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The Dorner fallout: Policing the cops

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As further investigations are revealing, that very well may be the case in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Christopher Dorner affair.

At first glance, it appeared to be cut and dried. A disgruntled former police officer “gone postal,” expresses his frustration in a rambling and often incoherent document, followed by the wanton slaying of an innocent young couple on the verge of matrimony. Dorner was apparently motivated by rage towards the young woman’s father, and his role in the assailant’s 2008 termination from the police department (it was upheld by a Superior Court judge in 2010). In the days that followed, a huge portion of the state stood on edge as they pondered the motive behind a “manifesto” posted online and leaked to media luminary Anderson Cooper.

The rambling of the so-called manifesto pointed fingers and specified names of dozens within the peace officer community who’d “wronged” the former naval officer/policeman; derailing his career and setting in motion a quest to clear his name and exact vengeance.

As Southern California and the rest of the country watched the drama unfold on prime-time television, a state-wide manhunt and dragnet involving multiple jurisdictions was put into operation across several counties, the state of Nevada, and parts of Mexico—while the LAPD beefed up security around the homes of police officials Dorner was believed to be harboring a grudge against. Before he was cornered in a remote mountain cabin in San Bernadino, Dorner eluded authorities long enough to shoot two San Bernardino sheriffs deputies and two Riverside police officers (resulting in the deaths of one from each department).

Curiously, in the midst of all the carnage while nearly 1,000 peace officers carried out a desperate search for the most-wanted man in California at the time, a “Christopher Dorner appreciation society” turned up on Facebook, declaring that its namesake’s “… life was ruined for fighting back against a racist culture.” Another, titled “We stand with Christopher Dorner,” claims some 26,000 “likes.”

“I feel your pains.”

—former policeman Joe Jones.

“The details differ, but the process is always the same. Someone in a position of leadership has sounded the alarm to destroy the worker; the accusations and investigations begin, the person’s entire work history and identity are revised until they are made out to be delusional and a danger. One by one the workforce joins in until the worker is so enraged and traumatized that some do—as Christopher Dorner did—eventually become the delusional and dangerous person they’ve been made out to be.”

—from “What Can We Learn From Christopher Dorner?” By Janice Harper in the March 13, 2013 issue of Psychology Today.

Janice Harper is an anthropologist who specializes in the workplace phenomenon of “mobbing,” the systemic bullying of an individual due to their “otherness” be it gender, race, or anything that sets them apart from the masses. One triggering device that generally sets these events in motion happens when the target becomes oppositional to the organizational agenda (in this case, Dorner taking exception to his training officer’s alleged mistreatment of a schizophrenic suspect).

While Dorner’s complaints and his reprehensible method of expressing them were quickly dismissed as the product of an unhinged mind, isolated individuals, many of them peace officers of color, voiced solidarity with his garbled rant.

In insular environments like law enforcement agencies (as well as paramilitary groups and other governmental components), upward mobility is predicated on relationships with “gate keepers” who can either advance or inhibit one’s career progression. That said, it may be understandable why the vast majority of employees in any enterprise are reluctant to bad mouth or criticize the source of their income, just as a dog is unlikely to “bite the hand that feeds it.”

This is a prime factor behind the urge to “toe the party line,” because many individuals with negative experiences, in this case concerning the LAPD, refrain from going on record with their grievances. Among those who have made the “leap of faith” are Sgt. Wayne K. Guillory and former officer Joe Jones, who used the media in an attempt at crisis intervention. Guillory used the website of Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s Urban Policy Round Table to share the pain of his struggle to combat racism in the course of his 30-years-plus career.

Jones utilized the services of a hacker group to issue his own “counter manifesto” in which he shared the trauma of his nine-year stint with the LAPD, before quitting in 1998, an experience that left him struggling with post traumtic stress disorder.

Reflecting the stature of this department in particular, the list of the dissatisfied who choose to cloak their gripes in silence, is a testament to the inordinate influence this organization has.

In researching this article, sources have espoused claims that the system has and can hurt those who go against it emotionally, financially, and professionally, not to mention damage to the reputation and esteem within the community.

Thus, it is rumored that there are in-house secrets such as: the captain who was arrested for a DUI, or another with a penchant for trolling for prostitutes; the command staffer implicated in the affairs of a narcotic-trafficking progeny; plus a plethora of all the weaknesses and foibles known to mankind. These indiscretions lie dormant within the system, open secrets of the chosen few, while others are “thrown under the bus” for the same or lesser infractions.

A born and bred product of South Los Angeles, as a child, Cheryl Dorsey was vividly aware of the LAPD and its reputation in her neighborhood. But by the time she was in her early 20s as a single mother with children, the attraction of a steady paycheck with benefits and the prospect of a lifetime pension after 20 years, was ample inducement to join. In her previous job as a secretary with the California Justice Department, she’d been invited to participate in a “sting” operation, which whetted her appetite for the investigative component of law enforcement.

Once in the LAPD academy, she said the harassment of the process of indoctrination along with snide remarks, both racial and sexual, soured whatever enthusiasm she might have had for her fledgling career. But with mouths to feed and accepting the responsibilities of adulthood she steeled herself to persevere.

