Did y’all read the manifesto of the cop killer out there in LA? (https: The Killer Cop’s Insane Facebook Manifesto, Part 1: ‘I assure you that the casualty rate will be high.’ )
There’s a lot of bleed life in there.
I mention this because you would not know that from the reportage.
Well, the New York Times did mention that a black ex-cop by the name of Christopher J. Dorner “laid out grievances against a police department that he said remained riddled with racism and corruption (note the equal billing), then adds, “a reference to a chapter of the department’s history in the view of many people was swept aside long ago.” Yeah, the “many people” source. The august Gray Old Lady went Fox on us. (As in: “Many people believe President Obama is a socialist determined to overthrow America.” And on.)
From his studio in New York, Anderson Cooper interviewed a psychiatrist, or was it a psychologist—in some office far away from Anderson’s studio in New York– about the likely disposition of a man who has killed thusly and who remains on the loose to kill, as he promises, even more.
Well, the health care mental specialist said, reminding us that he had not talked to the killer himself, but that from his doubtlessly learned perspective, Dorner was, well, crazy, a word the serious psychiatrist or psychologist said he deplored using. Dorner blaming what he perceives to be an unfair dismissal from the LA Police Department for his whistle blowing on another officer who he says abused a suspect was his blaming everyone for his problems, the bearded health care professional posited. The manifesto, let’s face it, is all over the place and reflects that Dorner simply refuses to accept responsibility for his actions.
What about that manifesto? “The department has not changed since the … Rodney King days. It has gotten worse,” Dorner the killer cop writes. Some of the officers in the King beating have even been promoted, to supervisors and commanders, he adds. (I smell an investigative story in there.)
There’s also this: “While traveling back to the station in a 12 passenger van I heard (a fellow cop) refer to another individual as a nigger. I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly as there were many conversations in the van that (were) compiled of at least 8 officers and he was sitting in the very rear and me in the very front. Even with the multiple conversations and ambient noise I heard (the fellow cop) call an (individual) a nigger again. Now that I had confirmed it, I told (the fellow cop) not to use that word again. I explained that it was a well known offensive word that should not be used by anyone. He replied, ‘I’ll say it when I want.’ (Another fellow cop, a friend of the first one) also stated that he would say nigger when he wanted. At that point I jumped over my front passenger seat and two other officers where I placed my hands around (the cop’s) neck and squeezed. I stated to (the cop), ‘Don’t fucking say that.’ At that point there was pushing and shoving and we were separated by several other officers. What I should have done, was put a Winchester Ranger SXT 9mm 147 grain bullet in his skull and (his bud cop’s) skull.
Also in the manifesto are the concerns shared by many young black men like Dorner and are to some degree boujie in nature: the desire to not be lumped in with the bad boys we see so often on crime reports and in American entertainment. “I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple (baby mommas).” And there’s the trauma blacks endure for living up to old stereotypes, when not even trying, like being told he didn’t write grammatical reports. There are also seeming contractions. “A valued target” is obviously the folks he’s identified as racists on the force. But so are those senior black commanders who abuse the younger whites under them as a payback for the older cops’ mistreatment from white higher-ups back in the day.
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Neil Boortz, the garden variety Southern racist to whom a major media company in these parts (Atlanta) gave a radio show (until he retired recently), would broadcast that he’s so pissed off about what Obama’s doing to America (whatever that is), that he was planning to leave. Despite the huge albeit ill-gotten salary, despite his still one-upmanship as member of the majority society, he was, with the socialist black guy in political charge, reaching his tipping point. He named some places I can’t recall but they all seemed to be either in (of course) Europe or in some island near the continent.
A black co-worker was wondering recently about the plight of black males in this country. I think that report had just come out about more black males being in American prisons and jails or tied up in some negative way to the criminal justice system—such as being on bond—than there were black males as slaves in, I think, 1850.
“So why do we encourage them to stay here?” my co-worker wondered. “Why not send them to another country since it’s so hard for them here. Even if they change their bad behavior, they still have a mark on their record. You know these employers don’t want to hire them in the first place. Now they have an excuse.”
He was actually talking to someone else. I wasn’t in their conversation. But I was nearby. “Why not Africa?” he said. “Ghana maybe. Nigeria.”
Wow, I thought. He had just promoted a pan-Afranistist program—all the more significant because he wasn’t a particularly political guy. I hadn’t heard that solution since the mid-seventies, when everybody was political. I thought also: most change is gradual, isn’t it? We glorified mass movements then. They’re sexier. But what’s the deal if they both end in the same result? Maybe life ain’t no Cecil B. DeMille movie. Is gradual the way we should have been going then? What we should do now? I also thought this. Do we—folks whose very history here has been one of enduring the majority society’s wrath and who surely have more a reason to being reasonably pissed—have a tipping point?
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They’re right in that Dorner’s manifesto contains rambling galore; in the second part, he gives his opinion on just about everything. Hey, he loves Chris Christy and respects Papa Bush. Much of what he writes is strange fruit juxtaposed to document’s main message.
But it also comes across as a guy getting all his last words in, for surely he knows what’s at stake for one who has promised to go out fighting.
And he also returns often to what everyone is failing to mention: “From 2/05 to 1/09 I saw some of the (vilest) things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the streets of LA. It was in the … LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.”
Bad what he did—and what he’ll continue to do if not caught?
Of course it is.
Crazy?
OK, yeah, he’s crazy.
But what pushed him to that cliff to tip?
How many—who live under similar circumstances and that’s a lot of people—are now being shoved behind him?