POLICING THE POLICE
a guard found Stewart hanging in
his jail cell. His was the third suicide at the Weber County Jail in
seven months.
“Matthew had his problems. He
had severe social anxiety,” Erna
Stewart says. “And things got
worse after the breakup. But we
were working on all of that. He was
getting so much better. He was doing so fricking good until all of this
happened. He was going to the gym
with us. He was laughing a lot. He
was just doing so well.”
At a public forum in August,
where this reporter also spoke as
part of a book tour, Stewart fought
back tears while talking about
her late brother-in-law. She then
quickly collected herself to confidently tick off a list of changes she
wants to see from area police.
She wants an end to home-invasion raids to serve search warrants
for non-violent crimes. She wants
more transparency. She wants a
civilian review board, so police accused of wrongdoing aren’t investigated by their fellow cops. The audience bathed her with applause.
Stewart says her role as family spokesperson — and later, as a
voice in the broader reform movement in Utah — came naturally. “I
HUFFINGTON
11.17.13
In May, a judge ruled that the
search warrant for Stewart’s
home and the raid were both
legal... A little over a week
later, at 12:50 a.m. on a Friday
morning, a guard found
Stewart hanging in his jail cell.
knew that no one in the family was
fully operational after the raid,”
she says. “So I had to step up. I’ve
always been outspoken, and not
easily intimidated. And the more
and more I got involved, the more I
thought this is where I belong.”
In August, Stewart received a
phone call from the Ogden police.
More than 19 months after the
raid, they were calling to let her
know that, despite their earlier allegations, they had never actually
found any child pornography on
her brother-in-law’s computer.
“Tha t’s about par for the course,”
she says. “They told the world he
was a pedophile, attacked him in
the press. Now, months after he’s
dead, they quietly call to
say they were wrong.”
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