The man pictured here is Christopher Monfort. He was shot by police and arrested the same day the man he is suspected of killing was memorialized in a tribute at Key Arena.
Just the other day police released a detailed profile of the person they felt they were looking for. In part, it said:
His skills in weapons use and close quarter techniques suggest prior training. He has likely practiced a great deal with weapons and those around him will note his abilities and interest in them. These skills may have been developed through previous employment or hobbies. In the days and weeks prior to the shooting, he may have increased his practice with weapons.
After the shooting, he may have disposed of, altered, hidden or repaired his vehicle in some form. This vehicle may have been damaged in the firefight. It is described as a 1980 to 1983 Datsun 210.
He likely has experienced a significant personal crisis in the recent past. This event may have been the death of a loved one, loss of job or status, divorce, financial hardship, or other failure. Whatever it is that is bothering him, he may often be outspoken about what he perceives to be a deeply personal grievance. We’d like to know what this grievance is. His grievance may relate to his employment or position in life. We do believe that although he shot a police officer, he may in fact admire them and even act like them.
This is what we know about Monfort for sure. He attended the UW studying criminal justice and same with Highline Community College. He has worked as a security guard and/or private investigator. He tried for years to become a police officer. He ran for student government while in college and later resigned his position. He drives a car matching the description of the suspect car. He also drives a second car- a retired police cruiser painted dark blue or black. Last week he began covering the car in question when he’d never done so before. He has no criminal record in Washington and no history of violence that is known at this time. He was a UW criminal-justice grad and member of the McNair Scholars Program. He was shot today and taken into police custody. At the time of this post he is in critical but stable condition at Harborview.
That is what we know. Does he match the law enforcement profile?
Any time law enforcement is working off a profile developed based in details of the crime or evidence, I think of Atlanta. The Olympic Park bombing during the official games was enough to shake a nation. Like the current case, a profile of the bombing suspect was released. There were quite a few similarities between the two.
And then came Richard Jewel- I’m sure you remember. He was the guy accused of being the Olympic Park bomber. If memory serves, Jewel worked as a security guard at the games and had helped point law enforcement in the direction of potentially helpful evidence. Soon, his life was ripped apart. He too had aspirations in law enforcement- but they never went anywhere.
He was accused by law enforcement and vilified in the news media around the world- just one problem- he didn’t do it.
Those following the Halloween murder have 1 of 2 opinions of Monfort’s involvement; either he did it- or he didn’t and the police are going after an innocent man- maybe because he’s Black, maybe as a frame job.
Let’s back up for a second though. None of the things we know about Monfort make him guilty. But they don’t make him innocent either.
We can’t say it wasn’t him because he was a UW grad.
We can’t say it was him because he has a similar car.
We can’t say it wasn’t him because he studied criminal justice.
We can’t say it was him because he desired to be a cop.
Things like that could be debated at length on either side.
Welp, call me crazy, but I don’t think SPD is itching to pull off a frame job. Of the information already reviewed above- they don’t have what they need for a conviction. I don’t think this is some grand conspiracy about a dirty cop taken out by another dirty cop who then worked with more dirty cops to frame some random guy for the crime. I could be completely wrong, I’m just sharing my opinion.
I don’t think police tried to murder said random guy today outside his apartment as part of their awesome frame up job. They had more man power and fire power, if they wanted him dead then he would be.
I don’t think the officers working this case want just anybody. They want the person or persons that did this and nothing less.
Police got a tip about a car and went to investigate. They poked around the outside of the car and then waited to see if anyone would approach it- Monfort was allegedly that guy. Police say when they tired to talk to him he pulled a gun, pointed it or attempted to fire (it didn’t fire) and then ran, not once, but twice, from the police.
Police don’t just go around randomly chasing people. If Monfort was being chased, could that be because he was running? Why would he run? He had no criminal background, seemed to otherwise be an upstanding intelligent person- so why run from the cops all of a sudden? He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would otherwise have real reason to start running after police start talking to you. But, I suppose stranger things have happened.
