Manhunt underway for ex-LAPD officer suspected of shooting 3 cops

[Malsua]

Heard earlier one police official in charge of one agency (didn't catch the name) claiming they did not intentionally set the fire despite the scanner traffic that was heard. It's being "investigated"...

That they can somehow lie in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary just goes to show how corrupt our enforcers have become.

[Ryan Ruck]

Here's it is...

Cabin Not Intentionally Set On Fire, Sheriff Says

February 13, 2013

The sheriff of San Bernardino County said Wednesday afternoon that officers did not intentionally set fire to the cabin where Christopher Jordan Dorner was holed up and that the investigation was over because he believed the fugitive was killed in the standoff.

"We did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr. Dorner out," Sheriff John McMahon told reporters at a news conference.

[Updated, 4:53 p.m. Feb. 13: He said that deputies fired conventional tear gas into the cabin and then used incendiary gas on the structure, which was first reported Wednesday by The Times. The cabin burned to the ground. Dorner is believed to have died inside.]

McMahon said that he couldn't positively say that Dorner had died in the standoff at the cabin in the Big Bear area, where hundreds of rounds were fired Tuesday afternoon.

But, the sheriff said, "We believe that this investigation is over at this point."

As authorities searched the snow-covered mountains for Dorner in the days before the shootout, he appears to have been hiding in plain sight, just a five-minute walk from where law enforcement officials from multiple agencies had centered their search operation for the ex-Los Angeles Police Department officer.

More than 200 officers were involved during the first night of search operations late last week. Sheriff’s Department officials said the search included more than 600 cabins over eight square miles.

It apparently did not include the neighborhood where Dorner was hiding. The circumstance is reminiscent of the federal government’s search for reputed Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger, who was hiding under federal agents’ noses when he was captured.

"As far as I could tell, they did about as good as they could do," said Otis Farry, whose home is on Club View Drive. "Who would've known?"

Farry's home abuts the Big Bear Lake golf course, which is across the street from the neighborhood that rises into the forest.

“I figured he was back in the woods somewhere, but the guy was right across the street,” said Bruce Doucett, 55, a certified public accountant who lives in the same condominium complex as the unit where Dorner was said to be hiding. “All I can say is that it’s a bit unnerving.”

Doucett said the condo in question had been vacant and clean since Thursday, the last time a tenant was there for a vacation rental.

Authorities aren't sure how long Dorner might have been in the condo. But Carl Macon, 53, said it was unsettling to know he walked his dog by the condo every day. He described Dorner's alleged acts as "something out of a suspense book."

Macon said his house has been tense, even after a visit by a SWAT team Thursday night as part of the cabin checks. Despite rumors Dorner might have left the mountain, Macon said he thought chances were good the fugitive had stayed — a lot of people he knew were on their toes.

But now, Macon said, it's "time to chill."

A former Naval Reserve lieutenant, Dorner allegedly threatened "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against police in a lengthy manifesto that authorities say he posted on Facebook. The posting named dozens of potential targets, including police officers, whom Dorner allegedly threatened to attack, according to authorities.

Records state that the manifesto was discovered by authorities last Wednesday, three days after the slaying of an Irvine couple: Monica Quan, a Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, a USC public safety officer.

Quan was the daughter of a retired LAPD captain whom Dorner allegedly blamed in part for his firing from the force in 2009.

[vector7]

"WE DID NOT DELIBERATELY BURN THAT CABIN....The first canister was "cold tear gas" the SECOND canister we fired into the cabin was "pyrotechnic" and generates a lot of heat, and the cabin erupted in flames"....sheriff."





“Burners” is police slang for pyrotechnic tear gas canisters, which are known to cause fires."

Radio transmissions of sheriff's officers deciding to burn Chris Dorner out of the cabin

At 29:30 of the first file you hear them decide to "go with the burn"

While law enforcement officials scoured the hillsides above Big Bear Tuesday searching for Christopher Dorner, wardens from California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife were called in to patrol the rugged terrain of California 38.

It was on that highway that the officers first encountered Dorner fleeing in a stolen car, engaging the fugitive in a white-knuckle chase in which the ex-cop commandeered two different vehicles, authorities said. The pursuit culminated in what officials described as a wild shootout between Dorner and a state game warden.

The actions by alert wildlife officers may have set in motion Dorner’s last stand -- in a snowbound cabin, surrounded by police. The cabin burned to the ground, and authorities believe Dorner was inside.

Condensed version:

[vector7]

LAPD pulls 'Waco' on Christopher Dorner; orders media to stand down before burning Dorner alive to silence him forever

Wednesday, February 13, 2013
by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) The LAPD has pulled a Waco.

