Manhunt

[zk]

[quote=no_such_reality]In today’s disgusting LAPD behavior, Chief Beck proceeding to proclaim it’ll take days to get the facts around the shooting of the two women.

He then proceeding to claim that the shooting occurred in two groups after the women accelerated towards the second group of officers.

Yea, that explains those 46 holes in the back.[/quote]

So they’re getting shot at, and they don’t know who is shooting at them. Of course they’re going to flee. And if there are cops in front of them, of course they’re going to be heading towards them. Doesn’t sound like any kind of excuse at all.

Over/under on what this incident will cost the LAPD? If somebody died, I’d put it at $10M. Since nobody did, I’m going to guess $5M.

[spdrun]

If I were a lawyer, I’d ask for a renaming of the LAPD as part of the settlement. LAID (LA Idiocy Department) would work for me.

[desmond]

Beck did come clean last night on a TV interview and said the women had no fault on their part and that he, (LAPD) takes full responsiblity. To late for that. Now he is going to reopen the firing case for Dorner.. Pretty shocking that they have not found him, and have you noticed not much press on the manhunt? Sounded like his truck axle broke so he must have got stuck, to evade this manhunt Dorner is like Rambo. If he was not a killer you could call him DB Dorner.

[raty4R]

It’s all good now. The LAPD, oops I mean tax payers are buying the women a new truck.
“LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced Saturday his department will provide a new truck to two women injured by officers in pursuit of fugitive ex-cop Christopher Jordan Dorner.
Read more at http://ktla.com/2013/02/09/delivering-newspapers-then-caught-in-a-hail-of-lapd-bullets/#BrgxJwFl2sQLEhHU.99 ”

[NotCranky]

The police know where he is at. They consider this sensitive information at the time and it is not being shared. Just seems probable.

My guess is they have him pinned down and trapped. Waiting for the elements to beat him down or just proceeding very cautiously. Maybe they even have him in custody , dead or alive, but probably trapped.

That seems like the way to interpret the silence in the press.

[profhoff]

Seems unlikely they know where he is. The LAPD is offering a million dollar reward now that they admit the manhunt has failed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/christopher-dorner-authorities-reward

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/10/us-usa-california-cop-idUSBRE9160SM20130210

[NotCranky]

Could be, or it could be that they are using the reward to tease out aiders and abettors or evidence in the murders. Maybe I underestimate how clever this wanted man is or how stupid the police are.

[all]

On Big Bear since yesterday, not much going on. Three parked media vans and that’s about it. I jumped to big bear from snow summit, the road is open, the resort is as busy as usual.

[no_such_reality]

Dorner manhunt leads LAPD SWAT to Lowe’s store in Northridge

[quote]The manhunt for Christopher Dorner led LAPD SWAT officers to a Northridge Lowe’s home improvement store after people reported seeing someone who resembled the fugitive former police officer there.

LAPD swarmed the store off Nordhoff Street about 5 p.m. Customers were escorted out of the store as police looked for any signs of Dorner.

LAPD stressed that it was an unconfirmed sighting.

[Updated 7:27 p.m.: A law enforcement source said the call to the Lowe’s might have been related to a couple fighting outside the store].[/quote]

Yep, have an argument with your spouse in the parking lot, cause SWAT to swarm the store.

[zk]

[quote=bearishgurl]
This is US 93, a mostly two-laner along the rim of the Hoover Dam, 35 mi SE of Las Vegas. A slow, comm’l truck-filled border crossing, this area is highly patrolled at ALL times. It would be only too easy to spot his vehicle there …[/quote]

Maybe, if we knew what vehicle he was driving. But since his truck burned up, we don’t.

You gotta wonder if he might lay low for a while. Law enforcement can’t keep this level of presence up forever. Maybe he’ll wait until things settle down and then go after his primary target (whoever that is). Tough to lay low when you have such a distinctive appearance and everybody in the country is looking for you, I know. But maybe he’s had a plan for that all along.

I wonder if the whole truck thing was a ruse. If he planned this all weeks or months (or even years) in advance, he coulda had another car up there. So, bring your truck up there, the vehicle everybody is looking for. Break the axle, on purpose, by hitting a rock or something. (Who breaks an axle? That’s gotta be tough to do. He probably wouldn’t be driving like a maniac up there. It would only draw attention to himself. You gotta be stealthy in his situation.) You break the axle on purpose so that when they find your truck, they think you are in the immediate area. You have to be because you broke your axle and of course you didn’t bring an extra car.

