But that was only the beginning, as he also had some new gear to show off. On the left side of his pistol belt, he had a set of three rifle magazine pouches that he’d purchased from the Cheaper Than Dirt catalog. Two of them held a pair of twenty-five round rifle magazines each. The third one held a surprise. In it were stuffed some magazines for his forty-caliber Glock pistol. They were extended thirty-round clips, similar to the ones made by Glock for the nine millimeter. Glock didn’t make such a magazine for the forty caliber though, so all that was available was aftermarket mags. The only ones that had been available for many years worked poorly, if at all, but lately some better quality ones had been getting imported from Korea. But while they were better constructed, they still needed a bit of tweaking to make them reliable. First, Randy had replaced the springs with some stronger ones made by a company called Wolff Gunsprings. Second, he had removed the two-round extensions on the bottom of the mags and replaced them with a regular floorplate, in order to boost the power of the springs a little further. There were six of these magazines stuffed into the third rifle mag pouch on his belt, for a total of one hundred and eighty rounds of pistol ammo.
After showing that off, he pulled out the tactical vest. These vests typically come with a set of three rifle magazine pouches on the left side of the front, but the original pouches that came with it only held one of his M1A mags each. So he had that set of pouches removed and replaced with the same type of pouch set that was on his belt, giving him another six rifle mags. On the right side of the vest were a couple of horizontal utility pouches. In one of these he had stuffed a couple more rifle mags, and in the other pouch were some energy bars.
The energy bars could come in handy, because with a grand total of one hundred ninety-five rounds of pistol ammo and two hundred seventy-five rounds of rifle ammo (counting the magazines already in the guns) he was set for a very long day of shooting.
Randy had one other new gadget to show off too, a 300 milliwatt handheld green laser that was of substantially better quality than the pen type lasers. This one wasn’t being mounted to any weapons though. “Whatcha gonna do with that thing?” Vincent asked.
“Oh, it’s got uses.”
* * *
Over the next two and a half months after Niles Meservey died, things were relatively calm. There were a couple of other officer-involved shootings in the region, but most would agree that those had been justified ones. Then the calm ended.
On August 25th of 2009 in Spokane Valley, which was a suburb of Spokane, Pastor Wayne Scott Creach and his wife Imogene were getting ready for bed. Pastor Creach was the owner of a nursery called The Plant Farm, and the same piece of property also housed his residence.
An alarm went off indicating that someone was on the property. Since the property was clearly marked as being closed to the public, and since they had an ongoing problem with theft, this warranted some investigation. Pastor Creach looked outside and saw a strange car backed up to one of the buildings in a dark spot, where some outdoor displays sat. He believed the trunk of the car was open. So, not having time to get fully dressed to investigate, he went outside in pants and slippers, holding his Government Model .45 in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
The car on his property was an unmarked Sheriff’s vehicle. This was a violation of law right out of the gate, because in Washington State it was illegal for law enforcement to use unmarked cars for anything other than undercover investigations. But as no one had ever challenged the use of these cars to a high enough court to get it settled in case law, law enforcement across the state had come to consider the use of these cars for patrol, traffic enforcement, or any other purpose they wished, to be their God-given right. Not because it was legal, but simply because they could get away with it.
The public-safety issues created by the use of these cars were likewise of little concern to law enforcement. When you can’t discern a real cop from a fake one, bad things can happen, and there had been a slew of impersonator and “blue light bandit” cases in Washington and elsewhere because of this. Some of these cases had ended in rapes or murders. And the danger of impersonators wasn’t the only reason unmarked cars were supposed to be illegal, as Pastor Creach was about to find out. There was also a very real danger of misidentifying a real cop as someone who was not. And an unidentified cop can be more dangerous than an unidentified impersonator.
Deputy Brian Hirzel sat in the driver’s seat of that car, using the computer to work on a report on an earlier traffic incident. He had selected this location to write his report so he could watch another property down the road where there had been a report of problems. He was trespassing, but police tend to consider it their right to park anywhere they please.
Hirzel had a pretty colorful history of his own. As a cop in California, he had once caused a fatality by using a chokehold on someone. Another time, he had been dispatched to a home where a man was having a heart attack. The man’s wife and paramedics were already there and attempting to aid him. Then when Hirzel entered the home, the family dog barked at him and Hirzel shot it dead. The woman who resided there lost both her husband and her dog that day.
Neither of those things kept him from getting hired by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office though. In that region, these were resume enhancements. Now he was sitting in an illegally unidentified vehicle, on private property that contained a home and was clearly marked as being closed to the public, in a suspicious dark location that had a high incidence of theft. It’s pretty ridiculous not to expect to be investigated by the property owner under such circumstances, but that’s what Hirzel did.
Hirzel saw a man approaching with a flashlight and a gun. Had the car been marked, Pastor Creach would have seen the markings with his flashlight, and would have had the sense to at least put his gun away. But he didn’t know he was dealing with a deputy, and he walked right up to the window before he finally saw the uniform.
