17:07 Feb 08 2013
Times Read: 465
Still a scary situation in the Southwestern part of the US. No one knows exactly where this man is.
BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (AP) — Police spent all night searching the snowy mountains of Southern California but were unable to find the former Los Angeles police officer accused of carrying out a killing spree because he felt he was unfairly fired from his job.
Authorities planned a midmorning Friday news conference about 80 miles east of LA at Big Bear Lake, where Christopher Dorner's torched pickup was found Thursday. The area was under a winter storm warning, with snow falling and temperatures well below freezing.
Local ski areas were open, but Bear Valley schoolchildren had the day off because of the manhunt.
About 150 miles to the south, up to 16 San Diego County sheriff's deputies spent the night surrounding and searching a rural home after a hoaxer reported Dorner was there. There were people at home but Dorner wasn't one of them, said Lt. Jason Rothlein. Investigators have a pretty good idea who made the call and will seek criminal charges, he said.
Though the focus is on the resort area, the search for Dorner, 33, stretches across California, Nevada, Arizona and northern Mexico. LAPD officers are especially on edge because Dorner, who was fired from the force in 2008 after three years on the job, promised in rambling writings to bring "warfare" to police and their families.
"We don't know what he's going to do," said Cindy Bachman, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, one of many law enforcement agencies whose primary purpose has become finding Dorner. "We know what he's capable of doing. And we need to find him."
Tracks that surrounded the truck and hours of door-to-door searching around Bear Mountain Ski Resort turned up nothing, and authorities conceded that the whereabouts of Dorner, also a former Naval reservist and onetime college running back, remained a mystery.
"He could be anywhere at this point," said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, who had 125 deputies and police officers and two helicopters searching the community of Big Bear Lake, where light snow fell early Friday morning.
The saga began Sunday night, when Monica Quan, the daughter of a former Los Angeles police captain, and fiance Keith Lawrence were found shot in their car at a parking structure at their condominium in Irvine. Quan was an assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton.
The following morning in National City, near San Diego, some of Dorner's belongings, including police equipment and paperwork with names related to the LAPD, were found in a trash bin.
The LAPD was notified of the find, and two days later informed Irvine police of an angry manifesto written by a former officer and posted on Facebook. Among those named as targets was Quan's father, Randal Quan, the former LAPD captain who became an attorney who represented Dorner in his unsuccessful attempts to keep the police job he lost in 2008 for making false statements.
"Bing bing bing, the dots were connecting," Irvine police Lt. Julia Engen said. "These names are somehow associated to Mr. Quan, who just lost his daughter the prior day. The dots connected. OK, now we've got a name of somebody to look at. That's when the discovery was connected."
On Wednesday night, Irvine and Los Angeles police announced they were searching for Dorner, declaring him armed and "extremely dangerous." Hours later, they learned they were all too correct.
Two LAPD officers en route to provide security to one of Dorner's possible targets were flagged down by a resident who reported seeing the suspect early Thursday at a gas station in Corona. The officers then followed a pickup truck until it stopped. The driver, believed to be Dorner, got out and fired a rifle, police said. A bullet grazed an officer's head.
Later, two officers on routine patrol in neighboring Riverside were ambushed at a stoplight by a motorist who drove up next to them and opened fire with a rifle. One died and the other was seriously wounded but was expected to survive, said Riverside police Chief Sergio Diaz.
Thousands of heavily armed officers patrolled highways throughout Southern California, while some stood guard outside the homes of people police said Dorner vowed to attack. Electronic billboards, which usually alert motorists about the commute, urged them to call 911 if they saw him.
At a news conference held amid heightened security in an underground room at police headquarters, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck urged Dorner to surrender.
"Of course he knows what he's doing; we trained him. He was also a member of the Armed Forces," he said. "It is extremely worrisome and scary."
While in the Naval Reserves, Dorner earned a rifle marksman ribbon and pistol expert medal. He was assigned to a naval undersea warfare unit and various aviation training units, according to military records, taking a leave from the LAPD to be deployed to Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.
He wrote that he would "utilize every bit of small arms training, demolition, ordinance and survival training I've been given," the manifesto read.
The hunt led to two errant shootings in the pre-dawn darkness Thursday.