One theory floating around is that Monfort was released from his job because he had too many traffic infractions within the past 3 years- his most recent occuring just weeks before the shooting.
Another is that Monfort suffers from some sort of mental or emotional illness that has gone mostly undetected in the past; 1 in 4 adults do, so, not a stretch there. Some say Monfort had a level of self importance that was not normal. He may feel cheated; he’s 41 and he was never able to realize his potential in law enforcement. For some who experience this level of let down and realization, the only action left is to turn to crime- not necessarily because he was angry with police, but because he was desperate to be involved with them on a personal level.
Reading some of the quotes available from Monfort (via a college paper) and the intro to some work he did at UW around jury nullification make me scratch my head- particularly his comments around his controversial election into college student government.
While debate rages on about whether Monfort is the man who shot and killed officer Brenton, Monfort lies in Harborview hospital under police guard while investigators come through the car in question and his home. It may turn out that everything about Monfort is just a coincidence- like Richard Jewel. If not, police have captured a cop killer less than a week after he struck.
Do you think Christopher Monfort is the killer SPD is looking for?
Yes, I think Christopher Monfort is the murderer.
Everything is looking as him being the killer…DNA and bolistics on the riffle found in his home shows he is…
As Janice said, here is DNA and ballistics evidence. Richard Jewel? Does a “debate” still rage somewhere? http://www.seattlepi.com/local/412010_monfort09.html
@Trellis, unfortunately, yes, there is a large group of people out there who think this man is innocent and police have violated his civil rights. Mind you, much has changed since I posted this article, perhaps those folks have had a change of heart.
Thanks, Sable. I knew that new information surfaced after you posted. I did not know of the debate. Is the immediate contention of innocence comparable to the OJ case, with blacks and whites having very different histories and therefore points of view?
not quite like that.people felt Black men and teens were being hassled by police all week “for no reason” (pre-arrest). Once the arrest went down, many felt it was likely the police jumped the gun and violated this man’s civil rights, choosing not to believe the police side of what happened (Monfort pulled a gun, ran, etc). sigh… There was also a lot of “well, he’s a cop, so…” as if being a cop makes one worthy of being shot to death. There have also been stark differences in opinions about whether the officer in question was “good” or not. Stuff like that. I tried to write the article highlighting both- because I think the perspectives are fascinating- and troubling- setting most of my own opinion aside. Pre-warrant I was of (what I thought was absolutely fair) the opinion that this would go 1 of two ways- first, that he was innocent and all the similarities were just coincidence, like Jewel (minus the whole pulling the gun thing), OR, this is the guy…
I couldn’t even get through what you had written because you keep spelling his name differently/incorrectly. If you can’t even be accurate in spelling, then how am I suppose to be convinced that what you are saying is worth its salt?
Fair enough. On a quick read through, I count his name 10 times, mis-spelled twice. Damn. Shame on me.
I was forwarded in article that appeared in the Seattle Times today about the Monfort. The majority of the article was focused on the suspects racial identity–he’s biracial. What I find quite intense about this article is the way that it centers “The tragic mulatto” theory–that all biracial people are confused and it drives us (I’m biracial) to kill or act irrationally. I found this article very upsetting as it just adds to the continued racialization of this man in a way that perpetuates stereotypes.
I personally feel upset that he was shot so intensely and it seems that it would have made more sense to bring him in for questioning. I understand why the cops shot at him (since Monfort) pulled a gun but it seems like there was some idea of vengeance with the shot in the head.
oops, I forgot to copy the article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010239598_monfort10m.html?syndication=rss
I gotta say, if they’re framing him, it’s a mighty thorough frame-up. Apparently he’s *also* got a bunch of child pornography on his computer, which was a bit WTF? because it didn’t seem to fit with anything else.
