A New Jersey man came to his seemingly long-deserved comeuppance this week after he shouted racial slurs on camera, challenged those listening to “Come fucking see me,” and was arrested while 150 protesters gathered outside his residence.
Numerous news outlets covered the incident, which began last Friday when a video of 45-year-old Edward Cagney Mathews screaming at a Black man outside the latter’s house for an unknown reason went viral online.
Motherboard reported that whatever set off the altercation is unclear, but Mathews could be clearly heard repeatedly yelling slurs at his Black neighbors, calling them “monkeys” and “n*****s,” as well as telling a Mount Laurel police officer that “whitey... has no jurisdiction here” and “Fuck you, go talk to the monkey n*****s.” He also claims the right to stand in front of the door because “Learn the law. It’s not Africa.” During the video, Mathews also states his home address and dares viewers to come there.
On Monday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, numerous people did just that, gathering at Mathew’s condo and chanting “We want Edward!” In the morning, Mathews tried to apologize to the crowd to little avail. The Inquirer wrote that police arrived later that evening and arrested Mathews in front of the crowd, charging him with fourth-degree bias intimidation and trespassing. According to NJ.com, some in the crowd pelted Mathews with water and juice bottles as he was escorted to a police vehicle for transport, while riot police intervened after they began smashing windows on his residence.
A fellow resident on the 3800 block of Grammercy Way told authorities she has been “continually harassed” by Mathews, according to NJ.com, while a spokesperson for the Mount Laurel Police Department confirmed to the site that Mathews will now face additional charges of bias intimidation and assault after investigators determined the video pictured him spitting on one of his targets. Local residents told multiple news sources that Mathews had a longstanding pattern of racial harassment and they were not pleased with the way police handled it. NBC Philadelphia reported that residents said they had reported his conduct to Mount Laurel police multiple times with no serious action taken until the video went viral.
“The main thing that makes you shake your head is how in the world has this gone unaddressed,” Southern Burlington NAACP president Marcus Sibley told NJ.com. “...We’re looking for reform. When we say that we feel intimidated, we feel like we’re being hurt and harmed, we would love for the response to be ‘This is wrong. This is inhumane. This is disrespectful, and we are going to prosecute at the fullest extent of the law, so other people learn this isn’t how you treat people.’”
Fellow condo resident Ashleigh Gibbons, 35, told the Inquirer that Mathews had moved in two years prior and “He’s been harassing ever since.”
According to Motherboard, another local resident shared a Facebook post in which she recounted an incident in which Mathews “KICKED IN MY DOOR” only for police to do “NOTHING.” The Facebook post also contains a photo of the woman’s car with the sentence, “I am a n***** who sucks cocks.”
In an interview with the Inquirer, Mathews offered one of the worst non-apologies of all time—explaining he was drunk while angered about a running housing dispute, but helpfully clarifying he spews the exact same racial slurs all the time, including at white people. He also denied accounts by neighbors that he regularly engaged in racist harassment.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting an encounter like that and certainly wasn’t expecting to disrespect anybody,” Mathews told the Inquirer. “Let me be clear: That is no excuse for what I said, but I lost my temper... Anybody that knows me knows that I just talk like this.”
According to NBC, Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina told reporters on Monday evening, “I want to especially commend the victim who showed incredible restraint with somebody spewing awful, vile things in his face. Assaulting him. That’s the subject of the additional charge today. That was on video.”
Coffina further explained the police inaction was due to a lack of evidence: “They had seen videos that weren’t available to us on Friday night that were even worse than what we did have available to us on Friday night. And the protesters had every right to be upset about that because this is despicable conduct.”
Mount Laurel Police Chief Stephen Riedener added that in prior situations in which officers had brought Mathews to court, “charges were either dismissed or no probable cause was ever found,” according to NBC. He added that thanks to the video police were “finally able to get the evidence that we needed to actually charge him with the crimes he was committing.”
You know, as opposed to, say, being shamed into action by the video going viral and a massive protest.
“He said to pull up. We pulled up,” Aliya Robinson, a 43-year-old realtor who attended the protest, told the Inquirer. “We’re not going to tolerate this anymore.”