Since one of Dorner’s victims was the daughter of the attorney who, by his statement, “botched” his disciplinary hearing against the LAPD, I’m just wondering why he didn’t instead file a claim against the City and then sue for damages (and his job back) when the judge hearing his mandamus petition rubber-stamped the hearing officer’s decision (as they often do, to get the case off their docket). In doing so, the judge hearing his petition left it wide open for Dorner to take legal action against the City and LAPD.
That’s what most aggrieved public employees do in this situation when their termination was based solely upon the credibility of the department’s witnesses in said hearing.
Dorner’s LAPD firing case hinged on credibility
The Police Department concluded Dorner was lying when he said his training officer kicked a man during an arrest. But it’s not so clear whose testimony should be believed.
For a Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel, the evidence was persuasive: Rookie officer Christopher Jordan Dorner lied when he accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest.
But when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge examined the case a year later in 2010 as part of an appeal filed by Dorner, he seemed less convinced.
Judge David P. Yaffe said he was “uncertain whether the training officer kicked the suspect or not” but nevertheless upheld the department’s decision to fire Dorner, according to court records reviewed by The Times….
I’m not trying to make excuses for Dorner’s bizarre behavior but these disciplinary cases hinging solely on the “credibility” of witnesses beholden to the department because of their own retirement calculations being at stake are patently unfair to the appellant because there are NO RULES OF EVIDENCE in force in any CA tribunal holding public employee disciplinary hearings. That is the sole reason for this long-held CA law:
Once the aggrieved employee is not granted his writ petition, he is free to sue and call in all of those “beholden-to-the-department” witnesses before a jury of his/her peers, after hitting each and every one of them with lengthy interrogatories and even deposing the ones who gave the most damaging testimony against him.
Believe it or not, it really isn’t that hard to find out the “special favors” granted by a department to each of its “star wits” in exchange for their testimony in a disciplinary hearing.
If there really WERE racist dept officials and witnesses who were instrumental in Dorner’s firing from the LAPD, it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened nor likely the last. This “covert racism” is MUCH easier to prove in a well-prepared-for court trial.
Dorner had options to pursue his “issues” with LAPD the right way but dropped the ball at a critical, time-sensitive point and is still seething (perhaps legitimately) years later. This part, to me, is very sad.
