He has stated his intent to take revenge for being fired from the LAPD in his manifesto.
Basically, he claims he was unjustly fired and is retaliating by targeting police officers and their families (there are also random comments, personal rants, etc). Dorner specifically targets Asian, Hispanic, and lesbian officers and says he will only stop once his name is cleared from the case of his firing.
He is already suspected of killing 4 people and police believe he has currently barricaded himself in a cabin by Big Bear Lake. In his manifesto, he claims that his experience and knowledge of military and police tactics will allow him to evade capture and continue to cause harm, but it seems like he is currently surrounded by the police. You can read more details here.
Why do you think Dorner would result to such extreme methods? Some articles say the cause may be some serious psychological issues and insecurities. If you had the chance to talk to him, what kind questions would you ask? What do you think goes through his mind to justify these actions of his? How credible was the case of his firing? What if he really was unjustly fired? Could PTSD possibly be a cause for his irrational behavior? If yes, what does it say about the treatment of veterans who suffer from it? Is the government doing enough to accommodate those that suffering from stressful jobs such as police officers and military service personnel? Do you think there was something that could have been done to stop Dorner before this whole issue occurred?
2 comments:
This reminds me of a movie I seen (Law Abiding Citizen). Although it isn't the same case, it has the same story mixed with a little Hollywood. (Yes I would recommend the movie.)
I feel like, sometimes as human beings... we may feel so helpless that we do such extreme things out of desperation. He probably felt like he was wronged and he can't fix it because of "the system." The idea of a broken law system is addressed in Law Abiding Citizen too.
If i could talk to him I would probably try to sit him down and show him what he is doing and show him that the way he is trying to accomplish his goal is just going to destroy his chances of achieving that goal (but his chances are probably long gone).
For anyone interested in this story I would recommend reading through Darner's manifesto. I believe that NBC article linked in the original post has an extremely misleading headline. Although Dorner does specifically labels certain Asian, Hispanic, and Lesbian police officers as "high value targets," these labels are each qualified by paragraph-long description of specific behaviors. Unlike NBC's interpretation, Dorner may be making generalizations, he certainly does not generalize on an entire ethnicity or sexuality basis (for example, he claims to target Hispanic officers who "victimize their own ethnicity," not targeting ALL Hispanics as the headline implies). Additionally, the headline says Dorner blames these "high value targets" when really, he seems to be condemning their actions; while there certainly are blame and accusations in his manifesto, they largely reside elsewhere and not in the excerpts which the NBC article is drawing from.
From reading the manifesto, it would seem that Dorner has a very powerful and important message regarding the corruption within the LAPD. While this message may be legitimate, Dorner's methods of spreading his message are horrendous and undermine the validity of his message. As seen in this NBC article, much of the media has extracted specifics from his manifesto and placed them out of context so that he may be easily demonized. As a result, his entire manifesto loses its purpose and this incident devolves into tragic, senseless violence.
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