Barely two hours after ordering the media to remove their helicopters from the area and cut all live feeds, the LAPD managed to set fire to the cabin occupied by Christopher Dorner and burn him alive inside it, according to media reports.

Mission accomplished for the LAPD, an organization that has run its manhunt more like a rampaging street gang than a professional police department. As Natural News has already documented, LAPD officers have engaged in attempted murder of innocent citizens in their freakish frenzy to try to kill Dorner.

Their motive explains why LAPD officers fired tear gas into the cabin where Dorner was staying, knowing it would ignite flammable materials in the home and set the place on fire.

"...tear gas was fired into the house before the fire broke out," reports the Los Angeles CBS affiliate. This is the same sort of tactic that was used to burn down the Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas in 1993. The Waco raid, we all know by now, was a politically-motivated ATF assault against innocent men, women and children, all conducted for the purpose of increasing the visibility and importance of the ATF by creating a crisis where none existed. Click here to see an informative video on the subject.

Law enforcement knows full well that tear gas rounds often set homes ablaze. In fact, a California fire department issued a report in 2012 that supports precisely that conclusion. As the San Jose Mercury News reported last year:

Police tear gas launched into a Vallejo home in February during a SWAT-team standoff played a role in starting a fire that caused $60,000 in damage and killed two dogs, a fire department report released Monday finds.

The evidence so far

So here's what we know:

1) The LAPD engaged in a wild, frenzied attempt to execute Dorner. This resulted in LAPD officers engaging in the attempted murder of innocent civilians, including one surfer and two women in a pickup truck. (Question: Why are LAPD officers who shot at innocent citizens not being charged with attempted murder?)

2) Once Dorner was holed up in a cabin, the LAPD chose to fire tear gas canisters into the home instead of waiting him out and forcing a surrender after a long standoff.

3) LAPD officers know full well that tear gas canisters can set off fires.

4) Once the fire broke out, Dorner was a dead man. If he fled the fire, he would be shot down by the LAPD. If he stayed in the cabin, he would be burned alive. This is the new brand of "justice" the LAPD is dishing out in 2013.

I'm not condoning the actions of Dorner, who appears to have murdered at least four victims.

But if the LAPD is going to abandon its mission of public safety and function as an armed vigilante justice squad, dishing out death sentences to those it believes are guilty -- without a trial or anything resembling due process -- then they might as well throw away all their badges as just call themselves the LA Gang Squad. Because that's how they're acting. They can even have their own gang signs that they flash at each other before running another taxpayer-funded drive-by.

Dorner succeeds where the media has failed

Whether Dorner is really dead at this point or somehow managed to escape the fire (a possibility that has been reported), he has accomplished one astonishing thing that even the media could not achieve: The exposing of the total criminality of the LAPD and its complete abandonment of law.

Even if Dorner is dead, the LAPD still comes out of this looking not only utterly incompetent but -- even worse -- driven by vengeance rather than law. As every citizen reading this can easily recognize, that's a very dangerous attitude for a police force to carry. In this frenzied manhunt, the whole world watched while the LAPD exposed itself as a gang of reckless idiots who openly fire their guns at innocent civilians and who ram citizens' vehicles with their police cars in acts of sheer madness and desperation.

"These lunatics broadsided the side of his truck, spun him around and started shooting at him," said the attorney for one of the victims of the LAPD murder attempts.

The Torrance Police Department, which seems to have abandoned all reason and logic just as the LAPD has done, explained that "Perdue's truck was 'suddenly leaving the area' and seemingly veering into a patrol car when the two vehicles collided at 5:15 a.m." (Source)

So now, pulling out of a driveway or simply starting your car and driving away can be interpreted as "suddenly leaving the area," earning you an attempted vehicular manslaughter maneuver by the local police. How's that for public safety, eh?

Dorner's killings were not random; but the LAPD's attempted murders were!

Consider the actual risk of harm here: Dorner did not engage in RANDOM killings. Want proof? He did not kill his hostages. He let them live because they weren't on his kill list. And yet the LAPD did, indeed, engage in random acts of attempted murder. Morally and ethically speaking, the LAPD was operating in worse violation than Dorner himself. Killing people who have wronged you is evil, but attempting to kill innocent people who have nothing to do with anything is even worse, and that's what the LAPD did.

In fact, if you really look at the situation in retrospect, a typical LA citizen was far more likely to be killed by the LAPD than by Chris Dorner. Dorner was a selective killer while the LAPD attempted to kill people indiscriminately... seemingly at random.

