POLICING THE POLICE
AP PHOTO/RICK BOWMER
reformers have carefully crafted
their approach, honed a message
that seems to be resonating with
the community, and won over
some early converts. As botched
raids and excessive SWAT-style
tactics have gained increasing notoriety around the country, other
communities may soon be looking
to Utah as a model for less aggressive but more effective approaches
to public safety.
T
HE TIP ABOUT the marijuana plants came from an
ex-girlfriend of Stewart’s
named Stacy Wilson. They had
dated for about a year and a half
HUFFINGTON
11.17.13
but broke up in the summer of
2010. Erna Stewart introduced
them. “I still feel guilty about
that,” she says. “He caught her
cheating on him, they broke up,
and it ended really badly. She
was angry with him. He was
heartbroken. She tried to get
him fired from his job. She really
had it out for him.”
Wilson reported Stewart to a
tip line that the Weber-Morgan
Narcotics Strike Force, a federally
funded anti-drug task force that
serves both counties, set up to collect information about illicit drugs.
In a bus ad promoting the initiative, the strike force members
pose in full SWAT attire: armor,
face masks, camouflage and guns.
The tip line number is at the top
Weber
County
Attorney Dee
Smith speaks
during a news
conference
on May
24, 2013,
in Ogden.
Smith initially
announced
that he’d be
seeking the
death penalty
for Matthew
David Smith.