HuffPo | Fugitive former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner's claim in an online "manifesto" that his career 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 toward 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 officer 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.
Dorner's allegations led Police Chief Charlie Beck on Saturday to order a reexamination of the disciplinary case that led to the former officer's firing. Beck said he wanted to assure the city that the department "is transparent and fair in all the things we do."
"I am aware of the ghosts of the LAPD's past, and one of my biggest concerns is that they will be resurrected by Dorner's allegations of racism," Beck said in a statement.
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.
