LAPD: Then and Now

In a new era that has transformed from the rage and angst spawned from the LA Riots of 1992, the LAPD has seen less and less media coverage and consequently less public criticism. Over 20 years after the revolutionary uprising that destroyed parts of Los Angeles due to the mistreatment of minorities, especially African-Americans, the focus of attention has shifted from internal American issues to the fear of terrorism from international enemies. With media outlets such as Fox, CNN, and ABC reporting on nearly every violent or potentially harmful transpiration Americans have found themselves anticipating an external attack when the real problems lie within our political, judicial, and law enforcement systems. The west coast race struggle has migrated to the east coast with the NYPD on blast because of their new stop and frisk law allowing any NYPD officer to stop any “suspicious” character and frisk them at their will. This new enforcement policy commanded the headlines for about two weeks then fell out of the news and out of the public eye. Out of sight, out of mind right? That’s the way the media (corporate business moguls who have a hand in nearly every political movement because of their monetary value and power) controls what the public hears, sees, and ultimately feels. However, there was one man who took matters into his own hand in February of 2013 in order to bring the attention back on the racism and corruption flowing within the department. Dorner was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for giving false statements regarding a female officer beating an schizophrenic man after he was already down and hand cuffed. Dorner began his vengeful spree with the killing of Monica Quan, the daughter of a former police captain who represented him in the hearings. Dorner maintained the notion that this officer was out of her legal authority when striking the man. Something like the murder of a women’s basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton in the second safest city in all of the United States, Irvine, is hard to keep out of the news. For the first week there was a statewide manhunt for this “cop killer” who also fired upon and killed two county sheriffs just south of Big Bear Lake. However, the manhunt ended rather abruptly at a cabin in Big Bear, and after that it was like none of this ever happened. Not a trace of what actually happened in that cabin or the manifesto Dorner wrote to expose the corruption and racism in the department were to be found on a major media scale. I find it quite alarming that this man was so easily disregarded as “crazy” and “disgruntled” because at one point he was a part of the most controversial police agency in the United States. What most people didn’t hear was that in their search for Dorner, who was to be shot on site, was that two Hispanic paper delivery women were shot by LAPD officers because their truck was similar to Dorners. The thing that I just don’t get is how an entire nation can see this happen and yet somehow nobody digs deeper and tries to uncover some of the truth that was potentially hidden in the manifesto full of anger and hatred. This one-man riot of the LAPD in 2013 will never have as much of a historical identity as the riots of 1992. It seems to me that nobody will even remember Dorner if 1992 any indication as to how important social uprising is to the contextual history of our country.