“It was not on purpose. We didn’t intentionally burn down that cabin to get Mr Dorner out,” San Bernardino sheriff’s department spokesman John McMahon told reporters last night.
The part of the press conference where police took questions lasted little longer than five minutes and officials seemed reluctant to give any details, with one question at the end about whether or not police offered Dorner a chance to surrender being ignored.
Police denied intentionally setting fire to the cabin despite an L.A. Times report yesterday which confirmed that after first having used “traditional” tear gas, law enforcement then lobbed CS gas canisters into the cabin, which are “incendiary” and “have significantly more chance of starting a fire.”
McMahon admitted that the second round of CS gas was “pyrotechnic” and that it “does generate a lot of heat,” but claimed that the police scanner audio simply made reference to “burners,” which was just another name for tear gas
In reality, audio recorded from online police scanners, before they were disabled, contains innumerable examples of police discussing a plan to intentionally “burn down” the cabin before the CS gas was thrown in.
Shortly after the first shootout with Dorner, local news channel KCAL broadcast audio during which police are heard saying, “Fucking burn this motherfucker,” and “burn that fucking house down.”
In another audio clip broadcast by CBS Los Angeles, police are heard saying, “get the gas, burn it down,” clearly indicating cops knew use of CS gas would set the cabin on fire.
Separate audio includes police discussing “the plan with the burners.” “The burners are deployed, and we have a fire,” says one officer, clearly indicating that the incendiary CS gas was thrown into the cabin in order to set it on fire deliberately.
Police also made no attempt to extinguish the fire once it started despite having fire trucks nearby, again indicating that they wanted to burn Dorner alive. Photos of the cabin taken after the incident show the building burned completely to the ground.
Christopher Dorner’s actions cannot be justified, but neither can those of the police involved in his death, who for days before the standoff were busy shooting at innocent people who looked nothing like Dorner.
If law enforcement officials thought that burning Dorner to death was a reasonable way of dealing with a dangerous murderer then they should hold their hands up and admit to it.
However, the fact that San Bernardino police are brazenly lying in claiming there was no plan to intentionally set fire to the cabin, when police scanner audio clearly suggests otherwise, overwhelmingly indicates that police know that their actions were illegal.