Deputy Hirzel was the only surviving witness to what happened next, but his story had a couple holes. According to his account, he yelled at Pastor Creach repeatedly to drop the weapon as he approached. The pastor’s wife however was right inside the house with the window open, listening to what was going on, as was their standard procedure in such instances. She heard none of those commands, but she did clearly hear her husband yelling in fear shortly afterward.
Hirzel stated that after Pastor Creach finally saw the uniform, he backed away from the car, and then the cop got out. His story went on that he ordered the pastor to drop the gun and get down on the ground. Ordering a man to prostrate himself on his own property is a fairly insulting proposition, and Creach evidently felt no such obligation. He did put the weapon away in the back of his waistband, and tell Hirzel that he’d had theft problems there before, but he wasn’t getting down on the ground. Most people would consider putting the weapon away to be sufficiently non-threatening behavior. Most would also consider what Creach said to be a clue that they were talking to the property owner, but if Hirzel had surmised that, he knew better than to admit it.
Hirzel’s story continued that while he held his gun in his right hand, he drew his baton with his left hand and attacked Creach, swinging to the left and striking him on the left knee, and the man buckled. The forensic examination however showed no mark indicating that he had been struck. Hirzel admitted that the strike had been a poor one. But if it had struck hard enough to make the man buckle, one would expect to see a mark. Anyhow, he then reholstered the baton, and that’s when he says Pastor Creach reached behind himself and grabbed his gun. Hirzel said that he saw the butt of the gun, and though he didn’t know why he felt that way, he was certain Creach was going to kill him. So he shot the pastor once in the chest with his .45 caliber Glock and killed him.
One problem with that account however was that Creach’s gun was unchambered. He wouldn’t have had a chance of shooting the deputy had that been his intention, and he knew it. Another problem was that the radio traffic record sho
ws that the bulk of this would have to have taken place within the time frame of ten seconds. And while none of the witnesses heard any of Hirzel’s alleged repeated orders, they did hear Pastor Creach shouting something that wasn’t completely intelligible, but was in the vein of what the hell, immediately before the shot was fired that killed him.
By Hirzel’s account, Pastor Creach had been compliant to the extent that he backed away from the car and put his weapon away so they could talk. But when he asserted his right as the owner of the property not to surrender his gun or to prostrate himself on the ground, he disrespected the authority of a man who had an extensive history of violence toward people who did so. Under those circumstances, special attention was pretty much the only result one could realistically expect.
The aftermath wasn’t a dog and pony show this time, it was a full blown circus. No outside review of any kind was permitted. The shooting was investigated by the prosecutor’s office and the Sheriff’s Department itself. It was also reviewed by the Sheriff’s Citizen Advisory Board, which unlike a real Citizen Review Board, had no authority to investigate on their own. That board was only permitted to see information supplied by law enforcement, and was allowed to see no evidence or testimony from the family of the slain man whatsoever. In short, the killing was thoroughly reviewed by the Sheriff and all his buddies, all of whom found Hirzel to have been innocent of wrongdoing.
While people had become more or less accustomed to such occurrences, this was perhaps one too many. It wasn’t just the killings, it was also the refusal of the system to hold murdering cops accountable in any way other than to sometimes fire them. Their message to the citizenry was clear, we can get away with this, and whatever crumbs of satisfaction you get, you can be damn grateful for. The outrage was building, and a breaking point was fast approaching. People were getting tired of all the special attention that was being lavished upon them and their loved ones.
And some folks were beginning to think that perhaps what people in law enforcement needed was some special attention of their own.
Chapter 9
A Very Bad Time For The Law
October, 2009
Horrific trends begin with a single horrific act. That’s how such trends as school shootings, workplace shootings, mall shootings, campus shootings, and so on began. These things were all once unthinkable, then they happened, and then they weren’t unthinkable anymore. It didn’t help matters a bit that the law and private regulations had made all of these places into soft targets where no one could fire back. That just made them all the more inviting.
History has proven that no matter what novel new ways to inflict harm and death somebody thinks of, there will be at least a few people in the world who find that they like the idea. And quite possibly some will be inspired to follow in the killer’s footsteps.
This is a fact of life that police in Washington State were about to find themselves on the receiving end of.
* * *
On Halloween night of 2009, a Seattle police officer named Timothy Brenton was parked on the side of a city street in his patrol car, with a young trainee named Britt Sweeney on his passenger side. They had just finished up with a traffic stop and Brenton was reviewing the stop with her.
Then a small white Datsun car pulled up alongside them, and before either officer knew what was happening, bullets were ripping through their patrol car. The driver of that Datsun was Christopher John Monfort, and he had lately made the decision to take his outrage at police to the level of action.
