Chris Dorner, Martyr for Justice

Dear Mr. President,
A fiery end to Chris Dorner, ex-cop, suspected cop killer. But a lot of the story is untold. For example, almost no mention of the collateral damage inflicted by cops on civilians during the manhunt: one day coverage of the two women in Torrance wounded when their pickup was mistaken for Dorner’s and without warning, police fired more than 70 rounds at them; and not one mention of the cops in Redondo Beach mistaking David Perdue’s pickup for Dorner’s, ramming it and shooting at him. No mention either, in today’s paper that, according to people monitoring the police channel, once Dorner was trapped in a cabin, surrounded by SWAT teams, no chance of escape, the police barred reporters and helicopters from the area, brought in an armored vehicle that, one by one, ripped off the walls and, in a coup de grace, set the cabin ablaze with 7 “burners” (pyrotechnic tear gas?) and refused to let firefighters extinguish it. Dorner was not brought to justice; rather, he was summarily executed to silence potentially damning testimony against the LAPD. Mr. President, not only have tactics from the war on terror come home but your secret system of justice for extra-judicial assassination has also come home, a system where a suspect is guilty unless proven innocent, where it’s okay to execute rather than capture, and where there’s no accountability afterwards. Collateral damage, excessive use of force, even the manner of Dorner’s execution—not by a Hellfire but by fire nevertheless, incinerated like a suspected militant. I’m not defending what he did; it’s as repugnant as the killings by the CIA or the U.S. military, but the parallels are striking. Even the media caricatures of Dorner and Al Qaeda terrorists are similar: crazed fanatics, cold-blooded killers, “ranting” “chilling” manifestoes. I read Dorner’s. He needed an editor but it’s clearly not the rantings of a crazed killer. I found him articulate, perceptive, even witty, but a man plagued by a lifetime of prejudice and injustice—none of it forgotten—driven over the edge by his dismissal from the LAPD for reporting excessive use of force. I’m convinced he spoke the truth. But even more important, it’s clear that the overriding motive for his brief war of terror on the LAPD was to bring about change, a different mindset, an end to racism and an end to the excessive use of force. He knew he would die but he had nothing left to lose. Like the Islamist militants we kill every day in our war of terror.