In the Matter of Jamar Nicholson -- Dumb and Dumber With A Gun

This is insane, and the LAPD is defending it? This is Bratton's old stomping grounds, do not forget, and he is ever-so-proud of how the department was turned around under his watch and of how the community now loves and respects their police.

Then something like this happens. It's not the only incident of its kind, but it's one of the dumbest, and the department is determined to do what all departments reflexively do: blame the victim(s), maintain the ranks, insist that even in obvious error, they were right.

It won't be long before the smears of young Jamar begin. It's so routine, many just accept it as the way things are supposed to be.

A cop sees what he "thinks" (I use the term advisedly) is a Negro with a gun, and his automatic, "split-second decision" is to shoot. He hits a bystander -- Jamar Nicholson. Oh well, too bad so sad. Bystander is wounded, so he is handcuffed for transport to the hospital. At least he did get medical attention. As we know, so often in these cases, none is rendered until it is too late.

Nicholson remains handcuffed at the hospital until some brighter light in the LAPD recognizes that, oops, he was completely innocent of having a gun or of threatening anyone -- let alone a cop.

Oops. Oh well, all in a day's work for the Manly Men of the LAPD, right?

Jeebus.

A "Negro with a gun," whether or not said Negro actually has a gun, whether or not said "gun" is real, is routinely a target for amped up police who see threats to be neutralized everywhere, especially among youth of color. Just the report of a "Negro with a gun" is enough to get the supposed suspect shot on sight (re: Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, etc.) 

This situation is very closely related to the behavior of troops in Iraq: the very sight of a Iraqi with a gun -- or the perception that an Iraqi had a gun, whether or not s/he had one -- was sufficient cause for immediate execution. Hundreds were killed in practically every city in Iraq on that basis. Hundreds more were killed at make-shift checkpoints for "failure to obey" orders they could not understand. Every time, or almost every time, the killings in Iraq were ruled "justified" because the brave trooper -- who was actually scared out of his wits of the local Natives -- was "following procedure" and the rules of engagement (even if he wasn't.)  This is not much different than the behavior of police departments and district attorneys in ruling (almost) every police killing "justified" because of policies and procedures, training, and unstated rules of engagement.

Clearly the unstated rules of engagement domestically are that Negroes who are perceived or reported to have weapons are to be shot on sight. They needn't be threatening anyone -- they don't even need to have a weapon. The report of a Negro with a weapon is sufficient cause for summary execution. Many police departments employ and deploy snipers to carry out executions -- just as the military does. And it does not matter whether the target has a weapon or is an actual threat. The perception is all that matters. "What was in the officer's (trooper's) mind at the time?"

In the case of Jamar Nicholson, the officer who fired claimed to have perceived a weapon in the hands of Jamar's friend with whom he was walking to school at the time. The police officer claims that he ordered the friend to drop the weapon, but the friend refused. The officer then fired, unintentionally striking and wounding Jamar -- who was unarmed and a witness not an offender.

The LAPD at its press conference regarding this officer involved shooting displayed an air-soft pistol which was claimed to be the one Jamar's friend was holding "in the shooting position" when the officer fired, striking and wounding Jamar. For his part, Jamar says he never saw his friend holding a gun that day or any other day, and that the only thing he can remember is that he asked his friend for some cologne, and his friend had sprayed some on him. Was that what the amped up officer perceived as a weapon justifying the shooting?

Where did the air-soft pistol displayed at the press conference come from, then? Speculation is that it was a "throw down," a toy weapon planted by the police. I suspect there was no "weapon" on the scene. The air-soft pistol came from the department's storage room along with all the other replica guns displayed at the press conference.

This incident was a cock-up from the get-go, but I will bet cash money that the officer has no idea he did anything wrong and basically cannot comprehend the  outrage this and so many other officer-involved shootings generate.

The department will back him up to the bitter end. More than likely, there will be no charges against him, as long as the case is made that he was "following" procedures. Jamar will probably get a financial settlement in the 6 or 7 figure range, and that will be that. Case closed.