Sitting on the driver’s side, Officer Brenton took the brunt of the barrage. Britt Sweeney was grazed but not seriously hurt. The Datsun pulled forward and did a quick U-turn to try and avoid the dash cam, but it didn’t turn quickly enough and was caught on camera. As it drove off, Sweeney had the composure to jump out and return fire. She didn’t hit Monfort, but she did hit his car once. Then she tried to aid her wounded partner, but it was too late for him. Timothy Brenton died at the scene.
In the aftermath, a lot of heated opinions about the event and police in general were vented. But regardless of their personal views, most everyone who knew or had encountered Officer Brenton agreed that he had been one of the good ones.
* * *
The shockwaves generated by this event were fairly enormous. Never before in Washington State had a police officer been targeted and murdered solely on the basis of being a police officer. The manhunt for the shooter got underway quickly, but everyone in law enforcement knew, that just as had been the case after 9-11, life as they knew it was not the same anymore.
Soon after the shooting, Seattle Police got a tip from an apartment manager. There was a car matching the description of the suspect vehicle that normally parked in the lot of his complex, and after the night of the shooting, it had been covered for the first time.
Three detectives went there to investigate. There, they located the vehicle’s owner in the parking lot, as he was leaving his apartment and walking to his car, and that owner was Monfort. The lead detective told him they’d like to ask him a few questions. Monfort’s response was to pull a concealed Glock 19, point it in his face and pull the trigger.
Unfortunately for Monfort, all it did was click. While his magazine was fully loaded, he had forgotten to chamber the gun. He turned and ran for the stairwell, but when he was cut off, he tried to fire again. Then the three detectives fired, hitting him once in the head and once in the torso. He would live, but he was now a paraplegic.
Police descended on his apartment and uncovered an orgy of evidence. The evidence included firebombs, the Kel-Tec .223 rifle that was used in the attack, and copies of flyers he had left behind at the scene of an attack he had committed previously. That attack had happened nine days prior to the shooting, when he had firebombed police cars at a maintenance yard in Seattle, in an attempt to lure officers into a deadly boobytrap. Among other things, the flyer said, “These deaths are dedicated to Deputy Travis Bruner. You swear on a solemn oath to protect us from all harm, that includes you. Start policing each other or get ready to attend a lot of police funerals.”
Travis Bruner was the deputy who, eleven months earlier, had witnessed the beating of Malika Calhoun by Deputy Paul Schene in a King County jail cell. He had assisted no one at the time other than Schene.
* * *
Randy and Elena’s place was cold, and they had a fire going in the woodstove to warm it up. The hide-a-bed couch was opened, and Randy and Elena were under the covers, watching the big-screen TV. On the side of the bed, Ninja was stalking Kemo’s tail as she tried to rest. Kemo was being strangely tolerant.
On the TV, a news anchor was revealing the breaking details of the investigation into the life of Chris Monfort. He had no criminal record, and he had a history of youth volunteerism. He had a bachelor’s degree in law and justice from the University of Washingon.
He was also a proponent of jury nullification. Randy was a believer in the same concept, but he differed from Monfort in the details of the issue. Jury nullification is the legal concept that a jury has absolute authority to disregard a judge’s instructions and acquit a defendant if they believe the law he is charged with violating is unjust, or being unjustly applied. Randy was all in favor of that, but according to the news reports, Monfort, who was half-black, favored acquitting all black defendants of virtually all crimes, to counter racial inequity in the justice system. The problem Randy had with that approach was that when you acquit someone who is guilty of a real crime, it’s your neighborhood they’re returning to, and your neighbors that they’re going to victimize again. That’s not what jury nullification is for. Nonetheless, they had quite a few opinions in common.
The anchor was discussing Monfort’s left-of-center political leanings as Elena picked up the remote and turned the TV down. “What do you think this means?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Randy replied. “This isn’t like anything that’s happened before. This guy is a whole different breed of
shooter.”
“How do you mean?”
“When somebody shoots a cop, it’s typically because the cop is engaged in a conflict with them at that moment, or because the person has an ongoing beef of their own with a certain department. This guy had neither.”
“What did he have then?”
“The way it looks, his beef was with out-of-control law enforcement in general. It had nothing to do with any quarrels of his own, he was attacking anyone he could find in uniform to avenge other people. This was an act of war.” He took a breath, as the news report went on. “I’m worried.”
“What about?”
“Trends,” he replied. “Remember the guy in Colorado who took over a school room, then sexually assaulted the girls inside and ended up killing one of them?”
Elena frowned with some disgust. “Why would you bring that up?”
“After that happened, there was a copycat in Pennsylvania who did exactly the same thing, only he killed five girls. The first case was the most vile sort of crime you can possibly imagine, and yet it generated a copycat.” Elena began to see what he was getting at. “When the unthinkable happens, it’s not unthinkable anymore. I think the game has just changed in a very big way.”
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