Friday, December 11, 2009 By Abby Comm
- PHOTO ILLUSTRATION by Brandon Weight
Tacoma, Washington was struck with tragedy on Sunday, November 30th. Maurice Clemmons was let out on bail last week after being charged with raping a 12 year-old relative and assaulting police officers. Clemmons challenged four uniformed police officers at a Tacoma Coffee Shop waiting for their shifts to start. One of the officers chased the gunman down and shot at him before dying of gunshot wounds from the suspect. The suspect shot and killed all four police officers.
Clemmons was on the run through-out Seattle. Officers offered $125,000 for information leading to the capture of the suspect. Details about this man emerged when he got out of jail. People were told Maurice wanted to "shoot some cops," police said. Unfortunately, this information was not reported.
On Monday, after a tip from Pierce County Investigators, police thought they had Maurice cornered in a house in the city’s Leschi neighborhood. After officers surrounded the house and flooded the home with spotlights, they sent a robot to approach it. SWAT teams then entered, only to find Clemmons was not there. "We have more concrete evidence that the suspect was at that location," said Detective Jamieson in the New York Times article Tacoma Suspect said to Threaten to Shoot Officers, "We don’t know if he was in the house, but he was seen at that location."
Eventually, Seattle police officers shot and killed Maurice Clemmons after locating him during a routine investigation of a stolen car. The Seattle Police stated in a New York Times article that, "The officer drew his gun, and the suspect reached into his waist area and moved." The report said, "The officer fired several times striking the suspect at least twice."
Clemmons went down near some bushes and was taken into custody. When medics arrived they announced him dead at the scene. The death of Maurice Clemmons ended an extensive manhunt that began with fatal shootings. However, it did not stop the controversy over who should be blamed for the violence. Mike Huckabee, a former governor for Arkansas, had dealt with Clemmons first issues. Mike Huckabee stated in a New York Times article, Wrangling Over Blame in the Tacoma Shooting, "Blame should be laid at the feet of two Washington judges for setting bail too low after Mr. Clemmons’s most recent arrest."
Part of the reason these four officers were killed was lack of communication. Communication is a big tactic that federal associations need to take into consideration. "There are many anonymous ways already used to report crime and suspicious things, but most people hesitate to do anything dealing with government and society," said Sophomore Rachel Bayles. This also might not have occurred if the shooter had not been set out on bail at such a low price. Rachel Bayles also says, "The shooter's sentence should not have been commuted, he should have stayed in jail for the full time that he was convicted for." Junior Ali Edeline agreed with this statement and said, "Criminals who commit crimes like what Clemmons did should not be let out earlier than expected."