You already knew that the LAPD was going to kill Chris Dorner, but did anybody guess it would all end Waco-style? You can read Dorner's manifesto online, although I'm not sure that any of those can be trusted. I've seen at least two different versions, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were all fakes. One thing we can be certain of is that he was never going to get a chance to testify in a courtroom.
I do not necessarily hate all police, but I don't trust any police officer. Ever. And I'm white. I absolutely hate dealing with police, because if you're talking to the police, they probably suspect you of something. Let's be real here, we need a police force, but I'm not sure that most of the cops we have now should be a part of it. I'm 35, so I grew up when NWA was saying "Fuck the Police" and I watched (on TV news) the LA riots. People my age and older will tell you that the Rodney King incident was a real turning point in this country, in terms of how people viewed the police. Suddenly, white people didn't trust the police so much. I was 13 and a Public Enemy fan, so I already didn't trust them. (I went to my first concert without parental supervision in 1991, to see PE, with opening act C+C Music Factory, I kid you not. Their respective "hits" at the time were "911 Is A Joke" and "Everybody Dance Now".) But if the Rodney King incident was a step forward in terms of police accountability, September 11 was at least two steps backward in terms of personal liberty. Suddenly, people who were concerned about the boundaries of law enforcement were "with the terrorists". An argument regularly heard from Bill O'Riley and his ilk was "If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about?", which is practically the mantra of a police state. Although George Dubya and his administration, specifically Cheney and Ashcroft, get much of the blame for the current state of affairs, (as they should) Barry deserves nearly as much, if not arguably more, considering that the government now kills more people with drones than a junior high Call of Duty player. (I wonder if they bone the victims' mothers as well.)
Really, why should the average person trust the police? People who sell drugs on the corner go to jail, and politicians can say "I'm tough on crime". People who launder the money that the corner hustler's boss' boss makes, well we can't jail them because that might destabilize the world's economy. I wish I was making this all up, but if you've been paying attention, you know that all of this happened in the last six months. Also, with respect to drug laws, why is marijuana illegal? What about gambling? Prostitution? How about the increasing number of incidents where suspects committed suicide with their hands cuffed behind their backs? This video seems to circulate the internet a couple times a year, and this guy is a law professor, albeit one who sounds a bit like Saul Goodman.
To put this in perspective, I'd certainly rather live in America and deal with our fucked up system of justice than live in Russia, China, or even worse, North Korea. And, as much as I favor abolishing all drug laws, I don't want to live in Somalia, which is the closest thing to a pure libertarian system in the world. (I believe it may more accurately represent an example of Anarchy, I'm not sure. Either way, basically no laws or government, and I'd rather watch a Vice documentary about it than even think about going there myself.)
What I really hope is that this will lead to a thorough investigation of the LAPD, and hopefully of all police units. The only way that happens is if more police come forward, and not just former police, but currently employed officers as well. We all know that won't happen. The "Blue Wall" is just too solid to ever effectively control law enforcement. In 2000, a NY district court even ruled that a police department was within it's rights to discriminate against an applicant because he was too smart. So basically, things will probably never get better, but they could be way worse.
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