Pittsburgh Cop Killer Richard Poplawski Voiced Racist Views Online
NewsToBeRead
Man Accused in Pittsburgh Killings Voiced Racist Views Online
By SEAN D. HAMILL
Published: April 7, 2009
PITTSBURGH - The man charged with killing three police officers here on
Saturday was a contributor to racist Web sites, writing about his hatred of
race-mixing, the economic collapse, Zionist conspiracies and his fondness
for his "AK" rifle.
The police said the three officers were killed, and a fourth wounded, after
they responded to a domestic disturbance call early Saturday at the home of
Richard A. Poplawski, 22. The police said Mr. Poplawski shot the officers
with his AK-47 rifle.
He sometimes wrote about what he saw as a Zionist conspiracy, as in a March
13 post: "One can read the list of significant persons in government and in
major corporations and see who is pulling the strings. One can observe the
policies and final products and should walk away with little doubt there is
Zionist occupation and - after some further research & critical thinking -
will discover their insidious intentions."
After the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl, Mr. Poplawski dismissed
football as nothing but "negroball." Then, instead of celebrating the
victory, he went out and did reconnaissance on how the police tried to
control the crowds and posted his findings.
"Cumulatively, what these postings reveal is a lot more about his mindset,"
said Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the
Anti-Defamation League, who found the postings after sorting through the
shifting online names Mr. Poplawski used. "They show a growing
anti-government and anti-police hostility."
Linking Mr. Poplawski to the postings, which used different screen names,
was a matter of matching them to some aspects of his life that he wrote
about, including his MySpace page.
The postings support what Mr. Poplawski's friends have told reporters: that
he was worried about the election of President Obama and that he had said he
would defend himself if anyone ever tried to take his guns.
The postings were made on Stormfront, a white supremacist chat site, and
Infowars, a Web site affiliated with a radio talk show host, Alex Jones,
beginning in late 2007 and continuing until two days before the shootings.
Stormfront's Web site indicates that Mr. Poplawski last visited the site at
3:32 a.m. Saturday, just hours before the confrontation with the police.
Neighbors said Mr. Poplawski had been out drinking till early Saturday.
According to the criminal affidavit, his mother, who called 911 at 7:03
a.m., had woken him up because his dog had urinated on the floor. That
started their confrontation and led to a nearly four-hour police standoff.
Most revealing to Mr. Pitcavage is that sometime in the last month, Mr.
Poplawski changed his logon name from "Rich P" to "Braced for Fate."
"I mean, this is talking about some inevitable confrontation," Mr. Pitcavage
said, "and possibly a fatal confrontation."