Policies and procedures regarding shooting at suspects thought to have weapons might be slightly adjusted but not sufficiently to prevent the next shooting of an unarmed Negro who the cop perceives to have a weapon.

The makers of air-soft replicas will be blamed for these incidents, as they already have been in numerous previous cases.

But wait. Gun ownership is prevalent and legal in this country. White people with guns are considered normal and natural. The issue with air-soft and other "replica" firearms isn't that they look real, it is that Negroes sometimes have them, and thus represent an existential threat that must be neutralized.

White people with replica or real weapons are not automatically perceived by police officers as existential threats.

There's your trouble.

Another part of trouble in this case is that the young man who apparently precipitated the incident by standing in "the shooting position" and not immediately obeying the officer's commands about dropping a weapon that he may not have had in the first place, has not been produced. The LAPD asserted that he was arrested and is in custody, but their assertions in this incident have turned out to be false on more than one occasion.

The young man who was shot and was treated as a criminal after he was wounded, Jamar Nicholson, is the only one so far who has been named and presented to the public. In news reports, the other boy is described only as "the person with the gun."

The problem here is rigid and dumb police policies which enable and require shooting at Negro suspects perceived to have a weapon.

Those policies can be changed from the top. Legislation is not required.

I advocate changing those policies forthwith.

False Statements

Isn't it something that the SBSD and the LAPD can issue a tissue of lies, a veritable festival of them when it comes to it, regarding Dorner and his last few hours -- and get away with it, while Dorner himself quite likely told the truth about misconduct he witnessed within the LAPD and got his ass fired for it, his life ruined and finally ended, in one of the most gruesome and yet inevitable endings we've seen since Waco.

It's pretty much the definition of the era we live in.

It's About Justice Not Process

During the height of the Occupy demonstrations, I took to using a slogan that I derived from the Egyptian Revolutionary movement and other social efforts going on prior to, during and after the Arab Spring
  DIGNITY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITY, PEACE.   
Such simple, indeed obvious, concepts but so far from realization in the modern world, even after the Revolution comes, as it did to North Africa. The reasons why are topics for many other days, but for now, let the topic be JUSTICE. For that is what the Dorner Thing and many other seemingly spontaneous or random acts of vengeance and violence are all about.

JUSTICE.

Dorner's central claim as stated in his purported manifesto is that he was wrongly accused of making false statements and unjustly fired from the LAPD in 2009, and that he attributes that injustice to institutional racism, the Blue Line of Silence, corruption, and the dishonesty of a long list of LAPD personnel.

His claim resonates strongly with practically anyone who knows anything about the LAPD.

Whether his case was as described in the manifesto is impossible for those of us not involved to know, but most of the relevant court documents are available online, and they paint an unpretty picture that is ambivalent about the facts of Dorner's claims but deny him any and all recourse from being terminated from the force.

The internal investigation of the incident in question -- in which Dorner asserted that his superior and trainer kicked a mentally ill suspect several times during the course of a messy arrest -- found that it could not establish with certainty that the kicks occurred. Witness and victim testimony was inconsistent, the officer who was accused of kicking the suspect denied it, and there was no written report (or video evidence) that indicated that the suspect had been kicked by the officer taken at the time of the arrest.

From the evidence of the documents so far, Dorner had ample due process -- during the internal investigations, the LAPD's Board of Rights hearings, and during a number of court actions and appeals. The process could hardly have been more complete. But process is not Justice, something lawyers and devotees of process are widely unable to understand or accept. And Dorner's claim is that despite all the process he received, he did not receive Justice.

He put it very simply and poignantly: "I never lied." From the evidence in the documents and what has been said about Dorner's character by those who know him, that's probably true, he didn't lie about what he witnessed and reported.

But the Board of Rights determined that they could not establish with certainty that he told the truth.

And thus, he was fired.

Think about that. Someone within a police department can witness and report abuse such as kicking a mentally ill suspect, but unless there is sufficient visual and/or written evidence at the time of the incident to establish with certainty that it took place as described, the police witness to abuse will be (not may be, will be) subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination, for "making a false report."

