World Affairs Brief, February 15, 2013 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:
State of the Union–the Art of Lying
Rubio Rebuttal–Political Grandstanding
Messed Up LA Police Department
Take Down of Edgar Steel
US Attorney General Argues Against Homeschooling
Military Exercises in Urban Areas
Rampant Inflation in Latin America
[…]
MESSED UP LA POLICE DEPARTMENT
There’s more to this story than the standard media line about a police officer gone rogue: “Former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner, 33, was wanted in a killing spree targeting law enforcement officers that left four people dead. A man matching his description was surrounded in the San Bernardino National Forest on Tuesday.”
Reuters and other mainstream media omitted a lot when they mildly said, “Police provided security details to over 50 LAPD officers and their families who were believed to be threatened by Dorner, when he named specific enemies in his rambling manifesto.”
In fact, trigger happy police went berserk protecting their own. Officers protecting the houses of Torrance police officers, opened fired without provocation on two women delivering newspapers. The police had been given the wrong description of the vehicle and wounded the two women and riddled the truck with bullets. Another driver was injured when a police cruiser crashed into him and the officer jumped out and opened fire on the suspected truck.
“But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue, the victim, looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.”
“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.” But the courts almost always side with the police against citizens. The taxpayers will have to foot the bill again for over-aggressive cops, who will get off with barely a reprimand.
So what ticked off this cop to turn against the department and go on a rampage? Reuters provides some clues: “Dorner lost his job with the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 after a police board of inquiry found he had lied in accusing a training officer of using excessive force against a homeless man.” The board of inquiry is internal to police and, like the courts, tends to protect their own against whistleblowers like Dorner.
The LAPD has a long history of thuggishness and abuse, which were highlighted in the Rodney King affair and the LA riots. Trigger-happy cops shooting unarmed vehicles during this affair proved that things are worse than ever.
This saga begins with the fact that Dorner felt he was unjustly fired for blowing the whistle on another officer. Dorner obviously had severe control problems himself to go on the rampage, but there was likely wrongdoing on both sides. The real issue (that should have appeared during his hearing) is the culture of excessive force and lack of restraint by officers in big metropolitan police departments and nowhere is this lack of restraint more obvious than in the LAPD and how they reacted to this threat.
“Last Wednesday, Dorner was named as the prime suspect in a double slaying that occurred the weekend before… Police say he killed a university security officer and his fiancée, the 28-year-old daughter of a retired LAPD captain who represented Dorner in disciplinary action that led to his termination.”
I don’t know if Dorner was telling the truth about the specific case brought against him but given the quantity of stories arising in the news about police abuse I’m inclined to think it’s true, but we’ll never know now. While chief Beck claims he will reopen the case on Dorner’s dismissal, you can bet it would only be to confirm the official story against Dorner.
What is particularly suspicious is the way in which Dorner was killed. Like the Waco fiasco where tear gas ignited a burning inferno ending a siege against the men, women and children of the Branch Davidians (and a massive cover-up of government intrigue and wrongdoing), Dorner too was burned up in a fire at a cabin in Big Bear, Ca where he had fled after a running gun battle with Fish and Wildlife police. His death ensured that he won’t ever be allowed to tell his side of this sordid tale.
Reuters’ headline said “Tear gas may have inflamed cabin where fugitive ex-LA cop believed dead.” and “Fugitive cop believed killed in fire after shootout.” Naturally, the Sheriff in charge of the operations denies any intent to burn him out. “We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon.
However, “Los Angeles-based CBS television affiliate, KCAL, and CNN, have broadcast an audio recording of what sounds like police radio chatter during the confrontation at the lodging. On the tape, voices purported to be officers shout, ‘get the gas, burn it down.’” At another point the recordings of the chatter over the police scanner includes police discussing “the plan with the burners.”
“Burners” is a term used to describe tear gas partly because they are known to cause fires, but these recording clearly show that the fire wasn’t just an accidental effect of the tear gas. Later over the scanner an officer says “The burners are deployed, and we have a fire.”
As Infowars.com reports, “Police also made no attempt to extinguish the fire once it started despite having fire trucks nearby, again indicating that they wanted to burn Dorner alive. Photos of the cabin taken after the incident show the building burned completely to the ground.” –just like Waco.
It’s also worth noting that the police departments shut down scanner communication after the fire started and ordered tweets and live updates from newscasters to stop—presumably to stop Dorner from getting updates from the newscasts. By this point, however, it was too late for that information to help Dorner, it appears only to help cover-up the actions of the police department. Expect these kinds of news blackouts to be called earlier and more often during standoffs.