CENTRAL NEWS SERVICE

Fugitives suspected of killing a Colorado policeman, and wounding three others, appear to have eluded a posse of hundreds of pursuers in the rugged terrain of the Wild West. In a demonstration of the power of the police state to protect police, 200 National Guardsmen and 300 local, state and federal police officers from 27 agencies descended on Bluff, Utah, with the impact of a commando raid, in search of the three men believed responsible for the fatal shooting of Cortez, CO, Officer Dale Claxton, and the wounding of two county deputies on Friday, May 29^th.

Residents of Bluff, Utah, were furious that the government ordered them to evacuate the artist's colony. In a heavy-handed move, the 300 citizens of Bluff were forcibly evacuated by bus to Blanding, 20 miles north of Bluff. Additionally, the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of managing the Federal Government's vast land holdings, evacuated nearby San Juan River of rafters as a precaution, due to sightings of the fugitives earlier with a boat. (Some speculated later that two of the suspects made their escape by boat).

Oddly enough, this incident took place at the same time that the IRS has issued 20,000 apologies to its victims, because it appears at this time that the leading cause of this rampage is the fact that one of the fugitives may owe the IRS $1,500. The fugitives are 26-year-old Jason Wayne McVean of Durango, Colorado, and Alan "Monty" Pilon, 30, of Dove Creek, Colorado. Police believe that a dispute in which the IRS claims Pilon owes $1,500 in unpaid taxes may explain his hostility towards the Republic. Pilon and McVean are laborers, and 26-year-old Robert Matthew Mason was a bricklayer; Mason's body was found Thursday at a campsite along the river, about five miles east of Bluff, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The rampage had its origins on the morning of 29 May, after Officer Claxton had radioed his dispatcher that he was following a water truck that had apparently been stolen from another county. He was waiting for back-up to arrive before stopping the truck, when the suspicious water truck pulled over on its own. One of its occupants jumped out dressed in military-style camouflage, disguised by a face mask and shooting goggles, and proceeded to walk back to Claxton's patrol car, and shoot and kill him with an automatic weapon at point-blank range. The suspects then abandoned the tanker and commandeered a flatbed truck, which they later wrecked after a high-speed chase and shoot-out with police in which two Montezuma County sheriff's deputies were wounded, and six patrol cars got shot up. The gunmen then commandeered a second truck, before abandoning it and fleeing on foot into the dry canyonlands five miles north of Hovenweep National Monument.

The fugitives disappeared and were not heard from again until Thursday afternoon, when a Utah social worker, Steve Wilcox, stumbled upon a pair of combat boots along the river bank, and a prone camouflaged person nearby pointing a rifle at his head. "It looked like a cannon," Wilcox said. "I stomped on the gas and I hadn't gone more than 30 feet when I heard a shot, and a bullet hit just to the right of the vehicle." The officer who answered Wilcox's 911 call was shot and wounded, never seeing the gunman; both of the .308-caliber bullets penetrated the San Juan County deputy's protective vest.

There is speculation about what the men were up to when they stole the water truck, and whether or not the men were connected to any militant organizations. Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which operates a watchdog unit that tracks so-called "hate groups" and right-wing paramilitary groups, told CNN that all three of the fugitives were linked to the Four Corners Patriot Militia. He said Pilon trained with the Militia in 1996. Pipe bombs were seized in searches of Pilon's and Mason's homes Tuesday. Automatic rifles and a shotgun were found in a pickup truck the fugitives abandoned. Police also found hand-drawn maps indicating the men were stockpiling supplies in various locations in the area.

The Cortez city manager, however, said that he had never heard of the Four Corners Patriot Militia, and San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy said that police have no proof that the suspects were in a militia. Cortez Police Chief Roy Lane said bomb-making directions from "The Anarchist's Cookbook," were found in Pilon's room at his parent's Dove Creek home. "We found a lot of Internet information to indicate he'd been reading about how to make a bomb, and there were other types of survivalist magazines and all kinds of information like that at his house."

The fugitives literally disappeared into the wilderness, as hundreds of officers combed the head-high brush along the half-mile wide river canyon. Helicopters buzzed overhead and sheriff's pontoon boats scoured the river. A SWAT team took up riverside positions 17 miles southwest at Mexican Hat. Temperatures in the past several days have been so high that police tracking dogs were stymied. The overwhelming police power has struck a nerve, however, because there are murders every day of civilians, which receive nowhere near the same response from the law enforcement community when they take place. The reality in this case is that the government itself is under attack, and it's a no holds barred brawl when the bureaucracy itself is under fire. Of course, nothing justifies the crimes of the fugitives. The fugitives are outlaws for good reason, homicide being the most serious of all crimes; the selective enforcement of the law by police is what calls the sincerity of these institutions into question. Five hundred policeman should be called out within hours the next time a black child is murdered in south central Los Angeles; anything short of that is just an excuse for failing the community, while propping the police-state up on the dead bodies of American innocents.

SOURCE: Information for this article derived from the Associated Press and CNN, 5 June, 1998. Written exclusively for CNS.