[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Wanted: Dead, Not Alive: The LAPD is Afraid of What Renegade Cop Chris Dorner has to Say Wanted: Dead, Not Alive: The LAPD is Afraid of What Renegade Cop Chris Dorner has to Say By Dave Lindorff February 12, 2013 "This Can't Be Happening" -- Let’s not be too quick to dismiss the “ranting” of renegade LAPD officer Chris Dorner. Dorner, a three-year police veteran and former Lieutenant in the US Navy who went rogue after being fired by the LAPD, has accused Los Angeles Police of systematically using excessive force, of corruption, of being racist, and of firing him for raising those issues through official channels. By all media accounts, Dorner “snapped” after his firing, and has vowed to kill police in retaliation. He allegedly has already done so, with several people, including police officers and family members of police already shot dead. Now there’s a “manhunt” involving police departments across California, focussing on the mountains around Big Bear, featuring cops dressed in full military gear and armed with semi-automatic weapons. Nobody would argue that randomly killing police officers and their family members or friends is justified, but I think that there is good reason to suspect that the things that Dorner claims set him off, such as being fired for reporting police brutality, and then going through a rigged hearing, deserve serious consideration and investigation. The LAPD has a long history of abuse of minorities (actually the majority in Los Angeles, where whites are now a minority). It has long been a kind of paramilitary force -- one which pioneered the military-style Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) approach to “policing.” If you wanted a good example to prove that nothing has changed over the years, just look at the outrageous incident involving LAPD cops tasked with capturing Dorner, who instead shot up two innocent women who were delivering newspapers in a residential area of Los Angeles. The women, Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71 (now in serious condition in the hospital), were not issued any warning. Police just opened fire from behind them, destroying their truck with heavy semi-automatic fire to the point that it will have to be scrapped and replaced. The two women are lucky to be alive (check out the pattern of bullet holes in the rear window behind the driver’s position in the accompanying photo). What they experienced was the tactics used by US troops on patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan, not the tactics that one expects of police. Their truck wasn’t even the right make or color, but LAPD’s “finest” decided it was better to be safe than sorry, so instead of acting like cops, they followed Pentagon “rules of engagement”: They attempted to waste the target. LAPD officers fired on this car with clear intent to kill (check out the bullet holes behind the driver-seat position) LAPD officers fired on this car with clear intent to kill (check out the bullet holes behind the driver-seat position). Trouble was, it was the wrong make and wrong color, and instead of Dorner, it was two Latino women, one of whom is now in serious condition from her wounds. No warning was given before the barrage. Local residents say that after that shooting, which involved seven LAPD officers and over 70 bullets expended, with nobody returning fire, the street and surrounding houses were pockmarked with bullet holes. The Los Angeles Times reports that in the area, there are “bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs.” In roofs? What we had here was an example of a controversial tactic that the military employed in the Iraq War, and still employs in Afghanistan, called “spray and pray” -- a tactic that led directly to the massive civilian casualties during that US war. We shouldn’t be surprised that two brown-skinned women were almost mowed down by the LAPD--only that they somehow survived all that deadly firing directed at them with clear intent to kill. The approach taken by those cop-hunting-cops of shooting first and asking questions later suggests that the LAPD in this “manhunt” for one of their own has no intention of capturing Dorner alive and letting him talk about what he knows about the evils rampant in the 10,000-member department. They want him dead. When I lived in Los Angeles back in the 1970s, it was common for LAPD cops to bust into homes, gestapo-like, at 5 in the morning, guns out, to arrest people for minor things like outstanding court warrants for unpaid parking tickets, bald tires, or jaywalking. Police helicopters also used to tail me -- then an editor of an alternative news weekly -- and my wife, a music graduate student, as we drove home at night. Sometimes, they would follow us from our car to front door with a brilliant spotlight, when we’d come home at night to our house in Echo Park. It was an act of deliberate intimidation. (They also infiltrated our newspaper with an undercover cop posing as a wannabe journalist. Her job, we later learned, was to learn who our sources were inside the LAPD -- sources who had disclosed such things as that the LAPD had, and probably still has, a “shoot-to-kill” policy for police who fire their weapons.) Friends in Los Angeles tell me nothing has changed, though of course the police weaponry has gotten heavier and their surveillance capabilities have gotten more sophisticated and invasive. It is clear from the LAPD’s paramilitary response to the Occupy movement in Los Angeles, which included planting undercover cops among the occupiers, some of whom reportedly were agents provocateur who tried to encourage protesters to commit acts of violence, and which ended with police violence and gratuitous arrests, as in New York, that nothing has changed. In other words, Dorner may be irrational, but he ain’t crazy. A black military veteran, Dorner joined the police because he reportedly believed in service. Unable to go along with the militarist policing he saw on the job, he protested through channels and was apparently rewarded by being fired. Now, in his own violent way, he is trying to warn us all that something is rotten in the LAPD, and by extension, in the whole police system in the US. Police departments almost everywhere in the US, have morphed, particularly since 9/11/2001, from a role of providing public safety and law enforcement into agencies of brutal fascist control. As Dorner says in his lengthy manifesto (actually quite explicit and literate, but described as “ranting” in corporate media accounts), in which he explains his actions and indicts the LAPD, “The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.” That could be said of many US police departments, I’m afraid. Example: Last fall, I had the experience of trying to hitchhike in my little suburban town. A young cop drove up and informed me (incorrectly, it turns out) that it was illegal to hitchhike in Pennsylvania. When I expressed surprise at this and told him I was a journalist working on an article on hitchhiking, he then threatened me directly, saying