The Amazing Amazingness of the Chris Dorner Manhunt

The one thing that is really amazing about this Chris Dorner manhunt is how much the citizens of Los Angeles are against the LAPD.

I talked to my mother Sunday night, and we talked about this. Back in the day she owned a liquor store on the border of Long Beach and Compton, and when the LA Riots exploded she was very much pro LAPD. Fortunately she also got along with the residents of the neighborhood, so they helped protect her store by keeping vigil on the roof with their various assault weapons. See? That’s love.

Fast forward to Sunday, and imagine my surprise when she told me she was a Dorner fan.

Okay, maybe “fan” is an exaggeration. But she made it clear that she thinks the LAPD is awful. It’s amazing what a little over 20 years can do to one’s outlook.

But my mother is not the only one with that sentiment. The picture above shows the amount of antipathy towards the LAPD people are showing. There are bumper stickers, makeshift signs on various cars, t-shirts.

And for once it’s not only the black community against the LAPD. It’s everyone. White, Asian, Latin, Eskimo.

Hours after Dorner’s last shots and victims, the LAPD down in Torrance shot around 50 rounds into a truck that was neither the make nor model of Dorner’s 2005 Nissan Titan early Thursday morning. Obviously instead of a 33-year old, six-foot 270-pound black man, they found two tiny Mexican LA Times delivery ladies.

The septuagenarian mother suffered two bullets to her back while her 40-something daughter had a minor wound to her finger. They have since lawyered up, and the LAPD trying to save face offered them a new truck.

Soon after and very nearby another truck, also neither the make nor model of Dorner’s truck, was rammed by the Torrance Police Department causing it to spin around and shot at. Again, to no one’s surprise, the driver was not Dorner. Instead it was a skinny white man looking to go surfing before work. He was not injured.

For the most part, people in Southern California are not afraid of Dorner. People are more afraid of the police who in their state of panic and fear have dispensed of protocol and decided to have a shoot-first policy despite martial law not being declared.

On Sunday the City of LA announced a $1 million reward for the capture and successful prosecution of Dorner. Hours later, the cops shut down a Lowes in Northridge. Why the hell would anyone willingly go to Northridge? I’ve never stepped foot in Northridge, and I’ve lived in Southern California for most of my life.

I can already picture the racial profiling gone mad, people desperate for the cash to turn in innocent people for the cops desperate to regain control.

One thing LAPD chief Charlie Beck said was that he wanted the reign of terror to come to an end. Hate to break it to him, but most of the terrorizing of the citizens was done by his agency not Dorner.

But the terror within the LAPD is palpable. The terror of them not having control in this situation, of them being the hunted has them dispensing with protocol and regressing to their primal self: the instinct of just shooting everything in sight, and fuck the consequences.

It has been entertaining watching the police stumble over their own footsteps during this manhunt. But the oddest and perhaps scariest is all the fan groups that have sprung up. One can agree with Dorner that he might have been wronged, that the LAPD is still riddled with corruption, that NRA president Wayne LaPierre can go fuck himself.

But Dorner has killed three people. He’s a murderer. I have a hard time putting anyone on a pedestal, but I sure as hell am not going to take my moral cues from a murderer.

I’m interested to see how this is going to end. Unfortunately I’m starting my road trip to Louisiana on Friday, so I might miss a thing or two.