If you weren't on Chris Dorner's kill list, you had nothing to fear from Dorner. But if you were a black man with a bald head, you had everything to fear from the LAPD! And they proved it by opening fire on not just one innocent person, nor two, but THREE innocent citizens who didn't even resemble Dorner (two of the victims were women, the third was a thin white guy).

No wonder the LAPD was so desperately trying to murder Dorner on sight: the man knew too much. He had seen the inside operations of the LAPD, and he recognized what a runaway criminal operation it was.

None of this justifies Dorner's actions, of course. Making a kill list and murdering people is no way to handle things in a civilized country... unless, of course, you're President Barack Obama, in which case you get a bunch of DoJ lawyers to issue a 16-page memo "legalizing" your own private kill list that "authorizes" the murder of American citizens.

That's where Obama and Dorner are a lot alike: They both believe in the use of violence, outside of law, to kill their enemies. Obama uses armed drones while Dorner used a rifle. Both of them are criminals who operate outside the law, and the only reason Dorner isn't a national hero right now is because he didn't have an army of lawyers working at the DoJ who could sanitize his activities by shoveling lawyerspeak manure all over the place.

Dorner also forgot to call his actions "peace." See, if you kill a bunch of Americans without calling it "peace," then you get chased by the police. But if you call it "peace," as Obama does, you win a Nobel Peace Prize. And then the bombs you drop on children in the Middle East are called "peace bombs."

Dorner's mistake in all this was not that he killed people, you see, it's that he didn't get enough voters to back him first. Once you get the voters behind you, you can kill anybody you want, with no legal recourse whatsoever. That's the precedent recently set by the White House, anyway.

[vector7]

How Law Enforcement and Media Covered Up the Plan to Burn Christopher Dorner Alive

Highly disturbing behavior by newspaper and Live TV sources in complying with the San Bernardino Sheriffs.

February 13, 2013 |

At approximately 7 PM ET, I listened through a police scanner as San Bernardino Sheriffs gave the order to burn down the cabin where suspected murderer Christopher Dorner was allegedly hiding. Deputies were maneuvering a remote controlled demolition vehicle to the base of the cabin, using it to tear down the walls of the cabin where Dorner was hiding, and peering inside.

In an initial dispatch, a deputy reported seeing “blood spatter” inside the cabins. Dorner, who had just engaged in a firefight with deputies that killed one officer and wounded another, may have been wounded in the exchange. There was no sign of his presence, let alone his resistance, according to police dispatches.

It was then that the deputies decided to burn the cabin down.

“We’re gonna go ahead with the plan with the burner,” one sheriff’s deputy told another. “Like we talked about.” Minutes later, another deputy’s voice crackled across the radio: “The burner’s deployed and we have a fire.”

Next, a sheriff reported a “single shot” heard from inside the house. This was before the fire had penetrated deeply into the cabin’s interior, and may have signaled Dorner’s suicide. At that point, an experienced ex-cop like him would have known he was finished.

Over the course of the next hour, I listened as the sheriffs carefully managed the fire, ensuring that it burned the cabin thoroughly. Dorner, a former member of the LAPD who had accused his ex-colleagues of abuse and racism in a lengthy, detailed manifesto, was inside. The cops seemed to have little interest in taking him alive.

“Burn that fucking house down!” shouted a deputy through a scanner transmission inadvertently broadcast on the Los Angeles local news channel, KCAL 9. “Fucking burn this motherfucker!” another cop could be heard exclaiming.

While live ammo exploded inside the cabin, the deputies pondered whether the basement would burn as well – they wanted to know if its ceiling was made of wood or concrete. They assumed Dorner was hiding there, and apparently wanted to ensure that he would be burned to a crisp. “Because the fire is contained, I’m gonna let that heat burn through the basement,” a deputy declared.

SWAT teams airlifted to the location were told to be ready in case Dorner did manage to escape. “Guys be ready on the number four side [the front of the cabin],” a deputy declared. “He might come out the back.”

Just after 7 PM (4 PM PT), right when the orders were given to deploy the “burners,” the San Bernardino Country 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. Reporters badgered Bachman for information, but she had none, raising the question of why the presser was convened when it was.

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.”

“Per [San Bernardino Country Sheriff’s Department] request,” tweeted the local CBS affiliate, KCBS, “we are complying and will not tweet updates on #Dorner search.”

At the time that I am writing this, some online media outlets are beginning to entertain the possibility that San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deliberately set the fire that killed Dorner – a fact that I reported on Twitter as soon the sheriff’s department order came down. If there is any doubt about the authenticity of the YouTube clip containing audio of the sheriff deputies’ orders to burn the cabin down, I can verify that it is the real thing. I was listening to the same transmissions when they first blared across the police scanners.