that if I continued to try and thumb a ride, he would “take you in and lock you up.” When I called a lawyer friend and said I was inclined to take the officer up on that threat, since I was within my rights under the law hitchhiking as long as I was standing off the road, he warned me against it, saying, “You don’t know what could happen to you if you got arrested.” And of course he’s right. An arrest, even a wrongful arrest, in the US these days can lead to an added charge -- much more serious -- of resisting arrest, with a court basing its judgement on the word of the officer in the absence of any other witnesses. It can also lead to physical injury or worse, if the officer wants to lie and claim that the arrested person threatened him or her. If I had been in Los Angeles, I would most likely have been locked up for an incident like that. Forget about any warning. You aren’t supposed to talk back to cops in L.A. And if you are black or Latino, the results of such an arrest could be much worse. I remember once witnessing LAPD cops stopping a few Latino youths who had been joyriding in what might have been a stolen car. There was a helicopter overhead, and perhaps a dozen patrol cars that had converged on the scene, outside a shopping mall in Silverlake. I ran over to see what was happening and watched as the cops grabbed the kids, none of whom was armed, out of the vehicle and slammed them against the car brutally. It was looking pretty ugly, but by then neighbors from the surrounding homes, most of them Latino, who had poured out onto their lawns because of the commotion, began yelling at the cops. One man shouted, “We see what you’re doing. These boys are all healthy. If anything happens to any of them after you arrest them we will report you!” The cops grudgingly backed off in their attack on the boys, and took them away in a squad car. I don’t know what happened to them after that, but they were most certainly saved, by quick community response, from an on-the-spot Rodney King-style beating that could have seriously injured them, or worse. As things stand right now, with the LAPD gunning for Dorner, and wanting him dead and silenced, not captured, the public has to worry that it has more to fear from the LAPD than it has to fear from Dorner himself. At least Dorner, in his own twisted way, has specific targets in mind. The LAPD is in “spray and pray” mode. Chris Dorner, in happier days, now a fugitive on the run from the LAPD "manhunters" Chris Dorner, in happier days, now a fugitive on the run from the LAPD "manhunters" Hopefully, Dorner will realize he can do more by figuring out a safe way to “come in from the cold” so he can try to testify about LAPD crimes, than by killing more cops. If he does manage to surrender, he’d better have a lot of support lined up to keep him safe while in custody. It’s already clear that a lot of people in the LAPD want him dead. Copyright © 2013 This Can't Be Happening. Scroll down to add / read comments Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Supp Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#5. To: tom007 (#0)
(Edited)
No he's crazy. A narcissistic, professional victim who's off the chain. He murdered the beautiful daughter and fiance of the Asian police captain who represented him at the hearing(s). I'd be willing to bet that the captain knew and understood the rules as well as anyone could and that he did his best defending Dorner under the circumstances. But Dorner seems to be saying that the New LAPD, reformed after he made the changes that suited him should have heard his case. Yes, he was a lieutenant in the USNR, but it's a lot harder to be hired by the LAPD than to enlist in the Squids. And, the FEDs may be readily cowed by charges of racism, but the LAPD is not. (Bush 1 turned on the cops who arrested Rodney King as he faced reelection, but he never criticized his CIA buddies' or his son's gratuitous use of force worldwide. But Chief Daryl Gates stood by his officers, even walking the street with a shotgun during the riots. He was a man's man as the wimp president unsuccessfully sucked up to minorities for votes) Cops also have the protection of due process, so who expects them to surrender because of Dorner's unproven allegation of racism? A woman cop has to be aggressive to earn her peers' respect, just as blacks may find it harder to earn the respect of other cops. The reason is, cops never know which blacks have chosen their skin color as their uniform, and they'll use racism to excuse failure and incompetence. And, since "black" is synonymous with "crime" in LA, there's no shortage of opportunities to turn on cops and side with criminals. Stupid, hypersensitive blacks with agendas and with no business even trying to partner with whites just don't understand that it's a long way from the administration to the street. (UCLA did a study that found that blacks "saw" racism where Hispanics and Asians did not. Blacks conditioned from birth quite naturally concluded that the spics and chinks were just too stoopid to see it) Dorner apparently felt that his woman FTO should have been more deferential to a minority arrestee in the presence of JUSTICE LEAGUE CRUSADER Dorner, who too often saw racism and abuse where ever cops handed out law and order to minorities. A worthwhile crusade to be sure but certainly not from the inside. He should have known that he couldn't prevail as a rogue. After all, he had to face police brass and he couldn't end run around them straight to some sympathetic federal judge. And even a judge could not excuse Dorner's reported failures. In other words he was at the mercy of his police superiors, and unlike the navy where throwing faerie poop up in the air will often raise sufficient doubt, he had to be a team player or lose his job. After his termination he still held his 832 certificate and he could have been hired by hundreds of other agencies, but to Dorner justice demands innocent blood if he can't be a Hollywood cop. Dorner was no doubt pleased that the system presumed that a cop's account of a traffic stop and/or arrest is the truth and a citizen's isn't, even though the whole world knows this is often untrue. Well, the same system that protected Officer Dorner as a matter of policy while on duty also presumed that his FTO (Field Training Officer) was the better judge of his conduct. Because that presumption didn't benefit the fat black whiner, or perhaps he resented having a woman FTO who could end his career if she detected his sexism and anti white bias, he's now murdering innocent people while attempting to appear as a martyr to the honkey haters, cop haters and liberals.
#6. To: HOUNDDAWG (#5)
Others mileage may vary but I think that was a great post, DAWG.
If he is sexist and opposed to women being cops then why does he say in the manifesto that he approves of the decision to open up combat roles to women?
What's to make of his FTO's physical abuse of a disabled man? Why was he fired for reporting this?
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest |
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||