The shooting rampage of Christopher Dorner gets more disturbing every day.  Dorner is the ex-LAPD officer who has declared war on the LAPD in retaliation for being fired in 2008 for making false statements accusing another officer of excessive force.

The problem, of course, is that cops have no credibility when it comes to disciplining their own members for abuses and do not take kindly to officers who rat out fellow officers.  In other words, it is completely plausible that Dorner was indeed fired for telling the truth.  Needless to say, that doesn’t justify murder.

Undoubtedly, LAPD is fully aware of the can of worms Doner opened by tying his murderous rampage to his being fired.  A lot of outside scrutiny will now be focused on the details that led to Dorner’s termination.  Police departments almost universally hide behind a wall of secrecy to cover their behavior.  When that secrecy breaks down, firings, bad publicity, and sometimes even prosecutions follow.

So, it is not unexpected that LAPD would try to nip this in the bud by doing another internal investigation so they can pronounce that their first internal investigation was completely fair.  The L.A. Times quotes L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck:

“I hear the ghosts of the past of the Los Angeles Police Department. I hear that people think that maybe there is something to what he says, and I want to put that to rest,” Beck said at the news conference.

“The only way I know how to put that to rest is to review what has already been reviewed at multiple levels,” he said.

The wording in this statement it is abundantly clear that the outcome is already a foregone conclusion.  They are going to review the case to confirm previous reviews.  It’s my guess that LAPD is going to use every tool at its disposal to minimize visibility into the Dorner firing from outside.

Another development is the offering of a record setting $1 million reward by the city of Los Angeles.  KTLA quotes Police Chief Beck:

“Some may ask, ‘Why so large’” he continued, adding, “This is an act — and make no mistake about it — of domestic terrorism.”

And, since this is now terrorism, the TSA has become involved warning that Dorner may be able to pilot a plane.

Finally, there are the two (at least) cases where cops opened fire on innocent people in their zeal to kill Dorner.

In the first case, a mother, age 71, and daughter, age 47, were delivering newspapers when police sprayed their vehicle with bullets.  The older woman was shot twice in the back while the younger was injured from flying glass. From MSN:

The oh-so-generous Los Angeles Police Department promised to give a new truck to two women wounded while police were pursuing ex-cop Christopher Dorner.

[…]

Police Chief Charlie Beck called the shooting a “tragic misinterpretation.” Um, sounds like it. A neighbor who witnessed the shooting told the Los Angeles Times she thought she heard about 60 rounds of gunshots.

In the second case of police shooting up a vehicle, most mainstream news outlets were quick to report that “no one was injured”.  What they really meant was no one was shot.  In this case, David Perdue was stopped by a cop, but then allowed to drive on.  He was then rammed by a second police car after which cops fired several rounds into his truck.  From the Redondo Beach Patch:

“I don’t want to use the word ‘buffoonery,’ but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” Perdue’s attorney, Robert Sheahen, told The Times. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

And, as is typical of events like this, the shooting is still under investigation, but given the wording of all the statements made by police, the conclusion has already been reached.  The investigation is simply to put an official patina on the justifications they’ve already made.

“The circumstances of the incident known to the responding officers would have led a reasonable officer under normal circumstances—and these were far from normal circumstances—to believe that fellow officers were being shot at and that the vehicle traveling toward them posed a serious risk,” said the Torrance Police Department in a statement released to The [L.A.] Times.

In both cases it should be noted that the trucks were a different color from the one Dorner drove and none of the people they shot at looked anything like Dorner.

[Update]

Here is an L.A. Times story that gives more details about the circumstances under which Dorner was fired.

Dorner sent a CD to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that supposedly contained evidence that supports Dorner.  CNN turned the dick over to the LAPD, so I wonder if we’ll ever find out what was on it.