LAPD officers guarding a target named in the manifesto shot and wounded two women in suburban Torrance who were in a pickup truck delivering newspapers. Investigators said Maggie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, were in a Toyota Tundra, similar to Dorner's Nissan Titan. Carranza had minor hand injuries. Hernandez was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the back. A lawyer said they had no warning.
Minutes later, Torrance officers responding to a report of gunshots encountered a dark pickup matching the description of Dorner's, police said. A collision occurred and the officers fired on the pickup. The unidentified driver was not hit and it turned out not to be the suspect vehicle, they said.
In San Diego, where police said Dorner tied up an elderly man and unsuccessfully tried to steal his boat Wednesday night, Naval Base Point Loma was locked down Thursday after a Navy worker reported seeing someone who resembled Dorner.
Navy Cmdr. Brad Fagan said officials believe Dorner had checked into a base hotel on Tuesday and left the next day without checking out. Numerous agencies guarded the base on Thursday. Fagan said Dorner was honorably discharged and that his last day in the Navy was last Friday.
Nevada authorities also joined the search, because Dorner owns a house nine miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
And agents were inspecting a package sent to CNN's Anderson Cooper that arrived in New York on Feb. 1, days before the first two killings. It contained a note on it that read, in part, "I never lied." A coin typically given out as a souvenir by the police chief was also in the package, riddled with bullet holes.
Dorner's writings suggested he did not expect to live through the ordeal.
"Unfortunately, I will not be alive to see my name cleared," he wrote at one point in his manifesto, later saying, "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago."
http://news.yahoo.com/calif-schools-closed-where-ex-cops-truck-found-160720470.html
This is really sad all the way around. It isn't like this man can disguise himself. His looks are very recognizable and he is so young, only 33.
COMMENTS
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AnaliethiaThionoeSangita
08:40 Feb 20 2013
This is a consultation with a colleague...
A young man kills 20 children and 6 adults in a town in Connecticut. But why? I have worked with many of my colleagues and listens to killers as an expert psychological witness in murder cases, I have spent a lot of my time over the last few years trying to understand how and why young men and women kill, maim, and attack others.
The mass murders like those in Connecticut, Colorado, Virginia are followed by shock, anger, and sadness. These are understandable first- hand reactions, but in the long run they accomplish nothing.
As long as the discussion does not move beyond labeling these events "senseless violence," horrors like these, we will never move us closer to a place of deeper understanding. A greater understanding is crucial here, because understanding leads to more peace and less violence through preventive action. All the crime scene investigations in the world will not do this.
Although all our instincts urge us to dissociate from the killer, achieving better understanding requires us to put ourselves in his or her shoes no matter how frightening and distasteful that may be, that my friends is why I did what I did with that unsavory woman. I have done this over the past few years, and I have learned that it is the only way we can understand a fundamental truth: Although to the rest of us, the observers and the victims, extreme acts of violence seem "senseless," these murderous acts make sense to the shooters.
This is true whether it be Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut; James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado; Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech; Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in Columbine, Colorado, and the thousands of others who wage war against their society, either in the form of high-profile massacres, or the daily grind of shootings around the country that barely make the local news.
How do we go about this process of "making sense?" Do not confuse this as a way of excusing it, but rather as a path to understanding and preventing violence. We start by recognizing that many young Americans (and other young people around the world) develop and carry with them a kind of moral damage, which some have come to call "the war zone mentality."
No matter how it develops, they grow up with a damaged sense of reality. They view the world as if they are soldiers confronting a hostile environment that they perceive to be full of enemies. An example of that behavior being that they record everyone they speak with. Once they get fixated with their skewed world view, they may hatch the delusion that even teachers, and young children are their enemies. For Adam Lanza, apparently even his mother was an enemy who had to be destroyed.
There is no one cause. It is as if they are building a tower of blocks, one by one, that can get so high the blocks fall over, with innocent people dying. Some examples of these building blocks can be found in dangerous neighborhoods, or schools rife with bullying. They can be found throughout the Internet and mass media. there are many, many web sites and videos that promote paranoid views of the world, and validate violent action in retaliation. This site being one on that list.
You can find them in the pervasive and intense playing of video games, with the hands-on virtual violence that desensitizes young people to proxy killing. These games have become a psychological pathway to real killing by dampening impulses of compassion and altruism.
The blocks can also come from a culture that supports access to lethal weapons. As many states have little to no gun control the crazy availability of guns like the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle used by Adam Lanza that are, in effect, weapons of mass destruction when turned against children at school, or moviegoers in a theater or shoppers at a mall have cost countless lives. These weapons have no place in the hands of mentally unsound civilians.