What sort of Justice is possible under such conditions? Naturally, most incidents of abuse will not be reported at all under the circumstances. And isn't that the point of threatening with termination anyone who does report abuse without also having airtight evidence?

Process can go merrily along, regardless. Process usually produces results, but those results are not in and of themselves Justice. And when injustice is the frequent or typical result of process, rebellion and revolution are almost inevitable.

Lawyers, particularly prosecutors, for their part seem incapable of even imagining such a thing. To many of them, the process itself results in justice; there is no other way to find justice except through established legal process (for example, through our adversarial courts, or the intricate and arcane investigative rules surrounding police misconduct) and whatever results from that process is by definition Justice. Even when the result is self-evidently unjust. Which more and more frequently in our corrupt and dysfunctional system of "justice" is the result.

Charlie Beck claims he will reopen the process to make sure it was done right.  Not to make sure that the result was just. This is related to the infamous Scalia observation that there is no legal reason why someone who is factually innocent shouldn't be put to death if all of the legal process was done correctly.

In other words, actual Justice doesn't matter so long as process and procedures are followed correctly. If the process and procedures produce arbitrary and/or unjust results, oh well!

I've wrestled with this issue many times online, challenging some assumptions about process and justice along the way. My father was an attorney and a JAG officer during WWII and Korea, and while the common snark is that "military justice is to justice what military music is to music," he said that actually, as imperfect as the military system was, it was intended to and designed to produce justice, and from his experience, that's what happened more often and more dependably than in the civilian court system. I know from the experience of other family members that it doesn't always do so, however, and that the military system can be abused and manipulated to accomplish patently unjust ends. Whether that potential for abuse outweighs its ability to produce justice I'll leave to others to decide.

I brought the reality of military justice up when there was so much controversy over military commissions at Guantanamo charged with meting out justice to terrorist suspects. The commissions were deeply flawed, there was no doubt about that, and some of the officers assigned to them said so in no uncertain terms. A few even refused to participate in them and many observers called them farces and charades, kangaroo courts and worse.

But something surprising happened in the few cases that actually went through the commissions: though they lacked many of the rules and attributes that we would commonly associate with fair trials, oddly enough they produced something much closer to Justice in the few cases they adjudicated than the civilian courts did in many cases of terrorist suspects they handled. Indeed, the commissions, though hardly even a shadow of a fair trial as commonly understood, tried to get to the bottom of the accusations against suspects held at Guantanamo and quite surprisingly ordered their release or imposed very light sentences when they discovered that the accusations were undersourced and overblown.

In civilian courts, on the other hand, false accusations and entrapment were routinely used to convict and sentence suspected terrorists in case after case, in embarrassingly unjust show trials, over and over again, and that system was being held up as the one that should be utilized for the Guantanamo detainees, because it's process was the proper one -- regardless of how unjust the results.

I wrote about the case of Sir (later, Saint) Thomas More as an illustration of how far from Justice a devotion to process can be.

It seems clear that a failure of Justice was the catalyzing element in Christopher Dorner's rage against the LAPD. Enormous numbers of people appear to be very sympathetic with his cause because they know just how far from justice the culture and behavior of the LAPD has been for generations. They know how corrupt the institution is, how venal, how brutal, how unaccountable. Yet Dorner was apparently afforded ample due process, numerous hearings, court appeals and so on. Never, so far as we know, throughout this ordeal was Justice more than an abstract consideration. It was all about process. Following rules of procedure. With an apparently unjust result. And an attitude of "Oh well! Bye bye!"

This isn't a "madman," this is a man who has suffered a gross injustice from a system that he had put his faith in. There are almost too many Americans to count who have suffered something similar, not to mention the millions around the world who have suffered or been exterminated by American "justice." Dorner's cause resonates because there have been so many victims of much the same thing as he went through, not because they approve of his radical tactics in getting revenge.

