We are not all Chris Dorner.
In 2008, Christopher Dorner was working as an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department when he allegedly witnessed his training officer kick a mentally ill suspect while he was down on the ground getting handcuffed. Dorner reported the incident but, unsurprisingly, the LAPD concluded it never happened. Instead, he was charged with making false accusations and, as a result, was fired by the department.
The former cop had been relatively quiet, however, until his online manifesto appeared - a 14-page document in which he listed his complaints and grievances toward the LAPD and declared "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against a department he accused of corruption and racism.
Dorner had a valid argument. It's absolutely possible he was unjustly fired - the LAPD has a notable history of racism and corruption, and this would just fit into a long timeline of tales told. But he didn't just want attention to the cause; he wanted revenge. And because of his actions, all of his efforts are now futile.
The manifesto had fair complaints, except for one slight problem: the day before, the daughter of Randal Quan - a former LAPD captain and a lawyer who formerly represented Dorner during Dorner's dismissal hearing - and her fianc?(c) were shot and killed. Quan's family was specifically targeted in Dorner's manifesto.
And so began the 2013 Southern California shootings, a series of shootings that killed four people and wounded three other officers in which Dorner was named the main suspect.
Despite all that, the rabid inhabitants of the Internet have crowned him as a folk hero.
Dorner has a large array of supporters throughout the online social world: a Facebook page with over 16,000 likes, fans tweeting encouragement and people from all over the country saying "we are all Chris Dorner." They cite passages from his manifesto, seeing him as a hero waging against a corrupted system, comparing him to the character Django from the recent film Django Unchained. He is a symbol of justice - a dark knight.
But despite his goals, he lost every case he had when he first pulled the trigger on Monica Quan. No matter how justified his anger toward the LAPD was or how valid his complaints were, there is absolutely nothing heroic about the way Dorner went about clearing his name.
Unfortunately, Dorner's actions have discredited a very important argument about the culture and the corruption of the LAPD, an organization with infamous cases such as the Rodney King beating and the Rampart misconduct scandal to its name.
The point it drove him to speaks volumes. In his manifesto, he wrote, "The only thing that has evolved from the consent decree is those officers involved in the Rampart scandal and Rodney King incidents have since promoted to supervisor, commanders, and command staff and executive positions."
In the search for Dorner, the LAPD mistakenly shot multiple people when officers thought they were the suspect, prompting people to wear shirts and signs that read "Don't shoot, I'm not Christopher Dorner."
It's optimistic to think the department will ever change, but it was and is a conversation that is unquestionably vital. The problem is that it was introduced to the public eye in such a negative way. The tales of corruption will be overshadowed by Dorner's spree shootings, by the politics of his manifesto and by Tuesday's manhunt that - quite literally - went up in flames and ended his life.
Dorner was not a folk hero or vigilante. Though he might have been at one point following his termination, he transformed from some innocent victim of a broken system into a criminal who reacted to injustice in an inappropriate and used revenge as his solution. Aman who wanted to clear his name, instead, completely muddied it, purposefully tearing down every argument he had.
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Photo: The Spectrum Archives
