Salon.com > Maurice Clemmons

Police fatally shoot suspect

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:01:00 +0000

A sheriff's spokesman in Washington state says Seattle police have fatally shot the man suspected of gunning down four police officers.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says Maurice Clemmons was shot and killed early Tuesday in a Seattle neighborhood. Authorities suspected Clemmons of killing the four Lakewood officers at a coffee shop Sunday morning in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle.

Troyer says Seattle police found Clemmons after Pierce County authorities supplied addresses of possible hiding spots.

Police have said they aren't sure what prompted Clemmons to shoot the officers as they did paperwork on their laptops. Clemmons was described as increasingly erratic in the past few months.

Mike Huckabee’s fatally bad judgment

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:31:00 +0000

If clemency for Maurice Clemmons were the only fatal error committed by Mike Huckabee as governor of Arkansas, he might be able to shift blame to the state's law enforcement system and even run for president again in 2012. Yet the Clemmons commutation that he granted nine years ago is only one among several cases that raise serious questions about Huckabee's judgment.

Clemmons, the fugitive suspect in the shooting deaths of four police officers, was hit in the torso by return fire from one of the cops who later died, he escaped.

Police: Suspected cop killer not in house

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:01:00 +0000

The suspect in the slaying of four police officers gunned down in a coffee shop was not found Monday in the Seattle home where he was thought to have been holed up overnight, likely wounded from his bloody encounter with the officers.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said the location of Maurice Clemmons was not known, and it's possible he still could be in the neighborhood. Troyer also said people who know Clemmons told investigators he had been shot in the torso.

"If he didn't get a ride out of there, he could still be in the area," Troyer said.

Troyer said warrants for first-degree murder have been issued against Clemmons, 37, who is accused of shooting four officers from the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood on Sunday morning as they were working in the coffee house. Pierce County, where the shootings happened, is the lead agency investigating the case.

Police surrounded the house late Sunday. Before heavily armed police officers determined shortly before dawn that Clemmons was not in the house, negotiators spent hours trying to communicate with him, using loudspeakers, explosions and even a robot sent into the house. At one point, gunshots rang through the neighborhood.

Another black mark on Huckabee’s record

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a problem, and that problem has a name -- Maurice Clemmons. Clemmons is currently a fugitive, suspected of shooting and killing four police officers. And Huckabee's the man who set him free.

In 1989, Clemmons -- then, at 17, still a minor -- was convicted of aggravated robbery and given a 95 year sentence. But in 2000, Huckabee commuted his sentence, making him eligible for parole; Clemmons reportedly violated that parole, and was sent back to prison, but was released for good in 2004. Now, Huckabee's presidential hopes may be tied to him.