RADLEY BALKO
POLICING THE POLICE
at the time — and some friends
had gotten into an altercation at a
party. The other men had followed
Gabriel Stewart back to the house,
where the fracas continued. After
someone called the police, the men
left — but they promised to come
back to burn down the house.
Matthew David Stewart played
no part in the altercation, and
he was asleep when it happened.
But Gabriel told him about the
threat later. “I think it may have
been in his head when he woke
up the night he was raided,”
Erna Stewart says.
Statements by Matthew David
Stewart’s neighbors support his
assertion that he didn’t know police officers were in his house. They
told Stewart’s attorneys and the local media that they heard gunshots
first, then lots of yelling, but never
any police announcement.
Photos of the police taken after
the raid show strike force members wearing dark, dingy clothes.
Some are wearing black hoodies.
One is wearing a Cheech & Chong
t-shirt. The police say the raid
team wore bulletproof vests that
clearly identified them as police,
and removed them after the raid,
before the photos were taken. But
there’s evidence that at least some
HUFFINGTON
11.17.13
of the officers weren’t. One police dashcam video, for example,
shows several of them scrambling
back to their cars to get their
vests after the shooting begins.
What is clear, however, is that
if instead of raiding the house,
the police had simply arrested
Stewart as he was leaving to go to
work, or as he was coming home,
Matthew’s
mother, Sonja
Stewart,
holds pictures
of her son.