Then he sets his truck on fire. Why set it on fire? To make sure it’s found. If he just left it there with a broken axle, it might taken a while for anybody to notice it and connect it to Dorner. If he sets it on fire, it gets noticed right away. Which is part of his plan.

Plus, why would he go to Big Bear (other than to perpetrate this ruse)?

So he gets everybody to think he’s in Big Bear, and then he scurries to god knows where to hide out. Or maybe there was another reason (a better one) for the ruse that I’m not thinking of.

He talked about using all his training, and the element of surprise. He said he would use unconventional and asymmetrical warfare. So, to me, him having such a plan doesn’t seem far-fetched.

[zk]

So I was thinking, there’s an airport in Big Bear. Getting in and out of Big Bear is immensely faster and easier if you can fly. I used to live in Upland. It took maybe an hour and a half or more by car to get to Big Bear. A friend had a plane, and it took 20 minutes to fly there. I’m thinking Dorner probably can’t fly, but let’s check it out. I googled it, and apparently he can fly. Wouldn’t be that hard to get an airplane (not by walking up to the rental counter, obviously) and fly out of there. You’d be over Victorville before the fire on your truck was out.

[desmond]

Did you see how badly burned the truck was? The tires were melted and not much was left but a shell, you can’t do that by striking a match and throwing it in the cab, especially in that cold weather, not easy to do. He had to have planned that. Having a car and fleeing would be very difficult, paying everything in cash, trying to hide your identity with your picutre all over the news? If he did not have a car then that would be even harder to elude the manhunt up in that environment. Either way he is really pissing the LAPD and others off.

[bearishgurl]

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….

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd-dorner-20130211,0,2498334.story

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:

http://law.onecle.com/california/civil-procedure/1094.6.html

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.

[ucodegen]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=ucodegen]…To get to Arizona, you can also go through Nevada then to Arizona..[/quote]

This is US 93, a mostly two-laner along the rim of the Hoover Dam, 35 mi SE of Las Vegas. A slow, comm’l truck-filled border crossing, this area is highly patrolled at ALL times. It would be only too easy to spot his vehicle there …[/quote]BTW, I forgot to mention.. it is no longer a two laner, and it no longer goes across the dam. The dam is now closed to cross traffic.
[img_assist|nid=17140|title=Hover Dam from new Bypass Bridge|desc=|link=popup|align=center|width=199|height=133]

[quote zk]So, bring your truck up there, the vehicle everybody is looking for. Break the axle, on purpose, by hitting a rock or something. (Who breaks an axle? That’s gotta be tough to do. He probably wouldn’t be driving like a maniac up there. It would only draw attention to himself. You gotta be stealthy in his situation.) You break the axle on purpose so that when they find your truck, they think you are in the immediate area.[/quote]I did a bit of research on the rear axles for Nissan Titan. It turns out that they do have a problem known by offroaders. The rear spider gear assembly is weak. This is only a problem when towing w/ larger tires or running really large off-road tires. I suspect the axle is not broken in his case.. it is the media having to ‘add something’ to be able to ‘repost’ something that is essentially the same as if it was updated news.. btw- how can you move around w/ 30 weapons??.. it is the ammo that you want a large quantity of, and a few very good weapons. About the spider gear assembly, you can only break it if you have good traction. In wet, snowy conditions.. you don’t have good traction.
[quote zk]So I was thinking, there’s an airport in Big Bear. Getting in and out of Big Bear is immensely faster and easier if you can fly. [/quote]But there may be an issue w/ having to file a flight plan. I suspect that he may have headed out through Lucerne Valley (to Victorville , Barstow, Mojave, and then back to LA). It is possible to skip Victorville completely on 247. The shorter path near Pearblossom is mostly 2 lane roads, not so commonly travelled and easier to control.
[quote=bearishgurl]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.[/quote]True.. but look at it from his side. He is military trained, not legal. He is unfamiliar with the process of using the courts and after the last ‘judge’ issue.. he probably feels that he can not get justice through the courts. He probably thinks that after this last one, there is no more recourse through the courts. He is probably taking the only course of action that he feels that he can.

[zk]

[quote=ucodegen]But there may be an issue w/ having to file a flight plan.[/quote]

A flight plan is not required for VFR flight. (And even if it was, he could just not file one and nobody would ever know.)

Authorities are now speculating that he might’ve fled to Mexico. What better way to get there unnoticed than in a Cessna? The DEA and ICE monitor northbound flights very closely. I’m not sure how closely they monitor southbound ones, but a clever operator could make it work.

[Author]

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