A Few Words On Christopher Dorner

 

I haven't spent much time covering the story of Christopher Dorner, the rogue Los Angeles policeman and Navy Veteran who for awhile looked like our local version of 'First Blood', killing a number of police and their relatives in different areas of Southern California and eluding capture for a number of days.

The national media glommed on to this quickly, because the script seemed made for them - ex-cop, veteran, gun nut, Right-wing crazy - until it became apparent that Dorner was an Obama voter who's 'manifesto' hearted a number of Leftist figures and causes, including Hillary Clinton. The Obama Media tried to get around this by dishonestly editing Dorner's manifesto, but were quickly outed, so they essentially moved the story below the fold except in California.

At this point it appears - and I emphasize that word - that Dorner has been run to ground in a cabin up in Big Bear, a mountain resort area near Los Angeles.

Dorner's story, in a few sentences, is this. He somehow got hired and got through the police academy, in spite of poor reviews and even committing the ultimate faux paux of shooting himself in the hand. He somehow got through probation, even though his training officer was quite outspoken about his temperament and wrote that he lacked judgment and common sense in the field.

The reason he was fired (and Dorner's reason for the rampage) is this - having found out that his training officer had written him up for his poor performance, he decided to retaliate, making up a story about her kicking a suspect in the chest and reporting her. When the story was proven false, Dorner resorted to a tried and true tactic and made a huge stink about supposed racism he'd been the victim of in the LAPD and claimed he hadn't gotten a fair hearing. After a thorough review,  an expensive and time consuming process that took months, Dorner was fired in 2007 for lying in an official investigation and submitting a false report.

Dorner's vendetta is based on the fact that he felt that he was railroaded. The first people he murdered were the daughter of the police officer who defended him during the review and her fiance'.

I happened to turn on Larry Elder's KABC radio talk show for a couple of minutes, and lo and behold, he and a guest, a former policemen, voiced a question that had been running through my head - how did someone like Dorner ever become a police officer? How did he ever pass probation? The signs were all over the place that he was a loose cannon. As Larry Elder mentioned, somebody obviously  opened up a path to let him slip through, to which his guest replied "Somebody opened up a chasm the size of the San Fernando Valley."

Elder and his guest left it there, but I immediately made the connection. And LAPD chief Charlie Beck underlined it:

The hunt for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected in three killings continued in snow-covered mountains Saturday as the LAPD's chief said he would reopen the disciplinary case that led to the fugitive's firing.

Officials in particular will re-examine the allegations by Christopher Dorner, 33, that his law enforcement career was undone by racist colleagues, Police Chief Charlie Beck said. While he promised to hear out Dorner if he surrenders, Beck stressed that he was ordering a review of his 2007 case because he takes the allegation of racism in his department seriously.

Bingo.

The LAPD wanted black policemen badly enough so that they were willing to overlook Dorner's obvious unfitness for the job, way past the threshold where a white, Latino or Asian recruit would have been shown the door.

And even now, after he's murdered at least half a dozen people including police officers, Chief Beck is still willing to take the race card seriously and go along to get along.

Nor do I blame him personally for this. He has to follow orders too, and he understands the political context of his position.

This is political correctness run amuck. And these people want to disarm us? When someone like Christopher Dorner can slip through the system because political correctness is their priority rather than our safety?

This isn't just racist by definition, it's sheer insanity,

If I'm going to pay for policemen, I could care less about their sex, their color, their sexual orientation or their ethnic background. All I'm interested in their fitness to be police officers and their ability to perform what amounts to a difficult and often dangerous job.

It would be a lot more useful to the City of Los Angeles to see Chief Beck reviewing how Dorner was initially screened, hired, got through the academy and passed probation in the first place. I want to know who opened that chasm, who dropped the ball. And you know what? I want steps taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.