The defenders of that system, however, seem to be incapable of appreciating how inhumane and unjust it often is, and how ultimately unreformable it is. Instead, they will focus on some individual or attribute or mechanical device -- Dorner or police misconduct or drones or whatever -- asserting that if only Dorner were taken out or police were better trained or drones were eliminated, or something-something something-something, then things would get back to normal and be OK.

No. In my view the systemic and institutional failures are too severe to stay focused on the superficial and never probe the rotting foundations of it all.

The Catholic Church would rather lose its head than probe its own rotting foundations, so it's easy to imagine how difficult it is for LAPD or many other failed secular institutions to do the right thing.

Another Christopher was laid to rest yesterday -- Chris Kyle, the American Sniper -- and so many thousands turned out that they had to conduct the service in a football stadium. Think about what he did to gain his notoriety. He saw it as "justice."

Was it?

And think about what Chris Dorner is accused of doing. He apparently said he saw that as Justice.

Was it?

(In the case of Dorner, what he has actually done -- as opposed to what he is accused of doing -- is difficult to know. Evidence linking him to the killings he is accused of is slight to none, his supposed appearances have not proved out, and there is a whole body of conspiracy theory claiming his "manifesto" is either entirely fraudulent or has been severely tampered with. On the other hand, what there is actual visual evidence of is Dorner's burnt out truck said to hold destroyed weapons inside, and Dorner seen on video disposing of weapons in a dumpster.)

"Chris, All The Best, Chief Bill Bratton"

[One of the best summations I've so far read about the LAPD Thing: "LAPD Chickens Come Home to Roost" by Ruth Fowler. ]

Disappeared -- The Pre-Legend of Chris Dorner

Here to Help

Have you noticed that despite the intense media coverage of the Dorner Manhunt, and even despite the $1 million reward offered up by the City of Los Angeles yesterday (thanks to a cohort of anonymous wealthy donors)  the object of all this attention hasn't been seen or heard from in something like a week now.

He's disappeared.

Have you noticed, too, that despite the efforts of the LA and other police forces to provide Dorner with the formal three-name sobriquet always utilized for major league -- and some minor league -- criminals (in this case "Christopher Jordan Dorner") most people seem to be sticking to the informal "Chris Dorner," as if he were somebody they knew or had a beer with on occasion, who they liked and trusted, who was their friend.

Have you noticed that even though Dorner is now designated a Domestic Terrorist by the LAPD (by what authority, I wonder?) the public outpouring of understanding and even support for his cause -- which is widely recognized as a cause of "justice" -- has not diminished; if anything, it's increased. His methods may be wrong, but his cause is just, so goes the reasoning.

I've mostly followed the story online and watched with something close to amazement as the comments about it have gone from clearly in favor of the police doing "whatever is necessary to take him out" to "he's doing what he has to, may not be the right way to do it, but he's already done or tried to do all the right things and has been screwed over." The sympathy/empathy for him and contempt for the LAPD is almost all that appears in comments about the story now. It's nearly universal.

This is, I think, unprecedented at least in modern times. I've heard of outlaws in pioneer days and during the Depression receiving a lot of public support despite their status as outlaws, but the Outlaw Character has practically disappeared from American mythology these days, and people who do things which are counter to the prevailing social mores are routinely denounced, demonized and whenever possible destroyed.

This is something else again.

While the police initially panicked to protect themselves, causing a great deal of collateral damage -- thankfully no one died in the hail of bullets let loose against phantom targets of opportunity -- now they're scrambling merely to hold on to any public good will at all. It's a sight to behold. Step by step, as they have lost the public's good will through many unforced errors over the years and the clearly out of control bolloxing of this case going back to its origins in the official mistreatment of Dorner for daring to complain about abuse he witnessed, the police have tried practically all the PR stunts they can think of -- mass armed assemblies and fruitless searches in the snow at Big Bear, conceding the need for further review of Dorner's complaints while designating him a Domestic Terrorist, fundraising and offering a million dollar reward, moderating press conference statements about him, apologizing to the citizens shot up by mistake, so on and so forth -- they are not winning back the public trust. The more they try to smooth over the PR disaster they have on their hands, a disaster of their own making let it be said, the more the public sees their desperation, and the higher their level of contempt.