In the hours after the standoff, however, the police cover-up remained unchallenged thanks largely to local media complicity. An initialLos Angeles Times report recounted the incident in a passive voice, claiming “flames began to spread through the structure, and gunshots, probably set off by the fire, were heard.” Similarly, LA’s ABC affiliate, KABC, quoted Bachman’s vague comment about “that cabin that caught fire,” failing to explore why it was aflame or who torched it.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reported claims by anonymous “law enforcement sources” that the sheriffs used “incendiary tear gas” to flush Dorner out of the cabin. The sources claimed the deputies who had besieged the cabin were under a “constant barrage of gunfire” and that, “There weren’t a lot of options.”

This is almost certainly a lie. The only mention by a deputy at the scene of a gunshot from inside the cabin was the “single shot” that occurred as soon as the “burners,” or incendiary teargas munitions, were deployed. After that point, deputies made constant mention of ammunition exploding inside the cabin as a result of the intense heat of the fire they set, but said nothing about any shots fired at them.

If there were a “constant barrage of gunfire,” it would have been the main source of concern among the police at the scene. Instead, they were preoccupied with ensuring that the fire burned the cabin completely without spreading into the surrounding woods.

There is a grand tradition of law enforcement using incendiary devices to assault besieged suspects, and of covering up their use. One of the most famous examples of this tactic, and its horrible consequences, was the Philadelphia Police Department’s bombing of the compound of the radical black nationalist cult, M.O.V.E., dropping C-4 explosives by helicopter on the house, killing 11 members of the group, including 5 children, and destroying 65 homes in the West Philadelphia neighborhood.

It was not until the 51-day FBI siege of the Waco, Texas compound of the messianic Branch Davidian cult that “burners,” or incendiary 40mm military grade cartridges, were used to burn a structure down. Six years after claiming that the Branch Davidians deliberately burned their own compound down, the FBI finally admitted that it used incendiary rounds, but insisted that none of them contributed to the fire that consumed the compound.

The “burners,” or pyrotechnic rounds the San Bernardino County Sheriffs used to torch Dorner’s cabin, are likely similar, and perhaps more powerful, than those employed by the FBI in Waco. Through the five-year-old “Department of Defense Excess Property Program,” the US military has provided police departments across the country with billions of dollars worth of military equipment, from amphibious tanks to AR-15 assault rifles, allowing the military to circumvent Posse Comitatus regulations by outsourcing their firepower to local cops.

“Burners,” or military grade incendiary grenades, are very likely among the items passed down from the US army to local police outfits like the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.The “burner” of choice for the modern American soldier is the AN-M14 TH3. It is a hand held grenade comprised of a thermite mixture that rapidly converts to molten iron when it is thrown, burning at a temperature of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to burn through a half inch steel plate or bring an engine block to a boil. It can also produce enough heat to set off unloaded ammunition, which would explain why the ammo inside Dorner’s hideout was popping.

If the San Bernardino Sheriffs employed the AN-M14 TH3 or something like it against Dorner – and it appears they did – they have good reason to attempt to cover their actions up. Without even a token attempt to establish communication with the suspect, who was, to be sure, a wanted killer hell-bent on murdering cops, they attacked him with what was likely a military grade weapon designed to destroy fortified structures. By burning Dorner alive, then misleading and deceiving the public about the operation, the sheriffs may have validated the rogue ex-cop’s sharpest indictments of the culture of American law enforcement.

Yet no element in the Dorner drama was more disturbing than the performance of mainstream media. At every point, major news outlets complied with law enforcement calls for self-censorship, and still demonstrate little interest in determining how and why a lethal fire started on a snow-covered mountain in the dead of winter. As a quintessentially American tragedy reaches its denouement, the truth remains buried beneath a smoldering pile of ashes.

[American Patriot]

I have a couple of points to make now that I've read all that.

1) Dorner had a mental issue. Probably should NOT have ever BEEN a cop given that he "snapped". I don't think he snapped. A guy was making a point on Bennetts show this morning that he was a "spectacle killer" and the media was culpulable in assisting him, especially Cooper.

2) The Justice Department, DOD and government IN GENERAL are extremely sensitive to "racism" - whether reports or incidents and take action normally. He had plenty of other options - this wasn't a "last resort" no matter how you look at it.

3) He was wrong on many levels to do what he did and how he did it.

4) The COPS were wrong to be "judge, jury and executioners". No matter how you look at it. It was the deliberate "shutting up" of Dorner.

