You need a high school diploma and a clean record to join the LAPD. I would be honored to list the requirements to be a Navy officer including the psych evaluation, but let’s just say that it’s leaps and bounds over what’s required to be a LAPD. I was just thinking: isn’t it fascinating how we require EMTs, LPNs, RDHs, and RDs to take classes to get certified in their field, even fire fighters are required to get an associates degree in fire science. Yet, we take a profession (police officers) that requires no formal coursework other than passing 12th grade and give them a gun. It’s ridiculous, especially when people pretend to be shocked that a bunch of high school graduates with guns aren’t making intelligent decisions with their weapon. Could someone explain to me why we require fire fighters to get a degree but police officers get and watered down training Police Academy without any degree?
Resolved: All police officers should take at least 120 credits of coursework. With at least 45 of those credits in basic, non-elective college coursework that includes math, English, psychology and sociology.
Definitely a murderer. He murdered innocent people. Therefore he is a murderer.
Not a martyr. Martyrdom at the very least would require a level of moral righteousness he lost when he murdered Monica Quan and even more so Keith Lawrence. Certainly requires more than simply suffering injustice or catching a bad break, if we accept that’s what he caught. Not a lot of hard facts there for categorical statements.
He met a justified end. I’m not so sure the cabin he died in did though.
As far as debate goes, given the facts available to me, I believe he was on the whole a moral individual who broke down because of his naive refusal to accept that bad things happen to good people too. I believe he was depressed and angry at what he saw as a corrupt system.
I don’t think he was stupid or crazy or in fact evil.
If I had to bet money on it, I’d wager that he was just a plain ol’ garden-variety sociopath, and that it’s very possible that the LAPD now realizes that it has egg on its face because their psych evaluation didn’t catch it.
I strongly disagree, but that’s certainly possible.
The fact that he expressed in his manifesto that he did not wish to harm those who he didn’t consider targets and chose to put his own life in jeopardy by not murdering the people who stumbled on him in his hideout does not suggest sociopathic tendencies to me.
I suppose I’m not really qualified to express further opinion on the matter until I actually read it for myself. I’ll make time tomorrow morning to do so. Still, that’s exactly the sort of thing that I would say if I were trying to convince somebody that I’m not a sociopath. The statement that you quoted certainly appears on the face of it to be blatantly contradictory to his demonstrated actions. Had Dorner directly targeted the people who were responsible for his termination from the LAPD, then I might be more inclined to entertain the notion that he had a properly-developed superego. But the fact that he took out civilians who didn’t even know who he was pretty much abrogates any possibility of that being true.
I’d be interested in hearing what makes you think that because it’s completely opposite to my own opinion.
[QUOTE=Washoe]
Still, that’s exactly the sort of thing that I would say if I were trying to convince somebody that I’m not a sociopath.
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Convince for what purpose? He was a dead man walking.
[QUOTE=Washoe]
The statement that you quoted certainly appears on the face of it to be blatantly contradictory to his demonstrated actions. Had Dorner directly targeted the people who were responsible for his termination from the LAPD, then I might be more inclined to entertain the notion that he had a properly-developed superego. But the fact that he took out civilians who didn’t even know who he was pretty much abrogates any possibility of that being true.
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Again I strongly disagree. That’s way too easy.
None of the people who knew Dorner before the murders that I saw interviewed said they had any inkling he could do these acts. That’s significant IMO. From what I read in the media no one outside of the LAPD had anything bad to say about him on a personal level, except for an ex-girlfriend. Dorner seems to have followed a good moral compass until he went berserk.
He also seems to have made a very conscious effort to not harm any civilians he came in contact with during the manhunt.
Of course M. Quan and Lawrence were civilians. Of course they didn’t deserve to die. That’s just a harsh truth. Another harsh truth is that a man with nothing to lose and a death wish can do great harm to someone with a lot to lose, in this case Quan the elder and by extention the LAPD.
An evil act? Yes. A logical one? Yes also.
