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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.'"
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2135132,00.html
"In June 2011 a county sheriff in North Dakota was trying to track down three men, possibly carrying guns, in connection with some missing cows. He had a lot of ground to cover, so — as one does — he called in a Predator drone from a local Air Force base. It not only spotted the men but could see that they were in fact unarmed. It was the first time a Predator had been involved in the arrest of U.S. citizens."
This comes uncomfortably closely after the latest announcement of the drone authorisation map.
That are equipped with similar sensors.
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Use drones. Keep shooting random civilians until you find this man. Whatever it takes.
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.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
He's killing family members too. Any level of sympathy or understanding for his position went out the window when he declared war on presumably innocent bystanders. He might have had a cause but he damned it by his own actions.
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.
Silence is a state of mime.
....that making guns illegal for civilian use would not prevent evil cops like this one from murdering people.
Have the drones on the border only been going after sub-humans?
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.
If that worked, they wouldn't have taken so long to find Bin Laden.
We're talking about LA, an absolutely huge area ... spotting an infrared signature isn't exactly a small task if you're looking for something specific.
It's not like they can just click in the "find me this guy" command (yet) -- you have to know where to look.
Besides, all of the satellites you mention spend most of their time looking down at nude beaches anyway. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You can be sympathetic to the position without being sympathetic to the person. If Hitler said he loved cats i'd be sympathetic to his position.
The body count in the war on drugs is pretty high too
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Using drones that cause "collateral damage" to kill a suspect? What happened to the right to a fair trial, due process... ?
911. The bad guys won.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Once again, xkcd tells it like it is for would be survivalists.
Proverbs 21:19
This is wildly inaccurate. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits anyone from using the army or air force for law enforcement purposes without specific legal (Constitutional or statutory) authorization (18 USC Sec. 1385: "Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. "); since the Insurrection Act grants specific powers to the President in this regard (see 10 USC Sec. 331-336), the Posse Comitatus Act, viewed in conjunction with the Insurrection Act, limits the President less than anyone else, not more.
You know just over 30 years ago, "The use of unnecessary force has been approved" read over the police dispatch was a laugh line from a comedy. Now its apparent SOP in a completely serious way.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"' Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer he accused of misconduct"
You seems to be drinking the cool aid too easily. Every other source, the lapd over reaction and Dorners manifesto lead to believe that corruption coverups and raw incompetence was the name of the game for Lapd.
Ok Dorner is enemy public #1
but the LAPD looks like a fitting enemy public #2 and not just because they are shooting at anyhthing looking even remotely like a Nissan Pickup truck...
If Hitler said he loved cats i'd be sympathetic to his position.
Unless you are german. In that case showing the slightest sympathy for cats would be prove that you are a nazi.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ahh a tyrrany fight.
But just right now we are watching our low I.Q. boys shoot it out.
I just wonder how many more will get shot up in the name of this obviously personal battle. Two last I checked. Does anybody know what the Vegas line on this is?
Adding an armed drone could hike the casualty count nicely, more if it is cops and not military running the show. I don't care how much training you give a rock, it's still only smart as a rock, but with combat training. Police commonly exclude very high above average I.Q.s as independent thinkers and do not hire them.
Mustn't have anyone making decisions and judgement calls on their own now. I notice it doesn't stop corruption though. I think it would be o.k. to hire a few rocket scientists for a change.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Corrupt police railroading a cop that tried to expose their corruption, but because the law enforcement itself was corrupt, he uses 2nd amendment solutions.
How does murdering a basketball coach and her fiancé fit into that?
I don't really like gun nuts, but only the loopiest ones would say that Dorner is doing anything other than trying to get revenge for his perceived persecution.
I could support this man if he had not started out by killing a cops daughter and fiance.
Killing of the innocent should be avoided when possible.
And they should NEVER the targets.
He fucked up right there in my book.
