Spy Drones Used To Hunt Down Christopher Dorner

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Express reports that as a task force of 125 officers continue their search for Christopher Dorner in the rugged terrain around Big Bear, it was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil. 'The thermal imaging cameras the drones use may be our only hope of finding him,' says a senior police source. 'On the ground, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.' The use of drones was confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed agents have been prepared for Dorner to make a dash for the Mexican border since his rampage began. 'This agency has been at the forefront of domestic use of drones by law enforcement.' Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer he accused of misconduct, has vowed to wreak revenge by 'killing officers and their families.' According to San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon: 'To be honest, he could be anywhere right now. Torching his own vehicle could have been a diversion to throw us off track. Anything is possible with this man.'"

Comments

Fascinating stuff

[paiute]

Christ, this whole thing is entertaining in a macabre way that I should not be enjoying, but I am. It's like bad guys vs badder guys. I don't know who to root against from day to day.

Re:Fascinating stuff

[Holi]

Yes they concluded that it was a false statement, while completely ignoring the fact that the victim and the victims father corroborated his story. Not that any of this excuses his actions in the slightest.

The way it begins

[Compaqt]

Of course, who could oppose using hundreds of drones to hunt down a cop-killer.

And the next suggestion will be, "Wouldn't it be a good idea for the drones to be able to fire, too?" So the next thing you know, you've got weaponized drones.

And after a decade or so, they won't be used to find mass murderers. Merely traffic offenders or people late on their alimony.

Re:The way it begins

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they use the drones to find the cops that shoot up random civilian vehicles and punish the cops.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/08/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130209

I'm all for purging the police with a little, nay a lot, of Police Style justice.

Think of the children

[wbr1]

We can find lost hikers, boy scouts, love struck teenage couples lost in the wilderness with this! Just look the other way when we use it to imprison or kill enemies of the state.

You have to wonder

[Lucas123]

Dorner kills and posts a diatribe about the LADP's corruption and abuse of the public, citing cases like Rodney King. I wonder if Dorner's plan all along was to create mayhem and then let the LADP step into it and bring their abuses to light through their own actions. Already, the LADP has opened fire on two people in cases of mistaken identity in the search for Dorner.

Re:You have to wonder

[LiENUS]

They shot up two women in a truck, and then in another incident rammed a man that in no way fit dorners description (thin white guy) in his truck and shot at him (he was not hit by any of the shots)

It gets better. They actually stopped him, talked to him, let him go then decided to ram him and shoot at him.

Re:No different than helicopters

[0123456]

What do drone "operator(s)" get paid compared to a helicopter pilot?

The great thing about drone operators is that you can outsource the job to China or India. So probably not much.

Re:No different than helicopters

[AK Marc]

R22 doesn't work for government. You need a Bell turbine helicopter because nearly all government helicopters are multi-purpose. If it can't tow a water bucket for forest fires, hold 2 wounded for evac, and all that, then it isn't worth buying. So they spend $5,000,000 on a nice turbine helicopter, and only flight schools touch Robinson (and a few private pilots who desperately want to own a helicopter for personal use).

OK then what about the 2nd amendment?

[mozumder]

So where are all the gun-nuts now?

Here's your government tyranny: Corrupt police railroading a cop that tried to expose their corruption, but because the law enforcement itself was corrupt, he uses 2nd amendment solutions.

Are all the gun-nuts going to start shooting the LAPD now? Why not? Are you for or against government tyranny?

Would it help if he was white?

Or are all the freedom-loving libertarians actually complete pussies, and only want to have 2nd amendment rights not to fight tyranny, but to keep an artificial sense of security for themselves by thinking they can fight a government armed with nuclear missiles and Hellfire-equipped drones?

Really, you're not doing a good job of promoting the 2nd amendment if you're not actually using it to fight tyranny. Might as well get rid of it, since you don't need it.

Re:OK then what about the 2nd amendment?

[fyngyrz]

Are all the gun-nuts going to start shooting the LAPD now? Why not? Are you for or against government tyranny?

This is about someone using weapons to fight out of control government. In this case, he's the only one who knows the facts, so it's appropriate that he's the one doing the fighting, taking the risks, etc. Before you can co-opt large numbers, you have to do a lot better job of establishing your case than anecdotes. Even if he's 100% right, no one else can really know that.

This is simply not the kind of issue where you'd see a revolt. It is neither serious enough, well documented enough, or of consequence to a wide enough spectrum of people.

It is, however, the kind of thing that will happen from time to time, as the powerful crush the lives and dreams of the (relatively) little guy. When you takes actions that ruin someone's life, you'd better be sure they've got plenty of reasons left not to go off the reservation, as it were.

Re:OK then what about the 2nd amendment?

[fyngyrz]

My dad killing your kid does not justify you killing me.

You, and all your generations.

or my siblings may decide

Not if there aren't any siblings left. See how that works? Turns out your dad's best bet is not to kill my kid. You'd be the first one to tell him so.

Re:OK then what about the 2nd amendment?

[fyngyrz]

If you want to be righteous and violent then their families are fair game, and then you'll get a lot of other opportunities to be a hero when they re-escalate in response.

No, it actually works like this.

If you want to actually reduce the violence and killing, of both the cops and innocents, then you need to show restraint and fight them within the system.

The system doesn't work. As this fellow has been telling you. Also, he tried to use the system. It chewed him up and spit him out, as it tends to do when it is challenged in any way. He's moved on to another methodology now. The system has only itself to blame.

