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How can such a headline be happening:
The officers who are heroes are the same trigger-happy incompetents who attempted to kill two women delivering newspapers a couple days ago? The ones who attempted to kill a surfer driving to the coast for some morning waves? Or the ones who are recorded planning to burn up Dorner and his cabin and then recorded hooping and hollering “Burn the f**ker down”?
The editorial is in the Riverside Press-Enterprise, a key local newspaper and one of the vast majority of mass media who put their pencils and mikes down when the police ‘asked’ them to, when the police incendiaries’ flames were engulfing Dorner (emphasis added to this excellent article: How Law Enforcement and Media Covered Up the Plan to Burn Christopher Dorner Alive):
Just after 7 PM (4 PM PT), right when the orders were given to deploy the “burners,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Cindy Bachman hastily gathered reporters for an impromptu press conference. Claiming to know nothing new, she told reporters that she had no idea why the cabin was on fire, or who started the fire. …
Around the same time, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department requested that all reporters and media organizations stop tweeting about the ongoing standoff with Dorner, claiming their journalism was “hindering officer safety.” As the cabin sheltering Dorner burned, the local CBS affiliate was reportedly told by law enforcement to zoom its helicopter camera out to avoid showing the actions of sheriff’s deputies. By all accounts, the media acceded to police pressure for self-censorship.
On Twitter, the Riverside Press Enterprise, a leading local newspaper, announced on Twitter, “Law enforcement asked media to stop tweeting about the#Dorner case, fearing officer safety. We are complying.” The paper’s editors added, “We are going to tweet broad, non-tactical details, as per the San Bernardino DA’s request.”
The PE editorial writes:
The public focus should not be on Dorner, however, but on those who stopped him.
Yes, focus not on Dorner but on potential police misconduct (that’s not what you mean??), but also on yourselves, the mass media. Why are you still protecting the cops? Why are you still pretending the police did not deliberately set fire to Dorner’s cabin? Yeah, of course some of the cops probably were heroes, but why now the sweeping hero worship when so many were apparent incompetents and criminals in the tragic and tragi-comic pursuit of Dorner?
The PE goes on:
Whatever the faults of police or “the system,” there is no justification for vigilante bloodshed.
But the fault of the police is exactly that, vigilantism. Dorner, who was a veteran police officer, became a vigilante, and so did the police who apparently decided to kill him. But the PE editorial ignores that completely — its entire description of how Dorner died is “Dorner met a violent end in Big Bear on Tuesday …” What, no protagonist? It’s the Fourth Estate’s function to tell the public how he died and who caused it.
Oh hell, Dave says it better, in the PE editorial’s comment section:
Dave Hoover · Top Commenter
Where’s the EDITORIAL on the blatant cover up regarding the ‘burn plan’ huh? What about telling the truth, and how it is the duty of JOURNALISTS to investigate and REPORT what they find when they find it? No columns on that huh? No polls or commentaries other than that which helps tear down what is left of our civil rights! ‘But civil society cannot forgive the settling of slights by the lawless — regardless of whether the killer had any legitimate grievances.’ – this HOLDS TRUE FOR THE POLICE AS WELL!!
We have a widespread and serious problem, and it is violent, vigilante, out of control police. This could not be put any more glaringly on display than during the pursuit of Dorner. Why is the mass media covering its eyes and taping its mouths shut?
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The country’s been heading further in this direction ever since Reagan brought the theme ‘Law and Order’ into the public’s perception. We knew automatically who the Outlaws and Scofflaws and Miscreants are, including the Homeless, the Mentally Ill and Welfare Queens and Absent Black Fathers.
You may like this piece by long-time Oakland civil rights attorney Dan Siegel, who offers a realistic guide to Oakland’s PTB, and includes:
I really didn’t expect honesty; that would require admitting that sometimes everyone involved in a situation was a villain.
Legendary Dan Siegel … I’ll definitely check that article out. You can see he gets his attitude toward the police from the right history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Siegel_%28attorney%29
Well, didn’t you realize that heroes are defined as the guys with the most firepower? Aren’t drone pilots now heroes with their own medal for heroic service?
Such a long way from “neighborhood helpers”, aren’t we?
Some folks have always looked at things that way, but most have been sane. Not sure though recently, after so much pro-violence, pro-law-and-order propaganda of recent decades.
Yes the Victorians in England were so fair minded and egalitarian.
There was no siege in Sidney Street.
As usual, the Onion has the best take on this situation:
h/t to wendydavis
Cartoonist Ted Rall on Dorner.
From Glen Ford at BAR:
Glen (as usual) has a more level-headed take on this and says some things that I was thinking but wasn’t able to articulate nearly as well, about Dorner snapping because he couldn’t be part of the racist killing machine that is our imperial police force and military.
Oops, here is that link to the Ted Rall cartoon.
Even though it is from The Onion, I don’t think it is far from reality for many people.
Began by Ronald Reagan in 1966 in response to campus protests and the Watts riot. The LAPD, driving the story for 46 years.
Four decades ago, a Kremlinologist explained to me that Pravda and Tass were no more compliant that the U.S. press, and he backed up his claim with specifics. At the time I had various friends that were or had been reporters. They denied that claim, and insisted their reporting had never been interfered with. But, I felt like I was listening to an anchovy tell me that he’s free to swim wherever he pleases; it just happens that he always prefers to swim with his school.
