Chris Dorner had three options. He could either be dead
(SPOILER: He chose this one), he could have been caught and awaiting trial or
he could still be running from the police. In other words, Chris Dorner could
either have become a martyr, or he could be waiting to step into a spotlight
before an LA County judge before fading into the anonymity of a jail cell or he
could have simply continued to groom his enshrouding legend.
Dorner was a spectacle already, well before cops cornered
him in a hunting lodge in the California mountains. Depending on how LAPD killed
him – let’s say a report comes out that he was unarmed, shot in the back or they
accidentally shot someone else’s truck forty-seven times before a stray bullet
hit the fleeing fugitive - Dorner could have become a bigger spectacle, maybe even
a Rodney King-esque hero for the oppressed populations of Los Angeles and/or
all of America. If the LAPD had somehow slapped cuffs over Dorner’s wrists
while blood is still flowing through them, he could have become a bigger
spectacle, but one contained to the level of a Charles Manson: psychotic and
rambling, asserting his righteousness over the laughter of an increasingly
jaded audience. If that’s the case, someone ought to warn Dorner from getting any
forehead tattoos.
But let’s say he’d have kept running, and many certainly
seemed to have wanted that. Let’s say he manages to bust through the ring of
cops sieging his makeshift mountain fortress and steals a horse from the nearby
corral. What happens if the ex-cop gallops off into the sunset (This wouldn’t
happen, as Dorner would probably head south towards Mexico and the sun sets in
the west)? Would people have managed to turn his story into some kind of Robin
Hood revival?
I am, unfortunately, inclined to say that the rambling
murderer might have become a corruption-fighting hero for the little guy/common
man. Days ago, he already had a significant number of online
fans. It would have been easy, for these people at least, to make Dorner
out to be Robin Hood, fighting the evil of King John and his corrupt henchmen, in
this case the Los Angeles Police Department. Arnold Schwarzenegger would
obviously be cast as some kind of King Richard the Lionhearted figure, whose
absence from political life allows for the oppression to thrive and whose
return, perhaps as the commissioner of some reform-minded committee, squashes
the bad guys and saves the good. Give me a second; I’ve got to flesh out the
rest of this script…
But drawing metaphors between the LAPD and one of the more
famously corrupt monarchical institutions in English history[1]
isn’t that hard to do. Two LAPD cops shot up a suspicious truck believed to
contain Dorner. Unfortunately, instead of being a gray Nissan containing a
single, muscle-bound black man, the truck that ended up being riddled with
bullet holes was a blue Toyota carrying two Asian ladies.
Even handing out copious apologies, disciplinary measures
and free
replacement trucks won’t cover up such terrible incompetence, which wasn’t
only poorly timed, but also appears to be systemic.
Unfortunately for people hoping for transparency or reform
or some kind of positive change to occur within the LAPD, Chris Dorner is their
challenger. Fortunately for the LAPD, Chris Dorner is their challenger.
Chris Dorner, whose past is decent. Getting fired for
standing up to police brutality is perhaps the most honorable way to be dishonorably
discharged from the force. He seemed like a good cop who was unfairly removed
for challenging authority at an inopportune time.
And then he published the incredibly concerning and
frustrating and confusing manifesto of threats and revelations and advice to
Tim Tebow.
And then he shot and killed a good handful of people. These
victims, ranging from cops to cops’ family, were not at all related to the case
he protested or his subsequent firing.
Sure, murderous psychotics are littered throughout history
books, and many of them went onto great success. And sure, you could make that
utilitarian argument that those few lives lost were justified by the resulting benefit
to the many. But, to the disappointment the many Chris Dorner Facebook fan
clubs or the group of protesters who gathered near the site of the martyring
carrying signs that pleaded for the man’s safe release, this ex-cop is a little
to murderous and not enough revolutionary.
He isn’t a hero, and he shouldn’t be made out to be one.
Unfortunately, the other options aren’t all that heroic. And we certainly are desperate for heroes, aren't we?
[1] The aforementioned King
John was on watch when his vassals revolted and forced him to sign the Magna
Carta, a coup for freedom lovers well before Americans even existed.
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