More on Christopher Dorner
A number of our members were upset with me for this post, in which I expressed satisfaction that Christopher Dorner, killer of four, attempted killer of many others, had himself been killed. I respond here in this new post rather than be confined to the 200-word limit of a comment on the original one.
First, I did not advocate that the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department resort to extra-legal means so as to ensure that Dorner be killed rather than captured. In my 30 years as a police officer I have been shot at, but I have never shot anyone. In those 30 years there have been no less than five occasions in which I would have been fully justified in doing so; that I did not should suggest that I am not as heartless as some here assume me to be.
In the post I merely expressed a thought that was -- and remains -- commonly held among police officers, most especially those involved in the week-long search for Dorner, which is that in the realm of all possible outcomes awaiting him, the one that came to pass was the preferable one. Interestingly, none of the commenters who took me to task addressed the main point of my post, which is that if Dorner had been captured and brought to trial, he surely would have been placed on the same sort of pedestal on which we today find another cop-killer, Mumia Abu Jamal, who murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner 31 years ago yet lives on while enjoying a perverse kind of fame. That the families of Dorner’s victims will not grow old while seeing so despicable a man lionized in the same fashion is not something to regret.
Second, to those who say the sheriff’s deputies acted precipitously in hastening the final outcome in the Dorner case, how many more people would Dorner have to shoot before you were made comfortable in the decision to take aggressive action against him? Surround the cabin and wait him out, some suggested. This option presented a problem: Any officer who was in a position to keep the cabin under observation could have been seen by – and shot by – Dorner, whose inclination and ability to do just that had already been made manifest. Why give him the opportunity to kill again?
In his Facebook manifesto, Dorner told the world he would wage a guerrilla war on police officers and their families. Then he went out and did just that. What happened on that mountainside yesterday was nothing less than combat, and the incident commander for the deputies at the scene had a duty -- indeed a moral obligation -- to bring it to an end quickly.
Third, the Los Angeles Police Department had no role in the final shootout with Dorner. An LAPD SWAT team was flown by helicopter to the San Bernardino airport, but their assistance was declined by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.
Lastly, Christopher Dorner’s death was the direct result of decisions he and only he made. Surely he realized that if he surrendered he would have been offered a grand stage on which to air his grievances. Yet he refused to surrender even when given ample opportunity to do so. He chose his fate. Let the world now forget him.
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Comments:
May '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
I liked that other post.
Sep '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Thank you Jack for this further explanation. Why it was needed, I don't know. To have let this continue and risk further innocent deaths would have been absurd. This has to be the best possible outcome of a terrible situation! He was already becoming a hero to some and it would have only become worse. Kudos to the brave officers who brought this to an end, with only the one outcome which saved innocent lives!
May '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
I'm glad to hear this clarification.
But there is still something rotten in the California police departments.
Mumia may enjoy a perverse fame but that is not relevant. Two wrongs don't make a right. If he was guilty, and I know nothing of that man at all, then he should have been executed by due process. That the process takes too long is also not relevant. It is a process that should be fixed.
There is no question in my mind that the police were negligent in shooting up two vehicles that were not positively identified. When those police officers are charged with an appropriate crime and their departments and fellow officers roundly criticize that negligence, I will have a more charitable attitude to the police.
But after such a display of criminal negligence, I will remain skeptical that the orders to burn the house were not also criminally negligent.
You called it combat, but in my experience in combat we were required to have positive ID of the enemy and also witness a hostile act. I would expect more restraint in our own cities.
Jun '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
And even if sentenced to death, it would be decades until he was executed, if ever.
I wonder if suspects are more likely to be captured alive in places where the death penalty is strictly enforced? It seems that one possible unintended effect of abolishing (or simply failing to enforce) capital punishment would be to increase incentives for the apprehending officers to kill rather than capture a dangerous suspect.
Aug '12
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
A father seeks revenge on the brutal rapist who killed his daughter, who may have been virtually ignored by an overworked police force. The father kills the rapist and is arrested for taking the law into his own hands, charged with murder. A policeman is murdered and the entire California police/sheriff/park cops complex does not sleep until the cop-killer is dead, dead, dead...in the process shooting and wounding two innocent female paper deliverers and shooting up and totaling a white skinny surfer dude's pickup. Somehow, it's wrong for civilians to seek revenge, but not for the police.
