The Sanctity of Life

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,
make violent revolution inevitable
--President John F, Kennedy

 Well I was there and I saw what you did,
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin,
I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies 
--In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins
 ______________________

[continuation of "Jumping the Reservation" on LAPD hostage actions against former Officer Christopher Dorner]:

The atmosphere surrounding the conduct of Law Enforcement (LE) in the United States is salted by our daily reality of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

Ranger has never been a LE officer, but his knowledge of the field was gained while a training specialist at the USA Military Police School & Training Center.  There, he taught Physical Nuclear and Physical Security, Special Reaction Teams (SRT) and Hostage Negotiation (HN) courses conducted by the  MP branch schools of the US Army.  The basis of ALL US Code is that all life is sacred and every effort must be made to preserve life in all LE activities.

So SRT's and HN's are mandated to protect even the life of the criminals during hostage barricade or any other police function.  All life has the same value used to be the central tenet of our system of police work.

(The one exception -- which will never occur in regular police environments -- is the application of deadly force sans Rules of Engagement in the execution of Nuclear Physical Surety and Security.  If a person or group of persons enters  a Nuclear Exclusion Security Zone, the goal is to kill them before they can secure entry to the facility. This is just something we accept as the alternative is unthinkable.)

In regular police work, once a hostage is barricaded, he should not be assaulted or killed with sniper fire unless the situation is about to go mobile or the scene commander determines that loss of life is imminent (the judgement call is seldom questioned.)

In Dorner's case, his barricade was preceded by his killing a Sheriff's Deputy and wounding of another; we do not know who fired the first shot.  But the question is moot since Dorner was no longer a mobile threat and did not have any hostages.

If the LAPD had established a proper inner and outer security zone, then the threat was contained -- even if Dorner were still armed and combative.  The imperative for the LE Officer is to resolve the situation without further violence.  So where was the Negotiator in the Dorner scenario?  What does the absence of a HN say about the intentions of the LAPD?

Why was the LAPD SRT operating outside of its jurisdiction? Why wasn't the statewide team with the proper jurisdiction not given control of the situation?  The conclusion would seem that the LAPD violated the concept of the sanctity of life and actively ignored US Code.

There is bleed-over from the fact that the US is in a PWOT © which is not a war, in which we believe that life is a commodity that is of less value to the enemy than to the friendlies.  When the National Command Authority sanctions the indiscriminate use of violence to counter terrorism, the concept of the sanctity of life is eroded throughout that society.

Neither LE nor the President have the power to terminate a life unless there are no other options to ensure the further preservation of life. War and LE have conflated in too many zones into terrible gryphon.

Each of us must determine if we are a nation of laws or if we wish to be reactive and vengeful in the application of violence, police and otherwise.