Killing bad cops won't get rid of bad cops so only the good ones are left, it will just turn good cops borderline and borderline cops bad.

That's an assumption, one that goes counter to the ones this society is based upon. It has its corollary in "executing criminals and the consequent huge collateral damage to their families won't deter crime, it'll just turn others borderline and the borderline into criminals."

But in fact, what it does is breeds restraint and caution, which moves the borderline away from criminality, and keeps those who weren't even borderline well aware that living right is worth the candle. And when we execute the criminal, they stop committing crimes.

What you want to avoid doing is executing the innocent (or doing anything else to them, for that matter) because they and their families tend to get righteously pissed. Whereas the families of murderers and rapists also get hurt and pissed, but generally speaking, at the criminal, not the system. "YOU brought this on us!" "How could you!" and similar reactions.

Now, if the cops know that engaging in fuckery will get them targeted, and that everyone will suffer if they act like jackasses, not just them, and their families know that such fuckery will also likely get them targeted, the most likely result is that they will begin to actually do their jobs as they were intended to be done.

This is the way of war against something. You go after everything to do with the enemy that has besieged you. You take out the infrastructure, you blockade supplies, you drop on cities and you drop on industry and you drop on troops. You make the cost of being your enemy so high that no one wants to be your enemy. You do it until the other side cries "no more, no more" and convinces you they mean it. Then you occupy them and watch them for a while. In the interim, everyone else watches and goes "good grief, I don't want to be their enemy!"

This guy hasn't decided to play tit-for-tat. He's gone to war. And I'm not talking about modern, trained-to-fail warfare designed to use up munitions and equipment and keep the trough full for the military industrial complex; I'm talking about fuck-we're-facing-hitler-and-tojo all-out nuke-em burn-em where they stand war. And just like that war, the boys in blue started this one. He's already done far more damage to them than they can do to him; will he be able to do enough to make a difference in the sick, decayed culture of police officers? Remains to be seen. I rather think he may have already done so. Odds are good there's at least a spark of awareness already circulating among the police (and not just in LA) that when you step on people unjustly, they may bite back in a way the system can't insulate them from. The more so, now that a powerful example is being set.

It's revolution, writ small. Been a long time coming.

Re:OK then what about the 2nd amendment?

[fyngyrz]

Well I don't think it's well established that executions deter crime

It is 100% certain that an executed criminal will not commit another crime. So yes, execution deters crime.

I'm sure you've heard of agent provocateurs, the reality is if someone is really looking to take your rights away they're not going to take away your guns, they're going to try to goad you into using them.

So... you figure his trainer was kicking that homeless person in the head in order to goad the (then) trainee cop into later attacking the police department? I have to say, that's a stretch. Not buying it. :)

we've just lost the right not to be policed by drones

We never had such a right. After all the flowery verbiage dissipates, rights actually exist only in the context of someone with violent recourse available to them willing to stand up for a claim to a right. Almost always a group standing up for a member; (this case is particularly interesting because it's a member standing up for a group.) That's never been the case with drones; the government has repeatedly said it's ok to use them, and, they were already in use. When people start shooting drones down (and it's an absolute certainty that they will), that's when you'll develop some rights in the matter.

good cops have lost some ability to speak up about abuse without colleagues comparing them to this guy

As clearly demonstrated, there was no ability to speak up, to be lost. There can only be a gain in this department.

we've lost some right to walk down the street without being shot by some crazy cop

No, again, we didn't have any such right. Happens all the time. Rarely is there any blowback to the cop. And then there's this.

just like the 9/11 bombers made airports a hell of a lot less free

No, that was your legislature. Had nothing to do with the bombers, other than as an excuse. It'll backfire anyway. I stopped flying then; so did a lot of other people. We keep electing stupid, rich people. We keep getting stupid laws designed to benefit the rich. Eventually the public will figure it out.

This isn't a war you'll win, the most you'll do is create an enemy.

Not my war; it's this cop's. And near as I can tell, he's already won. He got his message out, he's generated a huge upwelling of sympathy, there's a lot of discussion of just how bad the cops really are, they haven't even caught him but he's already done more damage to them than remains available to do to him, he may yet do more, and the very, very large number of people who have been handled unfairly by the cops are all watching, no doubt while they take notes. A *lot* of people perceive him as a hero.

Finally, the police have been the enemy for many decades, and we didn't create the situation. They did. From bashing heads in Chicago to the "silent blue line" to beating "suspects", to confiscating people's cameras, money and property, they created the enemy that is them. Now some reaping comes, and in the final analysis, I can't say I'm the least bit surprised, except perhaps only in that it took so long.

Re:I just want to point out...

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, no. Police are not civilians; that's why the police call non-police citizens "civilians". Obviously, they wouldn't use that term if police were also civilians.

Police (in the USA) are a paramilitary force. That means they're neither full military, nor civilian. For parallels, read up on the Brownshirts and the SS.

Re:I wish

[0111 1110]

No. It wasn't collateral damage. He was intentionally going after the families of the crooked cops. Not only is it an exceedingly cold-blooded thing to do, but it ignores the fact that most cops are sociopaths and probably wouldn't even care all that much if a family member gets shot. As long as it isn't them.

I was on his side until I read that he was targeting family members. That is both sick and pointless since it won't even hurt the cold-blooded cops all that much. At least nowhere near as much as it would a real human being with normal feelings. I would have supported a bad cop killing spree, leaving only the few honest, law-abiding, non-sociopathic, cops alive, but how can anyone support the killing of family members?