Jan '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Jack Dunphy:
I did not advocate that the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department resort to extra-legal means so as to ensure that Dorner be killed rather than captured... In the post I merely expressed a thought that was and remains commonly held among police officers, most especially those involved in the weeklong search for Dorner, which is that in the realm of all possible outcomes awaiting him, the one that came to pass was the preferable one.
Mr. Dunphy, in your first post you wrote:
How else can that be interpreted except to mean that police officers were itching for a fatal encounter? Suicide would have removed Dorner from this world, just as easily as a private citizens' weapon used in self-defense. But you specifically said law enforcement officers wanted him dead by their own hands, and now insist this is not what you said.
Please explain.
Edited on February 14, 2013 at 7:19amJan '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Jack Dunphy:
Interestingly, none of the commenters who took me to task addressed the main point of my post, which is that if Dorner had been captured and brought to trial, he surely would have placed on the same sort of pedestal on which we today find another cop-killer, Mumia Abu Jamal, who murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner 31 years ago yet lives on while enjoying a perverse kind of fame. That the families of Dorner’s victims will not grow old while seeing so despicable a man lionized in the same fashion is not something to regret.
For the record, I did address that point only to concede that you were entirely correct in it; whatever else one might say, it's good that the victims' families have been spared that special hell.
Edited on February 14, 2013 at 7:47amMay '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
I don't like the comparison to combat. This is a mindset that I think is at the root of the problem. Yes, there was shooting, and yes it was quite dangerous. But it was not a military battle on some distant battlefield where the police had to charge into the blazing guns of a pillbox. This was a ski resort on Big Bear. I've been there many times. It's not a battlefield.
Cops are not soldiers. They do not wage battle. I'm not comparing dangers, I'm comparing mind sets.
There were many ways to handle this man and his situation. The police did nothing to overcome the perception that they wanted to kill this man before a trial could take place. They gave him no reason to come in peacefully. They made it clear that they would kill him one way or another before he came to trial.
Mumia might be a celebrity. But he is a celebrity in jail who is not endangering anymore cops. The people decided he should not be executed. The police in California don't care what the people might want.
Jun '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
"Takes too long" is an understatement. This article gives a good summary of the current state of capital punishment here in California:
Nov '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
I assume there was a shoot on sight order given to those officers surrounding the cabin. Had he made himself available to be shot, he would have been shot. It seems the gruesome manner and method, and its proactive and deliberate selection, creates a visceral reaction regardless of how much it's warranted or its level of appropriateness. A clean shot to the head can be digested as impersonal and surgical, the art and task of a professional sniper. To send in fire, and burn a man alive, no matter how balanced its decision was can't help but seem to be outside the bounds of civilized conduct. It begs the larger, and very fair question... Just because you can, should you? such are the things, paths well intended, that make slopes slippery. I do not fault the authorities or point a finger their way. I just acknowledge that the manner and method that brought resolution, was ugly and unfortunate. Necessary and appropriate perhaps, but ugly and unfortunate nonetheless. And also for the record, this was not in ski resort country, this was in a wilderness neighborhood. I worked down the road from that cabin for 3 years.
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
A couple of thoughts:
1. You don't hear so much about Mumia these days, do you? Wonder why.
2. As a resident of Los Angeles, I sleep better knowing Jack Dunphy -- who is a friend, and a colleague -- is serving in the LAPD. In our many years of friendship, I've never heard him blindly support the force -- especially the bureaucrats who run it -- and I've never heard him be even a whisper less than judicious. He's a pretty buttoned-up guy, unless you give him a couple of beers and ask him to talk about the Obama administration.
Jul '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Nothing is a battlefield, but that the fighting makes it so.
I don't see how this "wasn't combat". Combat is not the exclusive province of the military. This story indicates that the officers surrounding the cabin were under a "constant barrage" of gunfire during the hours-long siege.
