‘Horror scene’ as 4 Lakewood police officers shot, killed
LAKEWOOD, Wash. – Four uniformed police officers were shot and killed in a bloody Sunday morning attack at a Lakewood-area coffee shop, and investigators are seeking a person of interest in the killings, officials said.Pierce County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ed Troyer said the person they are seeking is Maurice Clemmons, who is a fugitive from Arkansas with a lengthy criminal record.
Not to be flip but is there a more hardened target in America than a fricking DONUT SHOP known as a pre-shift COP SHOP? Are we to imagine that everything would have been fine if four kindergarten and first grade teachers/armed monitors from the nearest elementary school had been having some pre-school coffee and going over their paperwork just as the cops were? Or maybe if the girl behind the counter had been packing?
And if we didn’t need more irony we have this:
Huckabee Granted Clemency To Maurice Clemmons, Person Of Interest, In Ambush That Killed 4 Cops
A man with an extensive criminal past — whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee– was being sought Sunday as a “person of interest” in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.
Snip
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons’ age at the time of the sentence.
After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper .
But even without the sickening hypocrisy of Huckabee blaming the Sandy Hook shooting on the failure of first graders to engage in state sponsored prayer, we have a case of four trained, armed police officers just minutes from going on patrol being caught mostly unaware by a shooter determined to kill. In light of that the suggestion that all would have been well if only that principal had a M-4 locked in a cabinet in her office ring pretty hollow.
