The LAPD told reporters Wednesday morning that they believe suspected murderer Christopher Dorner died Tuesday in a burned out cabin where he was believed holed up following a deadly shootout with police in the Big Bear area. That shootout left Riverside Police Officer Michael Crain dead and another officer wounded. (CBS2 has excellent coverage with reporter Carter Evans very close to the final firefight.)
Former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, pictured with Dorner above, called the fired ex-LAPD officer an “injustice collector”- a FBI profiler term for a suspect seeking revenge. Dorner, a sharp shooter trained in anti-terrorism tactics, left a long manifesto documenting what he alleges are specific police abuses and pledged to kill “high value targets” until the abuses are investigated and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck publicly cleared his name. Lesbians are among those Dorner promised to target:
Those lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target.
Beck has said he will reopen the case that lead to Dorner’s firing, the trigger that set off the killings. “I’m not doing this to appease him,” Beck told KCBS2’s Pat Harvey. “I’m doing this so the community has faith in what the police department does” Beck says he will make the inspection public.
The LA Weekly provoked some backlash by suggesting that the African American community considered Dorner a “hero” as a “victim of racism.” But African American columnist Nadra Kareem Nittle quickly disputed that view:.
To suggest that Dorner is a hero to blacks and a menace to whites is completely irresponsible, especially given that Dorner allegedly killed a young, black man with a bright future. Police say Dorner fatally shot Concordia University grad Keith Lawrence and his fiancée, Monica Quan, on Feb. 3 in Irvine, Calif. Why? Because Quan is the daughter of Randal K. Quan, a retired LAPD captain Dorner says gave him the short shrift at the hearing that led to his dismissal from LAPD. I doubt Lawrence’s family views Dorner as a hero, or aren’t they part of the black community?
Here’s is a section of Dorner’s manifesto:
I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple babies momma’s. I am an American by choice, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a military service member, I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered, and libeled me. I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North. I didn’t need the US Navy to instill Honor, Courage, and Commitment in me but I thank them for re-enforcing it. It’s in my DNA….
Terminating officers because they expose a culture of lying, racism (from the academy), and excessive use of force will immediately change. PSB can not police their own and that has been proven. The blue line will forever be severed and a cultural change will be implanted. You have awoken a sleeping giant.
I am here to change and make policy. The culture of LAPD versus the community and honest/good officers needs to and will change. I am here to correct and calibrate your morale compasses to true north.
But killing is anathema to morality.
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Killing is also a capital crime, and it looks as if Dorner paid the self-inflicted price. But the culture of retaliation at the LAPD is pretty much undisputed, isn’t it? Commission after commission has found it, even the Department has admitted it, but little or nothing has been done about it. And as alleged here, the LAPD doesn’t just take away a job: it’s objective is to destroy lives. We have seen it over and over again. That’s why openly gay male officers come and go, usually under a cloud; the ones that remain are required to be invisible, especially to the general public, like gay and lesbian staffers at the LA Times. Dorner was LAPD recruited, hired and trained, wasn’t he? It was just waiting to happen – sooner or later. We all still remember that for over a decade the LAPD was run by a career criminal named Daryl Gates. The current Chief, Charlie Beck, loved Gates – wept openly and shamelessly at Gates funeral, with the city big-wigs following Gates’ casket at a very respectful distance, as if he were still alive. The LAPD still has extensive, detailed files on them and they know it, so the Department still runs the town. When the Police Commission suspended Gates after the Rodney King beating, he threatened “to lay it on the line” and then closeted city councilman Joel Wach led the way for his return, an ugly and degrading spectacle. After the Rodney King verdict was read, Gates had no plan and deliberately let the city burn out of sheer spite. A shameful legacy, and the burning cabin in Big Ber yesterday was a bright, shining reminder that it is still reaching for us.
http://www.laobserved.com/visiting/2010/04/daryl_gates_secret_legacy.php