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.

Jumping the Reservation

  Bang bang, he shot me down 
Bang bang, I hit the ground 
--Bang, Bang, Sonny Bono 
___________________

[Note: Ranger wrote the following piece last night, before news of Dorner's death.]

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck calls cop-killer Christopher Dorner "a domestic terrorist," but is he?  What IS a domestic terrorist?

Was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh one?  He did try to develop an organization and attacked a government target, apparently hoping to garner support and membership as a result of his criminal actions.

Ted Kaczynski ("The Unabomber") was another person who used terrorist tactics, but he was a lone wolf with no pretensions to organization or structure, either for the purpose of support or group affiliation.  His actions could be described as nihilistic.

Former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner believes himself wronged, and belatedly targeted those he believed responsible for his "decline".  His actions seem to spring from paranoid ideation rather than terrorist aspirations.  He is collecting a perverted payback.

Labeling Dorner a terrorist unleashes a broad array of extralegal actions which may be taken against him. We have become acclimated to these illegal responses because we justify that terrorism must be combated at all costs, as it is a scourge to be blamed for all the ills that plague our daily lives.  But it is too facile to label a protester or a nutcase a "terrorist", and we must have some rigor in our definition.

Everything is not terrorism, even if it walks and talks like a terrorist.  Terrorists create mayhem any way they can via their unpredictability. We are a reductionist and cookie cutter society, and we are also an overstimulated society, in need of ever greater drama to keep us somewhat awake. Ergo, violence = terrorism, and the Constitution may be trashed in the process.

Beyond the questionable designation of the shooter as a terrorist, can that designator be applied to our President and his Administration?  Is President Obama acting as a terrorist when he dispatches hit teams to foreign lands?  Is the SEAL with 30 assassinations under his belt who killed Osama bin Laden a terrorist?

Ranger's analysis of Dorner is that he will not kill again capriciously because he has shot his wad.  He has shown the world how pissed off he is and there is no further need for killing; he has had his catharsis.

If he shoots again, it will be because he is cornered (Report: Dorner's wallet found in burned-out cabin.) [He did shoot again, as he was cornered.]  He will fight because he knows he is dead whatever the outcome, and he will try to take a few more government agents out with him.  He, and we, know that the LAPD wants to kill him.

He will not shoot any women or children [Donner did not kill the maids who discovered him, and he also  stole a man's truck, telling him, "'I don't want to hurt you. Just get out of the truck and start walking up the road.' [The man] asked if he could get his dog out of the back. Dorner said, "Okay, but don't take time to get a leash."]

All murder is not terrorism, but terrorism is often murderous.  The goal of cutting terrorists from the herd is a reasonable one; however, it must be done within a legal framework, one which is already firmly in place, if it has not always been employed.  People are so brainwashed to believe that terrorists are other than criminals, belonging to some rarefied category outside the body of law, that they will cheer the use of drones upon one designated, "terrorist", even though this violates his due process of law, one of the central tenets of our democracy.

Ranger hopes the rogue L.A. cop is arrested (not "captured", which is a designator used in combat, which this is not).  However, the propaganda buildup in the press does not bode well for this outcome.