Phil was completely correct. People - no matter who they are - if they are US citizens in this country have a right to due process. If Nadal is getting it Dorner should have. And in truth so should that "terrorist" they took out with a drone.

They need to ground those drones immediately where US Citizens are involved.

[Ryan Ruck]

"WE DID NOT DELIBERATELY BURN THAT CABIN....The first canister was "cold tear gas" the SECOND canister we fired into the cabin was "pyrotechnic" and generates a lot of heat, and the cabin erupted in flames"....sheriff."

The the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth were as well I assume? Remember, they said 7 "burners" were deployed which would mean 8 grenades total.

It is true that "pyrotechnic" CS grenades spread CS much more effectively than "cold" ones. The pyro ones are the ones you typically see used in a crowd control situation. The "cold" ones are like the bug bombs one might use and are more limited in their spread, about room-sized. In the pyro grenades, the CS binds with the pyro smoke and spreads better. I could see 7 cold grenades but 7 pyro grenades definitely sounds like overkill.

Supposedly the pyro ones have been improved upon to put out less heat and present less of a fire danger than older models. That isn't to say the fire danger has been eliminated, just that it has been reduced. I'm sure there are plenty of sources of ignition in an 80 year old wood cabin.

Not to mention that when you have large amounts of an aerosolized anything (as there would have been if 8 grenades were used!) there is still a danger of fire/explosion. That's why bug bombs tell you to make sure there are no pilot lights or other sources of ignition. This is the same thing that occurred at Waco and supposedly a lesson that was learned, not to over-concentrate CS to prevent an increased fire/explosion hazard. Their use of 8 CS grenades total looks like they were trying to exceed that saturation threshold with predictable results.

“Burners” is police slang for pyrotechnic tear gas canisters, which are known to cause fires."

Not saying it's not but, I've never heard of that. Maybe it's a Cali thing but I have my doubts...

[American Patriot]

According to what I HEARD on the videos - there was automatic gun fire. Maybe Dorner had an automatic weapon inside?

Maybe the cops were using automatic weapons.

I don't know who was shooting....

[Ryan Ruck]

More likely that was the police's firearms. It seems like they were really lighting that place up. Possibly even Dorner's rounds cooking off in the fire...

[American Patriot]

I've heard rounds cook off. They don't sound like a steady auto fire.

They are more random with 2-3-5 going off at once.

And for the most part, they don't go far either. They tend to "pop" and the bullet and brass go in different directions.

[American Patriot]

What Would Michael Collins Do? by Bill Buppert

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Bill

“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!”
- Michael Collins


The police in America have proven once again that they are above the law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line.


The readers who have read my essays over the years are aware of the case I have made for why cops are the primary danger to all individual freedom and liberty in any tax jurisdiction on Earth. No political bad actor in any account of human history could deprive anyone of liberty or enforce tyranny absent a police force. The vicious and nonsensical drug war has so retarded human progress with the caging and maiming and killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans and permeated the entire American society with laws piled on laws to do everything from making every financial transaction transparent to the rulers for “money laundering” to the creation of a legal system whose only sense of justice is in name only.


Two important questions have surfaced after the Dorner tragedy; first, have the police in California stepped over a Rubicon with the summary execution of Dorner in broad daylight?


The increasing militarization of police and the literal criminalization of everything has seen the rise of the fabled and dreaded Orwellian state where no one is safe and if one pays close attention to what just happened in the mountains of California, you discover that all judicial processes and civil rights niceties were overlooked and the police immediately murdered Dorner by burning him alive. They were even so brazen as to casually issue the orders to fire the cabin most likely under the guise of officer safety, the curious mantra that gives the police their license to kill and get away with it. The officer safety conceit releases them from all responsibility that saddles the averages citizen in self-defense thus the hundreds of thousands of videos on the internet and written and oral testimonials of victims of this officer safety madness. Will Grigg, the most able chronicler of police misbehavior in America, has already made the rock solid case of just how risk-free and safe is the occupation of the praetorians in America.


Dorner was hunted in the fashion he was because he was not one of the 98 percent of bad cops that give the two percent a bad name. The media is between a rock and a hard place because if Dorner were a “right-wing” man who did not belong to an Federally accredited victim group whose opinions of gun possession were quite the opposite of his manifesto, he would be the poster child of why the police are not only right but should immediately move to phase two of seizure and confiscation of all cosmetically offensive weapons in individual citizen’s hands who are not wearing a statist costume of one stripe or another. But Dorner is Diane Feinstein in male drag with the usual government supremecist superstitions that so pollute the minds of our rulers and their sycophantic media. The notable exception is that the Senator would not deign to handle weapons herself (except the pistol she has a permit for) and leaves those to her peons in her security detail.