Hope he takes out a couple of those murdering Fullerton PD cops before he gets killed or get put away forever though.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Sensationalist headline on multiple levels. First, law enforcement has been using drones already, ranging from cattle theft to border patrol. Second, the headline is trying to conflate the image with that of an ARMED drone which is extremely misleading; it's like saying that a law enforcement agency is targeting people with helicopters then posting a picture of an AH-64 Apache. This is not to negate the very real concerns that unmanned platforms introduce for law enforcement and civil liberties, but we shouldn't let hysteria get in the away of creating smarter policies.
I'm 100% against the use of drones, but lets not confuse this guy with someone who's using his 2nd Amendment rights to fight tyranny. Firstly, because even if he was railroaded, corruption in and of itself is not tyranny. Secondly, and more importantly, he lost claim to the moral high ground by targeting the family of those he has a grudge for -- two of the three victims were the daughter of someone he holds a grudge against and her fiancee. There's nothing heroic about that. That's murder, plain and simple.
Fighting a government? This guy murdered some cop's innocent kid and the cop's kid's fiancee. This wasn't collateral damage or some kind of mistake. He stalked them and murdered them.
How is that any sort of legitimate fight against a government?
--PM
I think that's rather a matter of individual perspective. A life of misery compared with a quick death? It's not cut and dry.
I think you're being more than a little disingenuous there. One of the things being accomplished, or at least how it looks from here, is that it is unsafe for everyone involved when a cop is being evil. Not only are they at risk, but their families as well. Now, while a cop may be a sociopath, the family now considers themselves at risk if he or she misbehaves, and additional pressure to behave may come out of that. And if not, well, good riddance to them anyway. Anyone who figures cops, legislators and lawyers should be free to do anything they want -- or who supports them in such fuckery -- should probably die in a fire anyway.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Cops murder people all the time. And they send innocent people off to their slaughterhouse prisons to die all the time. And they ruin innocent people's lives all the time. Families are hurt by that all the time. How is that a legitimate fight against crime? And why should their families be immune from the effects of their malfeasance, if the lives of the families of the people they abuse are not?
Actions have consequences. That's the lesson here. Not "omg, innocents!" And where were you when the lives of innocents were being ruined by these cops? Eh? Have you been pointing the finger at the cops for their daily, nay, hourly, maltreatment of innocents?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I agree that it is not a fight against the government as a whole, just a very tiny speck of it: a group of corrupt, violent LAPD officers and unfortunately their families as well. The killing of family members is certainly not the part of any "legitimate" fight, but he is probably assuming that the cops in question will be hurt by such killing, which may or may not be true. He certainly isn't just randomly killing people. His overall intent seems to be to fight against the corrupt cops that he witnessed committing cruel crimes and getting away with it. To bring them to justice in the only way he knows how. If it weren't for the targeting of family members I'd personally consider the guy a hero. Killing off all the bad cops is certainly one way to clean up our massively corrupt police force.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You, and all your generations.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, it actually works like this.
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.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Additionally, what makes you think I even know anything about what my dad has done? Since I am speaking hypothetically, "I" could be a snot-nosed little 2 year old who knows absolutely nothing about anything. You clearly find it despicable when one person ruins the life of an innocent (as do I), yet for some reason you seem to think it ok for another innocent life to be ruined just because they are related to the perpetrator of the initial act.
Blood feuds are always stupid.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
It is 100% certain that an executed criminal will not commit another crime. So yes, execution deters crime.
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 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.
As clearly demonstrated, there was no ability to speak up, to be lost. There can only be a gain in this department.
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.
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.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, there's your mistaken assumption right there. In a civilized society, cops don't kick homeless people in the face; they don't rally 'round the abuser and protect them when someone reports such an act; they don't fire the person reporting the act, and they don't intentionally wipe out their reputation. In a civilized society, all of the above go differently.
But in the society we actually have, this kind of thing, and this, is endemic, and eventually the people being abused, while being told to act civilized by the people committing the abuses, will decline to co-operate, and then the rest of us start having discussions like this one.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.