GOOD JOB SPD, Lets hope Justice is served and he gets what he deserves, the death penalty… FRY THE F@#*%R
They say…the guy had a gun and so they shot him, now what…, they say the covered up car is the one used in the shooting…..if the guy killed a cop and knows their hunting for him is he really going to park the car in a large apartment complex with lots of people living there? The car was an older car not too many of those around anymore. Either this guy did it and was ready to be caught or he didn’t do it. They say……the evidence in the apartment indicated he had plans to do more violence..ok I guess he wasn’t ready to be caught, if he is the right guy then why didn’t he ditch the car.
Pingback: Christopher Monfort : Profile of a Cop Killer? « the Sable Verity at Jack's Writing Site
Dig a little deeper into FIJA and you’ll get a shock. The jury nullification propaganda is mostly produced by anti-Semitic white supremacists like Red Beckman, FIJA’s founder. This guy is complex and there are going to be some shocking surprises in his background.
One initial report mentioned that he had a booklet on him when he was arrested that fits the description of “Citizens Rule Book: A Palladium of Liberty.” It’s hard core white supremacist literature that claims the income tax is unconstitutional, black people aren’t citizens because the 14th Amendment was never ratified, various “sovereign citizen” craziness, etc.
Structural racism produces some really strange things. This case is one of them.
what if he didnt do it how will they give him back his legs. wheres the original story alot of holes left to fill
Well he is black so that means even if we have dna,matching car,pulls gun on police,has mathing ballistics, hell even if we had slow motin high def video of the killing, because he is so oppressed and black it just has to be not his fault and whitey just has to be violating his civil rights………correct?…….tell him to get johnny cochran for counsel..oh wait he’s in hell and o j is in jail…..damn whats a brother to do?….he just did what thousands of other bros do every day…murder someone….wake up America…
Who is interviewing Monfort? The story of how he was arrested was certainly bizzare and likely not actually what happened; but this is not to conclude that he is innocent. I think it will be interesting to hear from him.
Just because hes black doesn’t make him innocent!
Well, we are going to hate to have to look at something else here, the other profile that Monfort fits very closely:
“Domestic Terrorist lone wolf operator”. Monfort’s training, lifestyle, background, age, political views and even methodology and choices of weapons all point to being schooled in the art and even rhetoric of warfare by the movement.
Unlike the assertions of warbaby, the movement has been working 20 years to suppress its early racist history, and the particular incident that Monfort refers to in his notes accompanying the attack on the police vehicles relates to a video that has been in high circulation on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2ZJxi6Tw9I
The victim in that police beating was also mixed race, but I don’t think race was the main motivator here. Look at the various comments in those videos, and you can see that a fair number follow the theme of “someone is going to have to do something” or “that cop deserves to die”.
Likewise, when you look at related articles on what were traditionally more racist websites like stormfront.com (white) and blackplanet.com (black), a lot of the topics on the police beating stories are starting to have very similar commentary. It is not like the old days when people took sides on the Rodney King issue mainly on the basis of race. Likewise, if you compare the more recent militia movement activity on youtube through groups like ARM and then the older groups represented on some of the older style websites, you will notice that while the majority of the newer generation of militia people are white, there are more of the mixed race people and nonwhites represented in the leadership.
One way to reduce the number of Christopher Monforts and Timothy McVeighs in your world is to reduce the number of government sponsored acts of murder and violence.
The question wasn’t whether or not he did it at all. It was why.
Timothy Brenton was usually behind a desk, that night he was on patrol in place of another officer- or so i thought. I assumed he got the wrong guy and didn’t know it.
Anybody else see the video of the girl being beaten in her cell? I think that was the same department, but that’s just one of the incidents that somebody would have gotten away with if there were no cameras in the cell. I doubt that was the first untimely violent outburst for a person to suffer at the hands of an armed enforcer of the law. Teenage girls are at mercy of a cops honor and integrity and I have heard a lot of bad things in King county and on my street.
Watch the video of the girl being beaten in her cell, she kicks off her shoe or something and it hits the officer outside, then he runs in and knocks her down hard enough to hurt himself and what does his partner do? He supervises the beating. I thought the video was old on youtube when i watched it but it was brand new and they hadn’t fired the guy yet when i first saw it.