All the dynamics were there: bullets flying, officers being hurt and killed. He was shooting at them, they were shooting at him. I'm certain all of the physiological effects were present that you generally see in soldiers engaging the enemy: adrenaline dump, loss of fine motor skills, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, etc. It was different from military operations, but it was "combat" in all but the most idiosyncratic definitions of the word.
Oct '12
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
You are a rare one. It's sad that so many bright people, in some cases, choose to ignore the realities you have faced in your career because they are skewed by residues of political correctness. They choose to distance themselves, not willing to climb out of their comfort. You have backbone. You're not afraid to get your hands dirty in the trenches dealing with other than philosophical duels. I salute your courage and your wisdom. You've been there, done that.
May '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Coyote, I might believe what the police say about this had they not already made it clear that they intended to kill him no matter who got in the way.
How did they know no one else was in the house? Did they even care, or would they be expecting to make apologies to someone like the owners of the cars they shot up earlier?
They didn't care. They wanted him dead and they made sure to find any reason to kill him. He was in a remote building that they could put under siege and wait. There are a lot of things they could have done. Perhaps what they did was best, but I'm not going to trust them, based on their record, to be the final word on the matter. The sad truth is that they will be. And they know it. And that's why they think like combat and shoot innocents without even bothering to check vehicle color or get other identification. Dorner being killed by a cop's bullet was more important than the lives of anyone else, the rule of law, or anything else.
Jul '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Resisting arrest with armed force. Case closed.
No incentive to surrender? If continued breathing is not an incentive, what are you expecting? A jet and a million dollars? Work release as a ski instructor in Aspen?
Every one of those officers pursuing that arrest was in imminent and deadly peril. And yet, if Dorner had laid down his weapons and assumed the position at any time, he would have had full access to the justice system.
And, yes, cop killers have always been accorded special attention. Not only do their crimes directly impact the protection of civil order, but the expectation that police routinely operate in an environment where their badge and oath has made them the target of killers at-large is inhuman. Dragging out every cheap defense attorney gambit and rightly or wrongly impugning the character of LA or California law enforcement has little if any relevance to the facts of this case.
Dorner was a murderous dog, and his own conduct led to his being put down like one.
Apr '12
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Skyler, your implication that the officers had a bloodlust and would not stop until they could hang their prey on a meat hook for pictures is out of bounds.
Jul '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
The officers at the cabin and the officers at the truck shooting are not only different people, but an entirely different agency, in an entirely different tactical scenario. We can't ignore the one simply by bringing up the other.
This apparent belief some people have that every cop in Southern California is part of the same hive mind is a little weird.
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Tom Meyer
Mr. Dunphy, in your first post you wrote:
How else can that be interpreted except to mean that police officers were itching for a fatal encounter? Suicide would have removed Dorner from this world, just as easily as a private citizens' weapon used in self-defense. But youspecificallysaid law enforcement officers wanted him dead by their own hands, and now insist this is not what you said.
Please explain. · 6 hours ago
Edited 5 hours ago
I meant that if Dorner was to die in the final encounter, as he seemed resigned to do, it would have been preferable -- more just, if you will -- that he fall at a police officer's hand rather than his own. I do not suggest that he should have been killed if he tried to surrender.
Jul '10
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Great post, Mr. Dunphy. I have been very critical of the California police especially over the shooting of the wrong vehicles and people last week. But I find nothing objectionable about how the police ended this. Had Dorner walked into a police department at any time last week, he would be alive and well in prison now. But no, he decided to murder even more people and attempt to kill as many police as possible from a bunker in the mountain. For those who are pooh-poohing police for killing him, what was the alternative to stopping a madman like him with no intention of keeping of surrendering?
May '11
Re: More on Christopher Dorner
Empty, it was not an implication. It is a very intentional and clear accusation. And the evidence speaks for itself.
- they shot up two vehicles without bothering to identify anyone or even get the vehicle description remotely correct.
- they were heard gleefully howling that they were going to burn him in the house, without knowing if anyone else was in the house.
- fellow police officers, well respected on this website, made it clear that they wanted him dead, and dead by their hands.
So, no apologies. Not a hint. It's a very clear accusation. They have no risk in executing him this way. Let's all hope that we are not in their way next time, because clearly they become quite reckless in their bloodlust.