Why Authorities Could Have Prevented J.T. Ready’s Murder Spree
Read the whole thing here. It’s a convincing argument that the murders of three adults and a baby could have been prevented.
If Jason Todd Ready had been a run-of-the-mill, delusional, Holocaust-denying racist neo-Nazi who liked to play with guns, I suppose we could could spare an ounce of surprise that, according to the Gilbert police, he killed himself and four others — including a baby girl, her mom, and her grandmother — last week.
But Ready, 39, practically had a buzzing neon sign reading “Destined to Implode” flashing on and off above his head.
Add to this Ready’s pattern of intimidating and sometimes criminal behavior, his regular spouting of violent rhetoric, and his yen for running around the Arizona desert with other AR-15-toting national socialists hunting Hispanics, and you essentially had the all-American equivalent of a bomb-strapped fanatic seeking directions to the airport.
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What was the FBI waiting for, an engraved invitation?
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Matson Browning is a former detective with the Mesa Police Department who dogged neo-Nazi skinheads, undercover and otherwise, for many years. His success in putting murderous white-supremacist crews behind bars has been documented by this publication and others, including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report magazine.
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“[My supervisor] said, ‘Mat, shut up. It’s just white people killing white people,’” Browning recalled.
The emphasis always was on black and Hispanic gangs, which Browning also followed. But Browning says he often encountered a disturbing attitude among fellow cops.
“When I started working the white boys, people were telling me, ‘White guys don’t commit crime,’” he recalled. “‘When’s the last time a white guy did a drive-by shooting?’ [they would ask.] ‘When’s the last time a white guy held up a liquor store? Or sold crack on the corner?’”
One of his biggest regrets now is that he could not persuade federal or local law enforcement to commit resources to investigating Ready’s suspicious activities, which, he says, date back to the early 2000s.
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