DornerBurning
I was born in Mississippi in 1949. Around that time one of the easiest ways to lynch an entire African-American family was to set the house on fire and shoot people as they ran out. That tactic  took fewer people than the average hanging, and you didn’t have to show your face.

The technique also worked well in Al-Qaeda’s massacre at the American embassy in Benghazi.

And it worked at Big Bear, too.

The San Bernadino County Sheriff’s knew the grenades they fired into the cabin were highly flammable, and would be set off by a spark. Or a gun shot.

Either the sheriff’s people were stupid about that or the Sheriff lied when he said they had not intended to burn Dorner.

The cabin was surrounded. A siege was in order, not a lynching. Certainly emotions ran high. Anger. Adrenalin  surf. But the public has a right to expect that their law enforcement personnel are professional and disciplined. And have an interest in justice rather than revenge.

Law enforcement failed on all of those accounts at Big Bear.

Dorner may very well have been the vicious killer he was painted as.

But the way that law enforcement behaved that night at Big Bear resembled the sort of undisciplined, fury-driven madness that characterized the Ku Klux Klan of my home state. Or terrorists at Benghazi. One can argue that the motivations may have been different, but the results are indisputably the same.

I have written about a number of the many strange, suspicious aspects of this case: L.A.’s “Killer Cop:” Was He Set Up? but law enforcement’s stonewalling, lack of transparency and blood lust to revenge their own losses raises a questions, destroys their credibility, further damages the shaky trust they have with the public and makes a lot of people wonder, “what was so important to cover up that they have to made sure he never got a chance to speak in court?”

I took some minor licks in the 1960s, most notably when a Madison County (Mississippi) deputy wanted to beat the hell out of me and my best friend Arthur for bringing water to a school teacher from Ohio whose car radiator had overheated on Highway 55 during a civil rights march.

I outran the sucker in my 426 Hemi Plymouth, otherwise I might not be writing this right now. I have seen the face of undisciplined law enforcement and know what it looks like.

And right now, it looks a lot like Big Bear.



  1. Tim says:

    Over here, over there, there’s wallets wallets everywhere;
    On a bus,
    Out in the street,
    One by a pier where the fishies like to meet.
    At a park,
    And on the border,
    And one in a cabin survived a white-phosphor morter…

    *One thing that is known is that he was a former police officer himself. In 1987, he had been accepted onto the Arcadia police force. He was let go just over a year later, for reasons that remain unclear. The chief of the Arcadia force, Dave Hinig, provided only vague answers for reporters, citing confidentiality laws.*
    http://davesweb.cnchost.com/stevenson.html

    burned alive on Cnn after canister launched into top window…
    http://greatdreams.com/atf_8-31-2001.html

  2. bobbo, constantly reminding the foolish of First Principles says:

    On the news—audio tapes of the cops intentionally setting the house on fire to smoke him out. It was getting dark and they didn’t want him getting away or a few more cops getting shot.

    Fair enough. Dorner was a special case. I give the cops a pass on whatever tactics they wanted to use.

    Not so on the people they killed and rammed vehicles with. This was akin to a “Police Riot” that we see all too often with our gang in Blue. Lip service to “Protect and Serve.” Like pirates with Letters of Marque–the Police are near criminals doing our bidding because, ……. thats what it takes. Or at least, its the seemingly cheapest way to offer the illusion of safety.

    The system is comprised of people…. with all the faults. Read the manifesto. Treat most citizens the way the LAPD does, and we slink away licking our wounds and do our best to avoid cops whenever possible. Treat an LAPD cop the same way and you get asymmetrical retaliation.

    Who do you think we are dealing with?

  3. jpfitz says:

    Same as it ever was.

  4. Publius says:

    LAPD immolates suspects using “burners.” President Obama bombs suspects using drones. The mainstream says this is OK or even cool.

    It’s all becoming quite consistent.

    Good Luck and Good Night

  5. Glenn E. says:

    Perhaps it’s too much of a grand conspiracy to be believed. But all the evidence against Dorner, comes from the very LAPD for whom he was supposedly seeking revenge. Or was he? And was that really his manifesto, or something that was cooked up or added to, to frame and discredit him?

    The only way, I might believe the LAPD had no hand in manufacturing any of the evidence. Or making Dorner into a fugitive, in order to silence his testimony against them. Would be if the FBI investigated and cleared the department. But how likely is that to happen? Even then, they might still be covering for the LAPD. As they apparently have for years, if what Dorner says in his manifesto, is true. So the Feds could still be willing to cover for a corrupt police department. And Dorner, and his alleged victims. Just collateral damage for keeping the LAPD’s dirty laundry, from going public.

    Note: Jack Webb is no longer with us, to make those Tv shows and movies, praising the virtues of the LAPD. No more Dragnet, Adam-12. So I wonder who they’ll find to restart that Tv propaganda mill? Gotta make the public believe, again.

  6. Grandpa says:

    A violent man came to a violent end. No different than Bin Laden. If you don’t want these murders dead, move to another country.

  7. MikeN says:

    Liberal media wanted to rile up the public with the image of cops oppressing blacks. Dorner was 11 when Rodney King was beaten up. The media at the time showed an edited tape to fit their story, making it look like the jury was racist to acquit. This fed Dorner’s racial grievances, as can be seen in his ‘manifesto’.

    As for his being fired for snitching, the case breaks down when you look at the facts. Plenty of eyewitnesses say the cop that allegedly did the beating, was not close enough to the struggle to have done what Dorner said. Plus it shouldn’t have mattered if Dorner was telling the truth: Dorner himself couldn’t subdue the guy despite being on top in the struggle. Some ‘excessive force’ is justified there.

  8. MikeN says:

    After Newtown, did anyone say they agreed with the murderer?

  9. T says:

    Not to mention the audio recordings of swat clearly saying they planted the burners ready to go ahead with burn plan. Obviously SWAT tactical uses some encrypted method the general public can’t listen, but they said that over the regular radio to command, and anyone listening to the police scanners live heard it. The fire was intentional and was not a result of gas, but burners they went in and set.

    You can here chatter they went in, saw blood, placed burners, left. They saw blood after hearing a single shot, and saw what might be a body, and rather than look to see if he was dead, they just burned it. That is arson, and the owner of the cabin should sue the sheriff.


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