As the women’s attorney told the Los Angeles Times: “The problem with the situation is it looked like the police had the goal of administering street justice and in so doing, didn’t take the time to notice that these two older, small Latina women don’t look like a large black man.” This could be written off as a sad fluke, except that 25 minutes later different officers opened fire on a different truck — once again getting key details wrong. Can’t officers at least check the license plate, and issue a warning, before opening fire?
“Nobody trains police officers to look for one of their own,” said Maria Haberfeld, a police-training professor at John Jay College in New York, according to the Web site News One. “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes and I don’t think anybody else would.” We all understand the situation. But saying that we wouldn’t want to be “in their shoes” is no excuse for such dangerous behavior. The police wouldn’t excuse a member of the public for misusing a firearm, regardless of how stressed out that person felt.
News One also published the photograph of a gray Ford truck in the Los Angeles area with a hand-made “Don’t Shoot, Not Dorner, Thank You” poster on the back window. T-shirts and bumper stickers have popped up to similar effect. Those are funny in a dark way, but police ought to recognize how poorly this reflects on them and their strategies. It’s sad when people are more worried about the police than they are about a murderer on the loose.
It’s especially sad when they (or at least many of their leaders) declare that they should have a monopoly on “assault weapons.”
The police involved in a reckless shooting (such as the attack on that pickup truck) should face the same penalties a private citizen would – no more, no less.
More so AZ CJ.
Aren’t they supposed to be ‘trained professionals’ with the ability to ‘see the difference in average citizens and criminals’? Or some such ignorant twaddle!
Thank you for the “at least many of their leaders” part. Arizona CJ has it right.
Respectfully, I disagree.
Police (or anyone operating under color of authority) should suffer far greater penalties for such behavior. They are in a unique position of public trust, and to abuse that trust is heinous in the extreme.
I hold with the view expressed (paraphrased from memory) in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers: “Crimes perpetrated by a recruit might rate lashes while an officer could be hanged.” With great authority comes great responsibility.
Responsibility? Oh, that’s just silly. Excuse me, “peel those grapes for me… that’s a good servant.” I mean seriously, what’s the point of power if you have to obey the rules? Did I just say excuse me? That’s sort of a joke in this context isn’t it. Well, if I must be punished. “Whipping boy? Oh, whipping boy…”
“With great authority comes great responsibility.” Oh, I haven’t laughed so hard in years. You really must stay for dinner.
Backup lamps.
There is a law on the books in Wisconsin that it is an equipment violation to light up the backup lamps when “the transmission is not in the reverse gear.” The purpose of this law is safety, that there is a uniform indication when a car is poised to back up into your path as a pedestrian or motorist.
There is one and only one car maker producing vehicles and selling them in Wisconsin in flagrant violation of the law: General Motors. No other car maker is doing this.
No one is interested in complying with this law or enforcing the law. The law is not a matter of justice, the law is not a matter of a social contract. The law is whatever people in power feel what it is.
Now, wait a minute. If we held our superiors responsible for all of their mistakes, we wouldn’t have the blessings of Medicare, Social Security, and Obamacare. Where would be be then?
Back me up, here, Comrade Jim, Comrade Gerrib!
“With great authority comes great responsibility.”
Not if you’ve got a union backing you up. Look for these clowns to be awarded “Street Cop Of The year” or some such in the next six months.
Well, in the cop’s defense, if you added the body weight and pigmentation of those two small Latina women, you might have someone of the size and color of Dorner. It’s an easy mistake that could happen to anyone.
Do I need to add the /sarc tag?
I love how in the press conferences they congratulate everyone on the great work they did. Yes, as long as we ignore all of the dead bodies…..
I think Dorner and his supporters are misguided, but it’s hard to argue that when the police apparently are misguided too. Everytime I walk through the scenario of the two women; I just can’t get over the number of failures and the magnitude of each of them.
Why? Does the fact the LAPD is a vast, blue-suited army of fail make Dorner less wrong to go on a murder spree?
Did the supporters go on a murder spree? Most of his supporters argued that maybe he was wrongly removed, and he was just doing whatever to get attention to this wrongdoing. I don’t agree with either his action or his manifesto, but the LAPD’s shoot first and ask questions later attitude certainly made Dorner’s arguments more credible and thus fueled his supporters. I’m surprised the whole thing ended without riots.
Yet what is worse? Police firing over a hundred rounds into the cab of a parked truck that’s the wrong make and model, without even checking to see if the occupant(s) remotely resembled the suspect, or firing a hundred rounds into the cab of a parked truck and wounding one occupant and completely missing the other?
They’re lucky the occupants didn’t climb out of the truck and scream, “You guys are the worst shots I have ever seen in my life. How the f*** can you fire a hundred bullets into a tiny target and only get two hits? Are you blind? Nevermind. Obviously so, because we are hispanic ladies in a blue Toyota, not a large black man in a gray Nissan.”
Maybe Sheriff Taylor had the right idea, just give your deputies one bullet each and require them to keep it in their pocket until needed 🙂
“Nobody trains police officers to look for one of their own,”
This is pretty rich, considering the U.S. has expended countless dollars, time and effort to get a police force that looks … just like us.
“Nobody trains police officers to look for one of their own,”…is a seriously flawed statement and more so, a flawed concept of what was happening.
Dorner was dressed in civilian type clothing and MIGHT have had on military woodland style, non-digital, camo jacket. He was driving his truck, and then other private vehicles that he commandeered.
If he had taken off in a LAPD uniform, driving a ‘black and white’ with ‘1A12’ on the roof, THEN they would have been looking, “…for one of their own,”. But Dorner was dressed like one of the lowly non-LEOs, and so, blended in.
If he’d taken off in a black and white, then they could have tracked him by GPS unless he cut the antenna. Those are pretty standard now to help route the nearest squad car to an incident. Still, unlike the movie portrayals, it’s pretty easy to block the GPS capability or cut it.
And apparently nobody trained the officers to look at license plates and to try the cabin next door.