Moral damage and a misperception of reality, usually, are not enough to lead to murder. The typical killer is emotionally damaged and has developed mental health problems, perhaps exacerbated by being bullied and rejected by peers, or abused and neglected at home. He or she might be suffering from profound sadness, depression, despair, self aggrandizement and narcissism.
The mental health problems that result from emotional damage require more, not less, social support, and not just from parents, who may be overwhelmed and ashamed of their offspring. The children and young men and women can be socially isolated because their damage makes peers and the community turn away from them, and that only compounds their problems.
Couple deluded thinking and rage with the rationale of the war zone mentality, and the result can be a boy or young man ready to kill, sometimes with horribly spectacular results. This is more commonly seen in the "routine" killings that I consult on as a psychological expert witness in murder cases across the country.
The crucial point is that even "crazy" people operate in a particular culture, a particular society, a particular time and place, and within a certain world view of how to manage your rage, your hurt, and your sadness. While not uniquely American (it has happened in recent years in Europe and the Middle East), the mass murder that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, is especially an American trait.
Our increasingly socially toxic culture promotes paranoia, desensitization to violence, almost unlimited access to lethal weapons, opportunities to practice mass murder via realistic "point and shoot" video games, and games that justify violence as a legitimate form of vengeance in pursuit of an individual's or group's idea of justice.
That begs the question, what do we do? We can improve mental health services in schools and communities, and discourage bullies by supporting the ones being bullied even if you don't like them. Many parents are frustrated that there is nowhere to go with their troubled kids.
We can work harder at getting kids to share disturbing information with adults with the confident expectation that those adults will help not punish and stigmatize. We can get behind efforts to increase screening for people that wish to purchase guns.
We can step up efforts to prevent kids from having access to the point-and-shoot violent video games. We can work harder at creating emotionally safe schools where bullying and rejection are antithetical to school spirit. We can do the same for online sites as well. One part of this is teaching boys that being compassionate and emotionally expressive is part of manhood in the 21st century.
If we don't help, there will be more dead and wounded. It has become an American phenomenon, and an epidemic. Only by getting close to killers and finding out what we need to do to integrate troubled youths and young adults into society do we have any hope of preventing more carnage.
There will be a large number of mass murders in the coming months because of a predicted trend in the masses.
This coincides with a large number of people finally feeling the effects of being jobless for an extended time. The ones at most risk are the socially awkward because they are already unstable and have a feeling of rejection.
Rejection coupled with financial difficulties on them or perhaps the parents of them causes strain on the relationships and as a result they may feel like a burden, or even may be told they are a burden, and as a result they feel resentment.
This resentment can cause a large number of chain reactions most of which are relatively harmless, but an alarmingly large percent of them will attempt or succeed at suicide, 10-15% which is enough to take notice.
But the number that worries me the most is the percentage of people that will lash out before killing themselves as a result. That number is less then the first but anything more then 1% is a dramatic increase. And the number is 4-6% this is alarmingly high!
1) It is as close as you can get to a scientific fact in this field, that is still in its infant stages, with many supporting studies that include everything from conditioned responses, to behavioral and social interaction, that seeing violence on a daily basis will cause you to become desensitized to it; the more you see it's the less you care.
In psychology, desensitization or inurement is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. It also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary. Thank you Wikipedia... XD
I know that the rare time that I play these games, and believe me it is rare, I nearly jump out of my seat when I am killed and that little controller vibrates, but the more I play the less that happens.
An example of the opposite of this would be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death.
I work on cases that I would say would make you sick if you saw some of the things I have seen. But over time I have become desensitized to it. And to be honest, unless you were at the crime scene and saw it first hand most people would associate it with as much care as say "Law and Order" victim photos.
These things should be horrific to us, but they are not because of desensitization. Now that same desensitizing can be used for treating people with PTSD or phobias. But uncontrolled subjection to this kind of mentality produces that very thing.
This is only a supporting factor anyway, and I am not implying that if you play point and shoot video games for an extended period of time that you will be automatically subconsciously obliged to climb up a clock tower and begin picking people off one by one.
This is merely saying that in cases like these it is a contributing factor. One of the blocks so to speak. As such parents should be more discriminative of what there child is exposed to on a regular basis.
