Another WHITE SUPREMACY problem, that affected another LIFE

THE SUSPECT
Racial legacy continues to haunt LAPD

By Michael R. Blood
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Fugitive Christopher Dorner's claim in an online "manifesto" that his career as a Los Angeles police officer was undone by racist colleagues conspiring against him comes at a time when it's widely held that the police department has evolved well beyond the troubled racial legacy of Rodney King and the O.J. Simpson trial.

Dorner, who is suspected in a string of vengeance killings, has depicted himself as a black man wronged, whose badge was unjustly taken in 2008 after he lodged a complaint against a white female supervisor.

"It is clear as day that the department retaliated against me", Dorner said in online writings authorities have attributed to him. Racism and officer abuses, he argued, have not improved at LAPD since the King beating but have "gotten worse".

Dorner's problems at the LAPD, which ended with his dismissal, played out without public notice more than four years ago, as the department gradually emerged from federal oversight following a corruption scandal. At the time, the office ranks were growing more diverse and then-Chief William Bratton was working hard to mend relations with long-skeptical minorities.

"This is no longer your father's LAPD", Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared in 2009, after the federal clampdown was ended.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice said the department should review the Dorner case and his claims, while stressing that she is not defending the suspect in any way and is shocked by the attacks.

She said the 10,000-member force headquartered in a glass-walled high-rise in downtown Los Angeles has entered a new era.

"The open racism of the days before is gone", said Rice, who closely tracks racial issues inside the department and has faced off against the LAPD in court. "The overall culture has improved enormously."

On Friday, a community of online sympathizers formed, echoing complaints against police that linger in some communities. One Facebook page supporting Dorner, which had over 2,300 fans by Friday evening, said "this is not a page about supporting the killing of innocent people. It's supporting fighting back against corrupt cops and bringing to light what they do."

The LAPD was once synonymous with violence and bigoted officers, whose culture and brand of street justice was depicted by Hollywood in films like "L.A. Confidential" and "Training Day".

In 1965, 34 people died when the Watts riots, triggered by a traffic stop of a black man by a white California Highway patrol officer, exposed deep fractures between blacks and an overwhelmingly white law enforcement community.

In the 1980s, gang sweeps took thousands of youths into custody. The O.J. Simpson trial deepened skepticism of a department already tarnished by the videotaped beating of King, the black motorist who was hit with batons, kicked repeatedly and jolted with stun guns by officers who chased him for speeding. Rioting lasted three days and killed 55 people after a jury with no black members acquitted three of the LAPD officers on state charges and a mistrial was declared for a fourth.

Much has changed. Whites now make up roughly a third of the department and, while under federal authority, LAPD moved to require anti-gang and narcotics officers to disclose their finances and worked on new tools to track officer misconduct.