I shouldn’t have to say this but please understand that I’m not passing any judgement on Quan by saying this, I’m in absolutely no position to do that and it would be wrong for me to do so.
How big of you.
We can guess and guess but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans…the only person who could have known whether he had this disorder or that disorder, or this psychiatric illness or the other one, would be his treating psychiatrist. I haven’t heard he had one and if he did, apparently he isn’t speaking ,…we will never know, since Dorner is gone and there is no treating psychiatrist as far as I’ve heard who has come out and announced what was going on with him
Dorner is a coward. killing himself despite all his claims of vengeance and being armed to the teeth? pffft. you don’t qualify as a martyr when you abandon your own manifesto.
Really? Is cowardice seriously the worst quality you can think of accusing that guy of exhibiting?
I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. What is big of me and how is it big of me? Please explain?
Not very logical, actually.
I don’t see the harm Dorner did to the LAPD, even by extension.
I agree their general (in)competence in a response to a crazy on the loose might have been exposed, but killing Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence as a mechanism to cause harm–even indirect harm–to the LAPD is not effective.
What harm comes to the LAPD because of Dorner? Nutcases on the loose like this always increase the power of authority. They don’t diminish it. Dorner’s incompetent murderous rampage actually promotes the opportunity for already-prejudiced LAPD members to justify their racism by holding up Dorner as an example. It diminishes any credibility Dorner had as someone who is rational.
Were he to have killed a specific individual against whom he has a particular grudge, one might argue that he’s some sort of Dark Knight attempting justice where a system has created injustice.
By killing Quan and Lawrence, who were totally innocent of any harm done to Dorner, he simply painted himself as a violent man unable to create a coherent or cogent way to avenge his wrongs. Sure; the death of Monica Quan injured her Dad, but in no way did that “harm” the LAPD by extension, and in fact the harm done to Monica’s father in no way furthered Dorner’s cause.
You must have massive blinders on then.
This isn’t even specific to law enforcement. This is basic logic.
C cares about B and B cares about A.
Harming someone harms those who care about them.
Killing is harm.
Ergo, Killing A is harming B and harming B is harming C.
If we can’t even agree on logic this discussion won’t go anywhere.
What makes you think he was fighting the “power of authority”?
That argument is stupid. Because if true no black man should ever complain against a white racist. Because well, that promotes the opportunity to promote racism after all. So don’t do it black people, even though you are striving for justice you are in fact promoting racism and working against your goals.
This isn’t as bad as the previous argument, but it’s still pretty bad. Dorner behaved rationally except for his disregard for self-preservation. Because (in his words) the LAPD took that away from him.
But wouldn’t it make more sense to kill an LAPD family member rather than Monica Quan? Her dad was former LAPD arguing against the LAPD in Dorner’s favor right?
I don’t know personally what Quan did or didn’t argue for, I know what Dorner believes he argued for because he said so himself:
[QUOTE=Dorner’s manifesto]
Never allow a LAPPL union attorney to be a retired LAPD Captain,(Quan). He doesn’t work for you, your interest, or your name. He works for the department, period. His job is to protect the department from civil lawsuits being filed and their best interest which is the almighty dollar. His loyalty is to the department, not his client. Even when he knowingly knows your innocent and the BOR also knows your innocent after Christopher Gettler stated on videotape that he was kicked and Evans attorney confessed to the BOR off the record that she kicked Gettler.
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So we see that Dorner believes Quan to be complicit with the blue wall of silence while representing him in his case agains the LAPD.
It’s also relevant to add that, although retired, Quan is still very much One of Us to the LAPD.
It really is sad (I say this with complete honesty) to see the lack of mental faculties in the general public to take a critical and balanced look at this. This was only too clearly shadowed here in the BBQ Pit, entertaining as that as.
I suppose the recent spat of randomly violent nutballs (Aurora, Lanza, etc) doesn’t help either.
If you can read Dorner’s manifesto and then decide the “lack of mental faculties” belongs to the public, I guess I’m done trying to persuade you of anything.
He can barely write, much less present a cogent argument.