Quite clearly, the police across America will be further emboldened to continue the kind of murder spree which just happened in California. Indiscriminately shooting up vehicles with occupants who bear no resemblance to their “suspect”, roughing up citizens at their leisure and, of course, employing the very weapons most wish to strip the Mundanes of. We are fortunate in America that in case after case, the absurdly poor quality marksmanship and weapons handling of the cops in the nineteen thousand law enforcement departments of America has saved lives but more tragically led to the lead poisoning of many innocent bystanders who then sue the cops and the taxpayers who are occupied by the police are forced to cough up millions to pay for the armed thuggery and malpractice.

The second and greater question that I hope becomes a meme in the American future: what would Michael Collins do?


What the LAPD and more importantly, the Federal government have not taken a measure of is the unintended consequences of unleashing the million plus statist goons in blue not only in the zealous attempted murder spree on view in California but combined with the looming threats of disarmament of the populace may be an uncorking of a genie the government will regret letting loose.


In California, one man made the law enforcers fill their pants, cower in their homes with protective details surrounding them and led to the aforementioned (comedic if not tragic) Kalifornia Keystone Kops antics where seven detectives let loose a fusillade of rounds into a newspaper delivery truck not even matching the description of Dorner’s vehicle and hit the two Hispanic women with two rounds and perforate the truck. Fortunately, the legendary and widespread abysmal weapons proficiency of the thin black and blue line saved their lives.


Michael Collins faced a similar foe in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century as England was closing on the eight hundredth anniversary of their occupation of Ireland. Collins adduced correctly that the locus and focus of all alien governance in Ireland was the law enforcement arm of the Englisg state augmented by British military forces.
Michael Collins was what one could suppose is any government most dangerous adversary. He was a practical visionary. Not only did he envision a free Ireland, he had a concrete plan to get there. Like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry before him and Giap after him, he blended a unique talent for the political chess game and calculus of violence that would enable the resisters to overwhelm the will and outmatch the ferocity of the British occupiers. While a contemporary of T. E. Lawrence, they did not know each other but crafted an eerily similar game-plan to defeat their foes. Collins knew that the “golden hour” for independence and all the planets aligning for the political tectonic shift were on the horizon and he simply had to arrange the events and orchestrate the players. Those six years between 1916 and 1922 would prove to be the precise moment when the Irish could loose the English fetters that had harnessed their nation for nearly 800 years.


Who was Michael Collins?


Collins worked as a clerk in London from 1906 until he returned to Ireland in 1916. He fought in the Easter Rising, was arrested and held in detention at Frongoch, Merioneth, but was released in December 1916. In December 1918 he was one of 27 out of 73 elected Sinn Féin members (most of whom were in jail) present when Dáil ireann (Irish Assembly) convened in Dublin and declared for the republic. Their elected president,Eamon de Valera, and vice president, Arthur Griffith, were both in prison. Hence, much responsibility fell on Collins, who became first the Dáil’s minister of home affairs and, after arranging for de Valera’s escape from Lincoln jail (February 1919), minister of finance. It was as director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), however, that he became famous. As chief planner and coordinator of the revolutionary movement, Collins organized numerous attacks on police and the assassination in November 1920 of many of Britain’s leading intelligence agents in Ireland. He headed the list of men wanted by the British, who placed a price of 10,000 on his head.



After the truce of July 1921, Griffith and Collins were sent to London by de Valera as the principal negotiators for peace (October–December 1921). The treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, was signed by Collins in the belief that it was the best that could be obtained for Ireland at the time and in the full awareness that he might be signing his own death warrant. It gave Ireland dominion status, but its provision for an oath of allegiance to the British crown was unacceptable to de Valera and other republican leaders.

Collins’s persuasiveness helped win acceptance for the treaty by a small majority in the Dáil, and a provisional government was formed under his chairmanship, but effective administration was obstructed by the mutinous activities of the anti-treaty republicans. Collins refrained from taking action against his former comrades until IRA insurgents seized the Four Courts in Dublin and civil war became inevitable. William Thomas Cosgrave replaced Collins as chairman when the latter assumed command of the army in mid-July 1922 in order to crush the insurgency. About five weeks later, while on a tour of military inspection, Collins was shot to death by anti-treaty IRA.



