POLICING THE POLICE
of the ad, along with a plea for
citizens to report “drug abuse,” a
term more often associated with
drug use than with distribution.
Below the photo, the ad reads,
“We’ve got your back!”
According to police documents, Wilson called the tip line
in November 2010, two months
before the raid, and spoke
with Officer Jason Vanderwarf.
Vanderwarf visited Stewart’s
house three times, but no one
answered. After finding what he
described as signs of a marijuana
grow, however, he filed an affidavit to get the warrant.
That appears to be the extent of
the investigation. The police never
ran a background check on Wilson
to assess her credibility. In fact,
after their initial conversation,
Vanderwarf said that he was “unable to contact her.” He later told
investigators that “she kinda fell
off the face of the earth.”
Neither Wilson nor officials
from the Ogden Police Department and Weber County Sheriff’s
Department responded to requests for comment.
There was also no investigation of Stewart himself, and the
warrant makes no mention of any
evidence that Stewart had ever
HUFFINGTON
11.17.13
“Everyone says I’m looking
great in the newspaper
pictures of me. I see a man...
who’s [sic] world was
destroyed, where everything
he once cared about was
stolen from him, everything
he found holy was defiled.”
sold drugs. The Salt Lake Tribune
later obtained a threat assessment document — the criteria
some police departments use
to determine whether to send a
SWAT team, or to ask a judge for
a no-knock warrant. For Stewart’s case, all of the criteria — the
presence of dogs, weapons, surveillance and “other” factors —
were listed as “unknown.”
As a result, when the members
of the strike force moved on Stewart’s house, they weren’t wearing
bulletproof armor or carrying the
ballistic shields and powerful rifles typically used in SWAT raids.
“I don’t think they thought anyone was living there,” Erna Stewart says. “They called it a ‘lowlevel’ raid.”
A few months earlier, Stewart’s
brother Gabriel — his roommate