http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/16/dorn-f16.html
Massive police mobilization ends in killing of Christopher Dorner
By Joseph Santolan
16 February 2013
On Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) identified the
charred remains of the body found in the cabin in Big Bear,
California as Christopher Dorner. The weeklong manhunt reached a
violent culmination on Tuesday evening. The body was so badly burned
that he had to be identified by his dental records. The LAPD stated
that the cause of death is as yet unknown and may not be known for
weeks.
Details of the events surrounding the standoff at the cabin on
Tuesday have become clearer over the past three days. It appears that
Dorner had broken into and occupied a vacant cabin in the mountain
community of Big Bear, in Southern California, not far from the local
police headquarters for the manhunt in the area. When on Tuesday, the
owners of the cabin had returned to clean it, Dorner tied them up at
gunpoint and took their vehicle. The couple was able to get free
almost immediately and phoned the police.
Wardens from the Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted and chased
Dorner until he crashed into a snow bank. Dorner commandeered a
second vehicle at gunpoint, and fled to a cabin on Highway 38.
Hundreds of police quickly converged on the scene. A thirty-minute
shootout ensued. Later in the afternoon, the San Bernardino County
Sheriff's Department fired incendiary CS tear gas canisters into the
wooden cabin, causing it to burst into flame. The police ordered the
media to remain at a sufficient distance, ensuring that no footage of
the event was captured. They repeatedly ordered the fire department
not to put out the fire.
When the cabin had burned to the ground, the police located the
charred human remains that they have now claimed were Christopher
Dorner.
It is clear that the fire was started deliberately. "We didn't
intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out,"
spokesperson for the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, John
McMahon, told the press on Wednesday. There is, it seems, a touch of
truth to this denial. The fire was not started to get Dorner out, but
to kill him.
Incendiary CS tear gas canisters use an explosive device to generate
an intense heat that instantly aerosolizes the solid tear gas
chemical. It will always set flammable materials, including a wood
cabin, on fire. Similar canisters were used in 1993 to burn down the
compound of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, in the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and FBI massacre of at least 80
people.
Recordings of the police radio transmissions at the time of the start
of the fire capture voices saying "Burn this motherf-cker," "Burn it
down," and "Shoot the gas."
That police had no intention of capturing Dorner alive was already
evident from the two separate incidents in which vehicles were
recklessly shot up during the early stages of the manhunt. The police
fired from 30 to 60 rounds into a truck occupied by two women
delivering papers, also hitting nearby buildings and trees. In the
second case, they pulled over a truck, suspecting it of being
occupied by Dorner, and then released it, when a second police
officer rammed into the truck and began firing repeatedly into the
occupied vehicle.
The police denials of the calculated murder of the occupant of the
Big Bear cabin have been half-hearted and weak. One senses from the
mainstream media the tacit acknowledgement that this was an
extrajudicial killing, and produced a variety of talking heads who
applauded the police dispensing with due process.
CBS interviewed California State Assemblyman Todd Spitzer who stated,
"A type of justice was served tonight thankfully we don't have to go
through an arrest, a trial and 25 years of appeals on death row."
"Well said," his interviewer responded.
The Los Angeles Times interviewed two so-called experts on the
subject. The first, David Klinger, a "use-of-force expert," stated,
"What difference does it make if one of the officers puts around in
his head, drives the armored vehicle over his body when they are
knocking the building down, or he dies in a conflagration?" The
second, Geoffery Alpert, a specialist in police tactics, stated, "I
don't understand what the big deal is This man had already shot two
officers and was suspected of murdering other people. He wasn't
responding in a rational manner. The actions you take have to remove
the threat and if it requires extreme measures, then so be it."
Christopher Dorner is being hailed by the online communities as a
sort of folk hero. He is nothing of the sort. There was nothing
progressive about Dorner's ideas or his behavior. The so-called
manifesto which was released online is a confused mishmash denouncing
police corruption, and praising the presidencies of Barack Obama and
George H.W. Bush, as well as Michelle Obama's bangs, Ellen Degeneres'
sense of humor, and offering some football advice to quarterback Tim
Tebow.
What is most significant in the Dorner case is the extraordinary
police mobilization in the manhunt that led up to his killing.
Thousands of police units were mobilized across three states. The
highly armed search involved hundreds of SWAT personnel, numerous
helicopters equipped with thermal imaging technology, and a multitude
of agencies across three states and in two countries.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Border Patrol, every
local police and sheriff and fire department, the California Highway
Patrol, the FBI, the US Marshals Service, the Federal Aviation
Authority, and at least some sections of the military, were deployed,
heavily armed in the hunt for Dorner.
Apartments and homes in three states were raided. Hundreds of police
converged on several public locations, locking them down for hours,
and backed up by SWAT and police helicopters. The search crossed into
Mexico where the US Marshals Service raided an apartment in Tijuana.
Even the Department of Motor Vehicles and state universities were
employed in this hunt, using their electronic billboards to make
announcements in the hunt for Dorner's vehicle.
The LAPD deployed six officers around the clock to guard each of the
fifty police personnel mentioned by name in Dorner's manifesto. That
is a total of 900 officers deployed for bodyguard detail alone.
An electronic search was also conducted. The police obtained a
warrant to search through Dorner's Facebook account, those of his
friends, groups and networks to which he was connected. They also
obtained a court order barring Facebook from revealing that they had
gone through its records.
A record $1 million reward was offered for information leading to the
capture of Dorner. The reward was funded by the police, several large
corporations and wealthy individuals in an appeal to the population
to assist the police efforts. It now appears that any claimants for
the reward will be denied, as, of course, Dorner was not captured. He
was killed.
The mainstream media played a deeply complicit role in this entire
process, parroting each new police statement without question, no
matter how contradictory each succeeding press release. At several
points in the course of the manhunt the LAPD issued statements to the
press instructing them not to ask questions of any member of the
police force involved in the manhunt. Most press outlets complied.
On the day of the standoff, the LAPD issued instructions to the press
to stop posting any updates about the events to Twitter. Again,
almost all sections of the press complied with this direct censorship.
The manhunt for Christopher Dorner reveals the advanced state of the
militarization of the police force. The massive simultaneous
coordinated mobilization of all of the agencies of the state and the
wholehearted collaboration of the media with their dirty business are
a measure of the underlying social tensions that are emerging.
Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:
Body Removed From Burning California Cabin Believed to Be Fugitive
Former Cop Christopher Dorner, Sources Say [9:50 p.m. ET]
Christopher Dorner Manhunt: Cops Believe Ex-Cop Never Left Cabin as It Burned
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/christopher-dorner-manhunt-cops-cop-left-cabin-burned/story?id=18480021>
Keith Addison escribió:
Chicago Police Department Brutality Costs Taxpayers Millions in Settlements
Monday, 11 February 2013
Mark Karlin, Editor Of Buzzflash At Truthout
<http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17798-chicago-police-department-brutality-costs-taxpayers-millions-in-settlements>
Miss a Traffic Ticket, Go to Jail? The Return of Debtor Prison
(Hard Times, USA)
Thought debtor prison ended in the 18th century? Think again.
By Alex Kane
February 12, 2013 "Alternet"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33918.htm
--0--
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33924.htm
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.
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"
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.
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