Collins was the right man at the right time in the right historical place. Absent his strategic & operational brilliance, tenacity and charisma, Irish independence may not have happened. In the larger schema of history, this became yet another chapter in the long succession of nation creation and destruction that has marched through Western history from it Hellenic roots in ancient Greece. Not only was Collins seceding from a larger tax jurisdiction but he was creating a wholly independent tax jurisdiction that would go on to become an odd amalgam of capitalism and socialism that would completely collapse economically at the beginning of the 21^st century.


Key aspects of his campaign were the careful grooming of auxiliary organizations in the mass base of the greater population, a consistent and wholesale campaign to legitimize Irish independence in the minds of the Irish and his charismatic leadership.


He also employed a savage violence that led to the events of 21 November, 1920 when he effectively killed and destroyed the essential elements and personnel of the UK intelligence organs in Ireland proper. T. Ryle Dwyer, author of The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins quotes Collins:
“My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens. I have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of spies and informers have committed. If I had a second motive it was no more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile. By their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.”



Most historians agree this crippled British intelligence operations (in this case, the Cairo Gang) from this point onward and made the withdrawal of British interests inevitable. Absent the sophisticated network of spies and informants, the war would be fought blind. More atrocities in response to this were visited on the Irish by constabulary and military forces and this merely stiffened the spine of the major and minor elements of the Irish resistance. That same day, British forces fired on spectators at an Irish football match which left seven dead and dozens wounded.


David Leeson in “Death in the Afternoon: The Croke Park Massacre, 21 November 1920” describes part of the aftermath.


“Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and one found that “the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and exceeded the demands of the situation.” Major-General Boyd, the officer commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, “the firing on the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place inside the enclosure.” The findings of these courts of inquiry were suppressed by the British Government, and only came to light in 2000.”



The Cairo Gang was responsible for surveilling and torturing a number of innocents and genuine guerrillas and Collins know that making them dead would send a message. It did. Fighting would intensify and British response and overreach to the incident would lead to the withdrawal of all British forces in a little over two years. One can debate the morality and efficacy of assassinating constabulary and military forces but the Irish justified their actions in much the same way one would put down a rabid dog. There are instances where defensive violence is the answer. Kirby Ferris provides an interesting perspective on this question:


“Perhaps the world isn’t the way we wish it would be. We all might wish that evil men could be persuaded from their vile behavior with bleeding heart entreaties, a kiss on the cheek, or proper toilet training. But it ain’t that way, folks, Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.”



Collins is instructive and the perfect storm brewing in America bodes ill for the over-reach of police forces in America. There are a myriad of cultural hurricane indicators gathering. When one looks at the Rubicon crossed in California, the gravely ill economy and the deep and dark pent-up rage against law enforcement by the tens of millions of families ravaged by the drug war and the interminable harassment of ten of millions of citizens for victimless crimes and the increasing militarization of cops, the recipe for confrontation is not far away.
And it won’t be one man.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I dedicate this essay to my friend Stacy.

[American Patriot]

In wake of Dorner shootout, questions over use of 'the burner'

Authorities' decision to use a powerful type of tear gas, which often causes fires, came as other options were running out.

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The remains of the cabin where Christopher Dorner and law enforcement officers traded fire are shown. The structure became engulfed in flames after canisters containing a powerful type of tear gas were deployed against the fugitive ex-cop inside. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times / February 13, 2013)

By Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times February 14, 2013, 9:26 p.m.




The day's light was fading when the SWAT officers decided they could wait no longer for Christopher Dorner to surrender.


Dorner, the fired Los Angeles cop suspected of killing four people in a campaign of revenge, had been holed up in a cabin near Big Bear Lake for hours, trading gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies. Repeated calls over a loudspeaker for him to surrender went ignored. Attempts to flush him out with tear gas led nowhere.
Wanting to end the standoff before nightfall, members of the sheriff's SWAT unit enacted a plan they had devised for a final assault on the cabin, according to law enforcement sources. An officer drove a demolition vehicle up to the building and methodically tore down most of its walls, the sources said.


PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer
With the cabin's interior exposed, the officer got on the radio to others awaiting his order. "We're going to go forward with the plan, with the burner," the unidentified officer said, according to a recording of police radio transmissions reviewed by The Times.


"The burner" was shorthand for a grenade-like canister containing a more powerful type of tear gas than had been used earlier. Police use the nickname because of the intense heat the device gives off, which often causes a fire.

"Seven burners deployed," another officer responded several seconds later, according to the transmission which has circulated widely among law enforcement officials. "And we have a fire."
TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer
Within minutes the cabin was fully engulfed in flames, ending a dramatic manhunt that captivated the nation.