She was successful, and built a career and reputation as a shrewd investigator and gained eventual assignment to the prestigious Internal Affairs Group (IAG). This is the unit designated to maintain public confidence by “policing the police.”

In this capacity, she eventually investigated a highly publicized officer-involved shooting. Patrolman Kevin Gaines was killed by Detective Frank Lyga, who in turn, has recently popped up in the news for provocative remarks he made while conducting an in-service training session at the police academy.

Professional achievements not-with-standing, Dorsey said she was often depressed and felt like an outcast at work. This was aggravated by lack of support from command staff, even those who were African American. Dorsey and others on the force say that Black officers who “break through” into the higher ranks, do so by rigidly conforming to the system at the expense of personal integrity.

“I defy anyone to find a Black person (within the department) with the rank of captain or above who has a backbone,” she declares. “They don’t exist!”

In response to the various attempts at “reform” over the past two decades, Dorsey feels the hierarchy has taken a more sophisticated approach to “cover up” inadequacies within the system, without effecting real change. Embedded in all this is the specter of the ever-present double standard. Occasionally however, the anointed ones tread a tad too far into the forbidden zone, and even the life vest of cronyism cannot save them.

“When they absolutely have to do a ‘Pontius Pilate,’ they will,” Dorsey says, referring to the termination of former officer Doug Iversen.

Iversen in 1992 shot and killed an unarmed Black tow truck driver, John L. Daniels, in a gas station at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Florence Avenue, alleging that the decedent tried to run over pedestrians with his vehicle. This charge was repudiated by several on lookers, including two Korean American attendants who manned the station.

Iversen was eventually acquitted of liability in the shooting, but was dismissed three years later because then-chief Willie Williams felt he exhibited “poor decision making and bad judgment calls.” The motorcycle cop had been disciplined three times before the shooting in the course of his 15-year career. The courts, in turn, awarded $1.2 million to the deceased man’s family in a separate, wrongful-death suit.

Iversen rebounded by securing a job as an investigator with a local security company.

“Peter” Whittingham began his career as a law man in his native Jamaica before heading north to join the ranks of the LAPD; he was successful enough to reach the rank of captain.

But Whittingham has had enough, so much that he rails against a disciplinary system and promotional process he regards as biased and based on cronyism, family ties, and social relationships.

“A vast majority of this police department has lost a total lack of confidence in the fairness of the disciplinary system,” he says, claiming that these views cross racial, gender and ethnic boundaries.

Acknowledging that these shortcomings might be found within any police entity, Whittingham believes the LAPD, because of its reputation and stature, has a special obligation to maintain a higher standard. Instead, he said they “work overtime” to keep up a “façade of integrity” and to mask the latent corruption endemic throughout the department. In essence, in Whittingham’s words, they are content to be “professional hypocrites.”

Citing an example of what he means, Whittingham said he was mandated to sit in on an LAPD Board of Rights hearing. This is the process in which officers accused of misconduct must appear before a panel of the LAPD hierarchy to determine the strength of the allegations, and the penalty, if any, to be meted out. The panel consists of two command officers and a civilian (who typically has some sort of legal background), as well as a defender and a prosecutor.

In this case, Whittingham got into trouble for championing the officer before the board—a Black man accused of making a derogatory remark about a White female cop, in an incident that transpired two years prior.

Captains who sit on these boards are reportedly pressured to make decisions favorable to the chief, who in turn will look favorably upon them come promotion time. In this, Whittingham believes his promotion to the next level of captain was delayed by his refusal to do the chief’s bidding. He cites other situations in which the chief has “tampered” with the disciplinary/promotional process to alternately advance or impede the career progression of a given officer. Whittingham eventually got his promotion.

In light of all this, Whittingham, who holds a captain II rank, has forwarded a letter to the Los Angeles Police Commission strongly opposing Chief Charles Beck’s reappointment for a second term.

Nostalgia for a troubled past

Part of the problem with the LAPD maybe the presence of a deeply entrenched cadre of veteran cops who long for the days of old, which made the department a legend across the globe (in direct opposition to the opinion of many of its urban constituents). Attorney Carl Douglas has been suing the department for some 30 years, and acknowledges the presence of minions of “old school Darryl Gates (LAPD chief, circa 1978-1992).”

In his view, this population “makes up a troublesome segment of the LAPD.”

Interestingly, he sees the current chief in a positive light, and gives him a thumbs up for another term.

“I think he (Beck) is serious about changing the LAPD for the better,” Douglas said.

His fellow attorney, Kevin McKesson, like Douglas a protégée of the fabled Johnny Cochran, offers another perspective as a product of the streets in South Central where the LAPD earned its infamy.

“I found nothing surprising in the Dorner Manifesto,” McKesson states matter of factly.

And while none of the interviewees contributing to this story condoned Dorner’s horrific events in February 2013, all of them believe it is a symptom of an apparatus still in need of a dramatic “fix.”

For McKesson, the old school mentality that Douglas mentioned is abetted by a recruiting pool that all area law agencies utilize. According to him, law enforcement candidates are by and large frustrated athletes willing to (blindly) follow orders. “They all draw water from the same well,” he says flatly. And, notes McKesson, “Just because Dorner was a bad guy doesn’t mean he was lying.”

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