Christopher Dorner was a renegade LAPD cop who made headlines for several days in February 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_and_manhunt
~Dorner was probably not involved in cryptocurrencies, but he is a good representative of the spirit of individual responsibility and ethics that will be necessary for crypto and decentralized economies~
The LAPD has a long history of abusing vulnerable groups and Christopher Dorner seems to have been an honest cop who decided to straighten out his department.
In 2007 Dorner was involved in the arrest of a schizophrenic man. During the arrest another officer kicked the 'mentally ill' person in the head, among other things, while the man was handcuffed. This is not that unusual, but Dorner filed a complaint against his fellow officer, which is extremely rare. Ultimately he was fired, accused of fabricating the accusation against a fellow officer.
Mr Dorner spent several years appealing the firing until the court made its last ruling against him.
On February 1st, 2013 journalist Anderson Cooper received a dvd with Dorner's complaints against the LAPD.
Over the next several days, Dorner would kill several officers and some family members of officers, causing the police to go into a frenzy to defend itself. Numerous higher ranking officers considered possible targets were given bodyguards. The police shot up several vehicles that they thought he might be in, including one with two older women who were delivering newspapers.
Finally he was located, in a cabin near the command post police were using for the hunt.
Police set fire to the cabin they believed he was in, rather than negotiate and try to capture him.
He had outmaneuvered them so thoroughly they did not want to risk him getting past them again.
Police claim he committed suicide as the cabin burned, but his body was not recovered.
The extremes the LAPD went to in protecting themselves were stunning.
There has never been any comparable effort by the LAPD to protect any threatened group to the extent they protected themselves. In most shootings involving a highly trained person the police will let the person kill until they run out of bullets, then they will move in when it is safe. Police were criticized roundly for doing that in numerous recent shootings, including the Parkland Florida shooting, the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas shooting etc.
In this case though the police themselves were being targeted and they went full out to protect themselves, even shooting several innocent people etc.
Was Dorner a good guy or a bad guy?
For the police he was a bad guy, obviously. But a lot of people supported him, and to this day there are occasionally references to him in news articles, which invariably bring out support for Dorner.
What was it that he actually did?
The police tried to portray him as a dangerous murderer who was a threat to the public, but actually Dorner was known as an extremely ethical person. He saw a situation where an entire police department had free reign to use violence against vulnerable populations without any restrictions. He went fully through all the 'proper' procedures to correct problems, but was up against a very corrupt organization. Whether or not a person wants to support such an extreme response, there is no question that he was on the side of justice. He was defending vulnerable people, and gave his life for that, while his fellow officers were focused only on protecting themselves.
Should an honest police officer avoid rocking the boat?
Or should they fight against their former colleagues, as Dorner did violently and Serpico and a few others have done more peacefully?
Below are links to Dorner's manifesto. Several links are provided in case they are removed.
https://genius. com/Christopher-dorner-manifesto-annotated https://web.archive.org/web/20190801061820/https://genius.com/Christopher-dorner-manifesto-annotated
http://www.laist.com/2013/02/07/christopher_dorners_manifesto_in_fu.php
https://factreal.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/chrisdornermanifesto.pdf ~pdf~
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jbh7CNTwtEA Video, his 'manifesto' being read. 1100 thumbs up, 87 thumbs down.
~For anybody who hesitates to consider Dorner respectable, some questions~
1) If you were part of a group that was being attacked routinely by police, and there was literally no effective legal recourse, would you want somebody defending your interests?
Or should you simply submit to the powerful group?
2) Did he actually try to fix the problems he saw by going through the accepted normal routes?
He did. He filed complaints with his supervisors, then took his case to the courts and used appeals until they were exhausted.
3) Did his actions have any effect?
Actually there seems to have been a huge increase in police accountability measures since his death, and it seems to have started about the time he went on his rampage. A person could argue against the violence of his acts, but his violence was targeted. The police killed and wounded several innocent people as they were looking for him. Since then there has been a steady increase of interest in unnecessary killings by police. http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2018
~One point worth adding ~
If body cameras had been worn during the incident in which Dorner accused another officer of attacking a handcuffed person, he would still have his job and quite a few people would not have died.
Body cameras are not a complicated thing. There are cameras at Walmart that cost less than $50 which can record hours of high quality video. Walmart also sells duct tape or staples which could be used to attach the bodycams. And yet officers routinely keep their cameras turned off, and it is the norm for police chiefs and administrators to encourage their officers to not record things that would look bad in the media. There have been many cases where several officers each claimed they forgot to turn their cameras on, or that they malfunctioned. Absurdity that could only happen if it were tolerated, even encouraged, from the top of those organizations.
Body cameras will not solve all police abuses, especially when higher level types are complicit. Note the case of Sergio Alvarez
"Rachel Alvarez has disputed that. In the statement read for her at the sentencing, she contended she found evidence in March 2012, six months before the department said it first learned of the crimes, of possible wrongdoing of which the police were aware. “I came across an Internal Affairs paper I found in my own home that mentioned one,” she said, adding that her husband told her at the time that he had been ordered to leave his dash cameras on while on patrol. She wrote that the allegation was never investigated.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article41086659.html
Also "... no fewer than eight individuals in the West Sacramento police department knew about officer Alvarez's sexual misconduct and criminal acts as of March 2012, months prior to his attack on plaintiff...".
and
"In West Sacramento, one civil lawsuit against the department and the city, filed on behalf of a mentally ill woman who attorneys say was twice coerced into giving Alvarez oral sex and once was sodomized by him, alleges that trading sexual favors for non-enforcement of laws was so well known within the 70-member force that officers nicknamed it “tickets for treats.” "
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/01/police-sex-crimes-licenses/74954514/
Imagine if employee theft were a problem in banks. Should banks give employees the option of turning off their cameras?
Why should police officers be held to a much lower level of accountability, and given extra opportunities to hide misconduct, than bank tellers?
~Also worth adding~
Dorner had a sterling character. Nobody who researches his case honestly would accuse him of being anything other than a person of the highest ethics, though perhaps a little prone to violence.
It is important that individuals act on their own ethics, and not hide within organizations that give them costumes and shiny badges to substitute for real character.
But also important that a person always hesitate to violence.
Sometimes violence is necessary, and a person could argue whether that was the case here, but the vast majority of times when people use violence it does not lead to anything constructive. My opinion is that Dorner had exhausted all reasonable options and chose that path as his only remaining option.
Also worth noting that when Dorner was on his rampage there were a number of articles and videos that showed people holding sign along highways supporting him.
As plentiful as they were, pictures of those signs are almost unfindable on Google today.
Some of the top comments from https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2gQnb1oUKM
"One man stands up to corruption. Fired"
"Looks like you guys messed with the wrong bull"
"Chris Dorner: The last honest LAPD cop. A true hero. He exposed their cowardice and sociopathy so they murdered him for it."
"This is just one person that challenge the corrupt and double face system that we live in."
Chris Dorner. A true American hero. He fought against corruption and walked a righteous path in the process. RIP
~
Three months after Dorner was killed...
"Rigoberto Arceo 34, May 11, 2013 Los Angeles CA – Arceo, who was a biomedical technician at St. Francis Medical Center, was shot and killed after getting out of his sister’s van. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says Arceo “advanced on the deputy and attempted to take the deputy’s gun.” However, Arceo’s sister and 53-year-old Armando Garcia — who was barbecuing in his yard when the incident happened say that Arceo had his hands above his head the entire time."
https://whatzenalotionbar.wordpress.com/tag/schizophrenic/