The more I see of this Charlie Beck person who is allegedly chief and in charge of the operations of the LAPD, the more repellant and snake-like he becomes. He's been floundering so badly, and yet is still put forth as the face of the agency. Something tells me he's not in charge at all; he's the fall-guy and will be sacrificed at the appropriate moment by those who are really in charge.

Who could that be I wonder.

Is this all an elaborate ruse to get rid of him while preserving the malformed institution he ostensibly heads? The "Chinatown" elements of whatever happens in LA are never buried very deep in any case; things are typically not what they are said to be or what they seem to be, there is always an underlying -- and often very different and very corrupt -- "necessity" being protected and promoted.

The LAPD exists to protect certain interests and certain people and to ensure that the control and exploitation of the rest continues without interruption or hindrance. When things go wrong, as they do every now and then, the LAPD pays for it with another round of "reform." But the "reform" never actually reforms the institution, because its whole point is to protect certain people and interests while ensuring control and exploitation of the rest. That's what the LAPD is for. When you understand that, you understand what their motto ("To Serve and Protect") really means. It doesn't mean they "serve and protect" you you see. Never.

There seems to be a widespread understanding that Dorner tried to do the right thing by bringing abuse that he witnessed to the attention of his superiors and he was punished for it. We can be certain that he is not the only one by any means.  He did what he thought was right and what he was supposed to do, and he was slapped down, hard, by a system that cannot accommodate that kind of idealism and honesty.

For the supposed chief now to reopen his case and pledge honesty and transparency (of course, we can assume it's a fraudulent pledge, but that's another issue, not germane to the matter at immediate hand) in reviewing the facts and Dorner's complaints, tells me that Dorner's "manifesto" has struck a strong chord within the department, that many, many LAPD officers have either hesitated to bring their own complaints about racism and abuse to the attention of superiors for fear of retaliation, or that they themselves have faced similar punishment to that of Dorner for trying to do the right thing, and now they're saying, "Look, this shit has got to stop."

Of course, the purpose of the institution requires that the shit continue. Even redouble. So they'll do what they have to to make it look like they're reforming or changing, but they won't actually reform. They'll fuss with process, they'll declare the matter settled. If you have any doubt about how these things go, look at what the Catholic Church has done in the face of withering criticism (oh yes, and lawsuits, many many lawsuits) of its institutionalized child abuse. Almost every "reform" has been eyewash.

So it is and will ever be with the LAPD.

It is the Iron Law of Institutions, and the only way to really change it is to abolish the institution and start over -- which isn't going to happen. Well, not before the Revolution comes.

Dorner's pre-legend is being put together right now, despite the fact that he is nowhere to be found. Is he even still alive? Who knows? He will become a legend whether or not he is ever found, dead or alive (my own suspicion is that he took his own life, perhaps in Big Bear). He might become a legend as powerfully iconic as the Hugo Weaving character in "V is for Vendetta." Let there be comics and movies and songs and stories.

And let there be masks. He's already got the smile...

The Meme Is Spreading -- "The LAPD Brought This On Themselves"

 

Last I remember hearing of the LAPD before this Dorner situation arose was after Anthony Villaraigosa  pranced around with nipples erect praising his shock troops for "masterfully" evicting the Occupy LA folks from the grounds of City Hall. That it was a violent and brutal raid in which dozens were injured and hundreds were arrested seemed to escape hizzoner's notice, but then, those were the days when kicking the shit out of the hippies was considered virile and manly and all. (Well, those days have never left us, have they.) The video above, for example, resulted from LAPD's violence against LA Art Walk participants in July of last year.

