Two Ladies Not Christopher Dorner Get Settled

Shot Out Truck
Photo by Brad Graverson/LANG 2-7-13

Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother Emma Hernandez, 71, were most certainly not the 30-year old, 6-foot, 270 pound black man Christopher Dorner. Their blue Toyota pickup truck, not the black/gray Nissan Titan that authorities were on the lookout for, was shot up with close to 150 rounds because they were delivering newspapers close to a home of someone affiliated with Dorner the police were protecting.

Carranza had a superficial wound in the hand and her mother was shot twice in the back, and both have recovered though her mother had a tougher time with things obviously. LA City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and the ladies settled the case for $4.2 million.

Good for them. The settlement will still need to be approved by the city council, but considering what a black eye this episode made on the city I’m sure they’ll approve it.

The Dorner manhunt was embarrassing for the LAPD. Not only could they not find Dorner, but they were shooting up people indiscriminately in an effort to get him. I’ll say this much for the Boston PD and the FBI for their recent manhunt, at least they had an idea of who they needed to target.

The ladies were supposed to get a replacement for their truck. It took a while, and when they finally got one it was a different model and they were told they would have to pay taxes on it. The issue was finally resolved when the City gave them $40,000 to buy a new vehicle.

I said it when the manhunt was going on, and I’ll say it again. Never before have I been scared that my octogenarian Korean grandmother would be in danger of being shot down by the police. With the police response looking like a shoot-first-ask-questions-later, what would stop them from doing the same with my grandmother?

When the Dorner manhunt was concluded with the burning of the cabin up in the mountains, people in Los Angeles were not out in the streets cheering on the police, the ATF agents, the San Bernardino Sheriffs, the FBI. Besides most of the people in Southern California didn’t feel threatened by Dorner: he was only targeting the police and their relatives. Even white people showed their disdain of the police.

Boston couldn’t have been more different. Obviously the people in Boston were under terror having been targeted in the bombing on Patriots Day. Also the authorities did a great job of not prematurely coming to conclusions like certain online and media outlets did *coughCNNandRedditcough*

No one was cheering for these two brothers to escape capture and leave the country like they did with Dorner. Innocent Bostonians weren’t getting shot up by the authorities. It was night and day.

There’s nothing deep or insightful about this. It was just that watching everything go down in Boston last week, the memory of the Dorner manhunt just kept popping up in my head.