff which is out there.
I want the explanation regardless of how evil and dangerous Matt was.
If the feds want to kill people as they did at Ruby Ridge, Waco 1, Waco 2, they will get it done. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is, only what their orders are.
Gray was also a target because the police were ordered to crack down, to help Democrat Mayors, by the Democrat prosecution who is now prosecuting them. Outcomes do not matter, only their Orders and Authority matters to them.
Tonawanda:
You’ve got the story: Matt had a gun. You say that you doubt it. So you would doubt any story; there’s almost literally nothing they could say that would convince you (perhaps a videotape of the proceedings?), because you don’t trust them.
But the psychology of the escapee and the evidence goes against what you’re saying. Do you really think Matt was likely to surrender? Of course not. Therefore he probably defied them. What’s more, they took Sweat alive but wounded, which argues against the killing orders. If in fact they were trying to kill him, then when he was shot and they realized he was alive, all they had to do was administer the coup de grace and kill him off. They didn’t, which argues very strongly against your theory.
I spoke to a longtime friend of mine (30 years) whose son was a law enforcement officer literally on the scene of Matt’s killing (scene defined broadly).
The facts as he recounted them to me (from his son) are not what has been reported anywhere that I have seen, but they do justify the killing under the law.
I will always be skeptical of law enforcement accounts and always want to have fishy/suspicious accounts clarified.
I demand that as a citizen.
My skepticism, I believe, is far less harmful than the presumption of truthfulness and constitutional fidelity. My presumption is that the rule of law means nothing to a significant numbers of law enforcement agents/agencies.
The Gray case is far from settled in my mind, and the charges lodged by the prosecutor are not far fetched, even if they are questionable.
Sorry, I see skepticism about law enforcement activity in the same category as skepticism about any other government activity. Believe me, my skepticism (or that of anyone else) is not going to hurt the feelings or affect the behavior of those agents, except to the extent the union tactics they adopt (like passive-aggressive behavior of not doing their job) are employed to emphasize the power they have over us.