The SWAT radio transmission, in addition to the comments of at least one officer who earlier in the gun battle could be heard by a TV reporter calling for the cabin to be burned down, have raised questions as to whether authorities intended to end the standoff by setting the structure on fire. San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon at a Wednesday press conference adamantly denied that was the intent. But the department on Thursday declined to answer further questions about the standoff.


Multiple sources, who were at the scene and asked that their names not be used because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said the decision to use the incendiary gas canisters came amid mounting concern that time and options were running out.


FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop
Dorner, they said, had not communicated with police at any point during the siege and had continued to fire off rounds at them with high-caliber weapons. "Any time they moved, this guy was shooting," one source said. Bringing large floodlights into the area was deemed too dangerous and police worried Dorner might have night-vision goggles that would soon give him an advantage.


When they eventually moved in with the demolition vehicle and began to get glimpses into the cabin as the walls were torn down, Dorner's whereabouts and condition were unknown. On the radio transmission, one officer describes seeing blood splattered inside the cabin and then another reports hearing a single gunshot being fired, raising the possibility that Dorner may have killed himself before the fire engulfed the cabin.


On Thursday, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department announced dental records had confirmed what had been widely assumed since the showdown — that the charred body found in the cabin rubble was Dorner's. The test results brought to a definitive close the epic manhunt for Dorner, 33, who police say killed a deputy during the cabin shootout, a Riverside police officer and an Irvine couple as part of a plot to retaliate against the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him in 2009.


Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha, was critical of the decision to use the "burner" tear gas canisters.


"It's true, he was firing at them. But he was cornered. He was trapped. At that point, there was no rush in the sense that he was barricaded. The standard rules on barricade situations are that you can wait the person out," Walker said. "To use a known incendiary device raises some very serious questions in my mind."


Other law enforcement experts interviewed by The Times, however, said the move was justified. Even though SWAT officers were certain to have known a fire was a strong possibility, the use of the gas was reasonable in the face of the deadly threat Dorner presented, they said. Allowing the standoff to carry on into the night, they emphasized, would have added an unpredictable element to the drama that officials were smart to avoid.


"What difference does it make if one of the officers puts a … round in his head, drives the armored vehicle over his body when they are knocking the building down, or he dies in a conflagration?" said David Klinger, a use-of-force expert at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and a former LAPD officer. "If he is trying to surrender you can't do any of those things … But if he is actively trying to murder people, there's no doubt that deadly force is appropriate and it doesn't matter what method is used to deliver it."
Geoffery Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who also specializes in police tactics, agreed.


"I don't understand what the big deal is," Alpert said. "This man had already shot two officers and was suspected of murdering other people. He wasn't responding in a rational manner. The actions you take have to remove the threat and if it requires extreme measures, then so be it."

[American Patriot]

You know... I get the impression people are saying "What difference does it make if they kill him" with fire, lead, or raining acid on him. Who cares? That's what I'm reading in this article.

I am one of those guys who still believe that you're innocent until the PROVE you guilty. Even if they have you on video tape committing the crime you should still get due process.

Even a person I know who's pretty conservative when I said "due process" said "Fuck that. He killed those people and was trying to kill more cops. Fuck THAT!"

Well... I guess in a way he is right, if someone is shooting at me and I can get my shot off, I'll take him down. There's no "due process" in that either.

But honestly, they could have waiting this guy out. The excuse they were worried about NVG is just bullshit and we all know it.

[Malsua]

Well, I don't say fuck that. They shouldn't have burned this guy out. They knew exactly what was going to happen.

I still say that 50 men outside of a building, shooting at it and torching it, is indistinguishable from a lynch mob.

The guy deserved to die. The police had no right to make that determination. Had the man surrendered naked with his hands in the air, they would have perforated him.

[American Patriot]

Yeah, I think you're right.

He'd have looked like swiss cheese.

And he might have deserved to die, but if he had walked out that would have been through a jury trial and not by Cop.

That's where this all went wrong.

[Phil Fiord]

If a person says "Fuck That" about any person deserving due process, they do not understand the basics of who we once were in this entire country. Some argue that times are different and while I agree it is not with the same meaning they choose to use. If we allow any person to be tried and executed like this, we are allowing it to happen to anyone.

Already an arrestee does not have to be read miranda rights. It is employed mainly in high profile cases as a means to thwart a case being tossed out.

Now, I also know that some will circumvent miranda protocol by enticing a person to simply admit a crime as that admission if voluntary is admissible. Or is it?

If you ever happen to be arrested for a small time issue misdemeanor, try winning claiming you had no idea of your rights. You will not win.

[Ryan Ruck]

Heard on the top-of-the-hour radio news that the official cause of death for Dorner was a single, self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Was kinda hoping it would have ended like this...