2) The encouraging of young boys and men to open up about their feelings is so that if some one that is an "at risk" youth are having fantasies of murdering people they will feel more comfortable opening up about it. Then we can address the issue more closely and get them the help they need before we have another violent out burst.
It may not always work but it will help in diminishing the feelings they have of isolation. Open disclosure met with understanding and proper tools to combat the urge to act on delusions or violent fantasies.
3) The true source of this is mental illness. However lets not forget there are many mental illnesses that are caused by external and social factors.
For the purchase of weapons I believe that increasing screening, and background checks to include psychological histories and screenings as a requirement might help.
Then to also have everyone that buys a gun be required by law to register it and again every year after, if the gun can not be produced at the end of the year, they be brought up with federal charges of distributing firearms illegally. Of course these ideas are just that, ideas, and would need refinement before implication, but it isn't entirely out of the question.
I didn't "count the countless" as you said. I merely gave recent examples of these incidents. These incidents should not be put into the same category as gang violence, because these are a different type of violence all together.
There are plenty of occasions where innocent lives were lost where no gun was involved, but add a gun to the equation and the overall carnage would increase. It becomes more difficult to stop someone with a gun and 20+ rounds on him then a man with a knife or just his fists.
You seem to be under the mentality that the issue is too big to deal with, so why care. Apathetic attitudes like that are part of the problem. Breaking it down and doing what you can in your community is the first step. There are more community activist then you may think out there.
First off I want to say thanks for all of the interest in this subject and there are so many great points in here it is hard to pick out just one to address. I will simply attempt to give a blanket rebuttal for now and focus on the details a little later.
I believe that many of you have taken a few of my suggestions to the extreme here. I am a gun owner myself and I own many semi- automatic rifles. I believe more "average Americans" not less should own guns.
I was merely stating that there should be a registration of these weapons, and reregistration of them every year. It would help in tracing weapons used in crimes and help to identify criminals. If the serial number is filed off the make and model is still easy to see and can be cross referenced with ones that are failed to be reregistered, for what ever reason. There are already plenty out there unregistered, I am aware, but within a decade or so that number will decrease rapidly.
In regards to the issue with gun free neighborhoods. I will have to respectfully disagree if criminals were to get wind of a whole neighborhood of people without guns wouldn't it become an easy target?
When it comes to mental health background checks and screening, I was referring to the more extreme cases. I doubt anyone wants a schizophrenic to own a gun. As even the heavily medicated ones are know for abruptly discontinuing their medication with desatorous results.
I am not suggesting that someone that has to take a Xanex at the end of a stressful day be considered mentally unsound. I am merely, suggesting those individuals that would be unfit to stand trial, be unfit to carry, own, or have access to firearms. Fact is a large portion of these people are already on disability and most likely can not afford them anyway.
On the issue of protection against a tyranical government, I agree with both Caekwalk and Ikea, you both have extremely good points. I think if the government were to attempt to take me down I seriously doubt me owning a gun would stop them. But that raises up the point I made about apathy. If it is just me, no one would care, if it was a small group, same thing. Although there may be a few protesting onlookers, within a week it would be old news.
The desensitization of the general public is an issue, people not only are turning a blind eye to bulling and injustices, but condoning them. Some even taking pleasure in the pain it causes another, for whatever reason. Do you really believe that a nation so divided could stand up to a government force with tactical nuclear weapons at their disposal? Yet that is an entirely different issue.
And again Masigno the terrorists are in a different category as they are often planned out in extreme advance, and are highly likely to be organized by more then one individual making a political statement. These are no such thing, they are the acts of people feeling alone and backed into a corner with no way out.
That is why increasing sensitivity training for school teachers. Just as teaching them how best to approach with discretion when addressing someone that shows the symptoms of being "at risk" is a good idea. So as to not further single them out and contribute to their feelings of isolation.
Providing a larger support system decreases the chance of people feeling like there is nowhere to turn. More mental healthcare providers such as school counselors, can help as well. The lower the counselor/student ratio the lower the chance of someone falling through the cracks.
Parents and education providers impressing upon all age groups, starting very at a young age, of the importance of treating others with compation and understanding can go along way in prevention also.
As I am starting to get tired I will wrap this up by saying. I do not support gun banning, just more tracking, training, and education. My main concern has been and always will be the state of the public mental health system, as well as the inadequate number of mental health workers available.
~Ana