Heroes my ass.
They were murderers.
Yes, so was Dorner. That doesn’t, and never will, make it right.
I’ve said since the beginning (and saw commenters here say it too, especially CTuttle) that he was NEVER going to be taken alive.
That’s murder. No matter how you dice it and slice it, that’s murder.
And not for nothing, wonder if the owners of the cabin were even asked if they were okay with it being burned to ground in order to “get” Dorner. And even more scary, what if they were, and agreed???
This is one fucked up fucking country we’re living in right now.
Dorner was wrong, and so were the LAPD. And now we don’t ever have to worry again about Dorner committing another wrong. It’s only a matter of time until the LAPD does, because they are never held accountable, and, are even sometimes called HEROES when they do.
Unbelievable.
No, no, and no. The po po-pos are the REAL VICTIMS, now, tomorrow, and forever!
Dr. Boyce Watkins, an African-American academic and author, has 10 Honest, Borderline Embarrassing Thoughts About the Life and Death of Christopher Dorner, among them:
I don’t find any of his thoughts embarrassing. Maybe he should give Van Jones some tips.
Thank you for the link and that history, Synoia. I meant in this country. Sorry it wasn’t more obvious.
This is exactly the same mentality guiding our overseas occupation armies. Overseas or in L.A., dead bystanders don’t matter if you can pretend you took out the ‘perp’. But the official media and official reality pretend ‘we’ are there to serve the locals.
I know I’ve been saying it over and over on these Dorner threads, but the lapdog behavior of the media, particularly the anchors on the CBS livestream, was really appalling. I love wendy’s “self-kettling” term; that’s exactly what they did, without any questions.
I just realized that the “journalist” that CNN has been using on the Dorner story, John Miller, is a former FBI Director of Public Affairs, chief spokesperson in NY for the omnipresent William Bratton, and later Bureau Chief for Counter-Terrorism at LAPD, again under Bratton. So he’s basically the same sort of “journalist” as the retired generals they trot out as if they were neutral observers.
Thank god for social media and citizen journalism!
From a link in that post, a former LAPD officer speaks out.
White phosphorus. If that’s what was used, that stuff melts people.
That’s an amazing ‘journalist’. So we have ‘news’ that is in love with the occupying army state, because that reflects the values of the owners, who are scared now more than ever of the restless peons. And we have ‘entertainment’ where policeworld is the focus of seemingly every TV series, and the cops portrayed — except for a few bad apples — as gritty but real heroes standing apart from and fighting to bring justice to a violent, scary, sleazy world.
That’s the first comparison I have ever seen of CS gas to white phosphorous. One of us will have to check that out, because John Miller ain’t gonna do it.
I understand that, in this case, the police used a pyrotechnic teargas canister called a “burner,” which IIRC what the LAPD used in the 1975 SLA shootout.
The 1985 police attack on MOVE House in Philadelphia was a bit different:
In the 1993 Waco Seige:
So, burnouts must be common police practice in standoff situations.
Thanks for the link to Dr. Watkins. Great stuff -
Former Seattle police chief on burners, Democracy Now.
Peter Lee on burners, preemptive strikes, due process and a lot more. (Waco, MOVE headquarters)
Wow, more food for thought. Stamper, the former Seattle police chief, says the use of burners is “doubly questionable” if they weren’t absolutely certain there were no hostages in the cabin. I hadn’t considered that. If they weren’t even able to say for sure that it was Dorner in the cabin, I don’t know how they could have been sure about anything else.
And this from Peter Lee:
Thanks for bring some of it; I’ve been busy collecting bits for a post that might be singularly unpopular here. ;o)
I liked ‘preemptive strike’, too.
The most effective blinders are the ones you’ve been trained not to notice.
I thought you were going to say that the anchovie ‘prefers to swim in a can’, lol.
@ PW: well said.
Didn’t the Israelis use white phosphorous during Operation Cast Lead? IIRC there was a big controversy about it
Amnesty, among others, says they did. Beyond the fact that they can both be used in incendiary grenades, I don’t know how white phosphorous and CS gas compare to each other; that is definitely above my pay grade. But the little bit I have read kind of terrifies me, given that tear gas and flash bangs and other dangerous, toxic weapons are now used to quell peaceful protests.
My kingdom for an edit button. Here is the link to the Amnesty article.
Well, according to the 1997 Chemical Warfare Treaty, CS gas, or 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, is banned in warzones except as a defense
Your notion (and analogy) of the anchovy to deciding to swim with the school is spot on.
As others have said, excellent analogy. My question, to change the analogy a little, is that apparently the entire media seems to have gone to the same obedience school, and I just wanna know where that is? I think journalism school teaches about the mythical ‘free press’ and other such fantasies, so that’s not it. But somehow working journalists have learned to take self-censorship orders from the police and the military, to be stenographers to the most powerful bullies in our sociey, and (obviously) to hold the cops and other ‘warriors’ up as heroes. Where’s the textbook … is it an online course?
It was Nixon, not Reagan. I still remember the TV commercials. Minor historical quibble. Somebody will probably come up with an even earlier example.
All they have to do is to look up the totem pole and down. They know just where they stand.