LAPD's reputation for excessive force, cruelty, murder, mayhem and violence -- toward selected segments of the public you understand -- has been known for generations; it's inbuilt. Every effort at "reform" -- that is to say, to curb the violence and cruelty and murder -- has had only limited and generally temporary success, if any success at all. What's true of LAPD is true of pretty much all law enforcement in Southern California: they are routinely violent, brutal and cruel -- toward selected segments of the public -- when they aren't outright murderous. There have been so many incidents just since the Rodney King Thing, that the public generally lives in greater fear of the police than they are of vaunted gangs and criminals.

The Doner Thing has opened floodgates of absolute outrage and contempt of the police, particularly LAPD since they are in the center of this mess, but affecting all the Southland law enforcement agencies. The ripple affect is traveling throughout the country.

The Dorner Thing has catalyzed the widespread recognition that enough is enough, and it was the panicked actions of the LA and Torrance PDs in shooting up two pickup trucks being driven near the home of one of LAPD's "high value protectees" -- ie: cops -- that wounded two women delivering papers and scared the shit out of a man while destroying two trucks while sending hundreds of bullets flying wildly into houses and cars and landscaping in a sleeping neighborhood that did the trick.

This action, they say, was the perfect demonstration of what Dorner was writing about in his lengthy "manifesto."

It is a culture of corruption, violence, impunity and... incompetence that afflicts the practice of policing in Los Angeles and throughout the land. Someone has to put a stop to it, because police agencies cannot do it themselves. 

While people are not happy about the way Dorner has chosen to try to put a stop to it, they "understand." What else works with these people, ie; the Po-Po, but a dose of their own medicine?

The wan and pathetic defenses of LAPD actions -- whether firing Dorner or shooting up pickup trucks in Torrance -- rub people the wrong way, to put it mildly.

And so a sort of conventional wisdom is congealing that says that the LAPD "brought this on themselves" by their actions specific to this case, by their historic incompetence, their long and disturbing record of violence and brutality (some of which was on nauseating display during their suppression of Occupy LA and other mass police actions in the Los Angeles area -- remember the LA Art Walk, or the Anaheim shootings?)

And look!

As Dorner seems to have disappeared -- whether into the mountain snow at Big Bear or somewhere else -- the police are modifying and mitigating their most outrageous behavior and even promising now to "review" Dorner's specific complaints.

Who'dathunk.

Furthermore on the LAPD Thing

Christopher Dorner with former LAPD Chief William Bratton c. 2006

I'm stunned at the level of animosity toward the police -- not just LAPD -- this series of incidents involving Christopher Dorner has raised. There was a chat with LA Times reporters earlier today which was linked by hotflashcarol over at FDL, and I checked in for a bit to see what people in the Southland wanted to chat about: 1) the LAPD is out of control; 2) why isn't the LA Times covering the outpouring of rage and outrage at the police?

Wow. You'd never know that from the complete silence about it everywhere throughout the major mass media and the near silence about it in the so-called progressive media, including most of what passes for the progressive blogosphere. Anytime anyone brings it up, they are shushed.

The police shooting of the LA Times delivery women (oops!) was a catalyst for the outpouring of contempt and outrage at the police. It's resulted in many comments suggesting Dorner was right about the LAPD.

KTTV in Los Angeles has been doing a remarkable job unearthing the legal documents surrounding Dorner's firing and his appeal. They are to be commended (and yes, it is a FOX affiliate these days. When I was a boy, it was an independent station owned by the Times-Mirror Corporation. I think they ran the Demolition Derby programs...)

The Times has been criticized for editing Dorner's manifesto. They've censored some of the names, and apparently cut some of the copy (though I can't say for sure, not having studied the unredacted vs the redacted versions carefully). The Times claims they haven't cut anything.

The police appear to be somewhat less panicked, but people are still saying they are more frightened of the out of control police than they are of the alleged killer ex cop. This can be useful to Authority.

There are -- of course -- conspiracy theories.

Because this is going on in the Greater Los Angeles area, there are bound to be fantabulous elements to the story, and there will be much confusion between the reality of what is taking place (what little we are allowed to know of it) and the crime laden teevee shows that tell everyone how it's done.

It is a nightmare for Authority.