tv Anderson Cooper 360 CNN February 13, 2013 7:00pm-8:00pm PST
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to wish you a happy valentine's day. so from your auntie robin who is trying to overlook you, don't forget it is valentine's day tomorrow and not to believe the person in your life who says, no, no, you don't have to get me, i don't want anything. maybe you don't have to buy something, but you do have to do something. trust me. trust me. and speaking of you don't have to do anything, piers morgan, i don't know if he's off not doing anything but happy valentine's day to you, my friend. let us ask you on valentine's day how many times have you been properly in love? do you not have another question to ask other people? what do you mean how many times have i been properly in love? is there an improper way? maybe i should ask you that. that's it for us tonight. normally you can find me in the mornings, that's where i get the energy from. thank you for allowing me to be here with you tonight in for
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piers morgan. anderson cooper starts right now. robin, thanks. it is 10:00 here on the east coast. we begin with a special edition of "360." nine days of terror, the hunt for christopher dorner. authorities cornered him and more importantly why they failed to find him sooner. we're going to hear from the man who came face to face with a combat ready but business-like dorner as he described what might have been an encounter. xx
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federal, state and local authorities have been briefing reporters on the latest. sheriff john mcman identifying the identity killed, jeremiah mackay, a father of two children, a 7-year-old daughter and 4-month-old son. additional testing will be done to identify the burned body, which is believed to be that of christopher dorner. in addition, he denied any concerted effort to set that fire. take a look. >> i can tell you that it was not on purpose. we did not intentionally burn down that cabin to get mr. dorner out. the tear gas canisters that we used, first off, we used a presence when we showed up. secondly, we used a cold tear gas. then we used the next tear gas was that that was pyrotechnic. it does generate a lot of heat. we introduced those canisters into the residence and a fire erupted. >> he was also asked but would not answer if dorner had been planning additional attacks in the area. that's where things stand right now. let's look at how we got to this moment, how the final chapter began.
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gary tuchman has more. >> reporter: 12:22 p.m. on tuesday. that's when a 911 call came in with the first real sighting of fugitive christopher dorner in days. two people who were hired to clean houses in the big bear area run into a man who looks like dorner. he ties them up and then takes off in their purple nissan. one of the cleaners is able to escape. that's when she calls police. it turns out they were tied up in a house right across the street from the san bernardino sheriff's command center. 12:45 p.m., fish and wildlife officials spot a purple car driving on california 38. they begin to pursue him. >> the suspect realized he had been identified. >> reporter: dorner tries to evade them, at one point crashing and taking to the woods on foot. with the officers still in pursuit, he stops a truck driven by a resident. dorner pulls a gun on him but allows him to leave unharmed with his dog. dorner is now behind the door of a silver pickup truck and gets
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back on the highway and passes by a fish and wildlife official coming from the opposite direction and once again he is recognized. the officer radios colleagues on the road behind him and warn them dorner is heading straight for them. when dorner spots the vehicle, he rolls down his window and opens fire. >> the warden in front noticed a white truck coming down, driving erratically at a high rate of speed. the suspect rolled his window down. when the second patrol truck came up, he engaged in the shooting with our wardens as they were driving. he did hit the truck multiple times. >> reporter: dorner heads up glass road, abandons the truck and takes refuge in a cabin. san bernardino county sheriff's deputies arrive. an intense firefight breaks out. a reporter for local station kcbs is also on the scene. >> we're standing here, we don't want to get caught in the cross fire ourselves. >> you, come here.
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>> me? >> you, come here! [ gunfire ] [ gunfire continues ] >> hey! get the [ bleep ] out of here now. >> reporter: this video shot by kcbs. >> guy's down! [ gun fire ] >> reporter: two deputies are shot. >> returning fire. >> they're returning fire. >> we have an officer down, officer down. >> they have an officer down. >> medic ship is in the air. >> reporter: one officer later dies at the hospital.
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dorner has now claimed four lives in his rampage. in an effort to get dorner out, police fire tear gas into the cabin and then begin to rip the walls down one by one. then -- >> we're going to go forward with the plan, with the burn. >> copy. >> reporter: flames and smoke begin to rise from the cabin. >> we have fire in the front. he might come out the back. >> reporter: still unclear how the fire started and spread. soon afterwards -- >> sounds like one shot fired from inside the residence. >> reporter: what we don't know, whether dorner shot himself or died in the flames. the fire burns for hours. authorities thinking dorner is still inside. late tuesday, they say a charred body has been found. the police have not positivity confirmed this is the body of christopher dorner. >> there is a lot of apprehension today in any kind of celebration because this is not a celebration. this has been a very trying time
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over the last couple of weeks for all of those involved and all those families, friends and everybody that's been touched by this dorner incident. >> reporter: the first officer shot by dorner was laid to rest today. the manhunt is over. there will be an investigation into how and why this man was able to elude police for nine days is just beginning. gary tuchman, cnn. >> now to the man who lost his truck to christopher dorner but is alive to tell the story. i spoke with him a short time ago. take me through what happened. you were coming up a side road on the highway and you saw law enforcement in the area. what happened? >> i saw something moving in the trees and i could see it was somebody with a gun. there's been a lot of people around here with guns searching buildings and like that, so i'm used to seeing them. but it was an odd area for that.
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then i realized it was christopher dorner and i saw a vehicle crashed in the snow behind him, and he came up to the window of my truck, my driver window with his gun pointed at me and he said, "i don't want to hurt you, just get out and start walking and take your dog." >> how did he look to you? >> he looked calm, kind of more like well trained, you know, business-like almost. you know, he didn't have any crazy eyes or anything like that. he was dressed in all military style camouflage. ballistic vest on with some pockets in the front. could have had rifle magazines or smoke bombs. i couldn't tell. >> you said a ballistic vest. like a kevlar vest? >> yeah, a thick vest. the kind i've seen on the pictures i've seen. military style. so it was all very calm. he was calm. i was calm. it was clear that he didn't consider me one of his targets. he just needed my vehicle and he said get out and start walking and take your dog and that's
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what i did. i asked if i could get her leash, he said no, just start walking. >> so i started walking up the road, and i got about maybe 20 seconds up the road, maybe 10 seconds, something like that, not very far and i heard a burst of gunfire down by where my truck was. so apparently he turned my truck around and was heading down the direction from which i had just come, and he came head on into a sheriff's unit and there was a firefight there. when i heard the gunfire, i bailed out into the snow, which was on the side of the road, and ran into the snow a little ways until i got to a big tree, got some cover, and i took out my cell phone and i called my friend, the sheriff deputy who i had just seen recently, he's a local deputy that lives in the area and patrols the area. for san bernardino county. i called him directly. he said rick, what do you got?
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i said paul, he just took my truck. excuse me. paul, he just took my truck. so paul confirmed my truck description, and he said okay. and i hung up and i kept running out towards the highway, just to keep getting away and i called a friend and i said drop what you're doing and come pick me up. which they did in a little while, and we drove down to where the highway patrol had already set up a roadblock and i said stop here, i wanted to sit and relax where i felt safe near the road block and the police officers there. >> let me ask you, how far the location where he took your truck, how far is that from the cabin where he, according to authorities, ended up? >> it's about 3, 3 1/2 miles down that windy road. >> and how far from where the truck ended up is that from the cabin, do you know? >> i'm not really sure. i couldn't really tell where that truck was in the photo i
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saw in the news. i couldn't get a bearing on it. i don't think it's very far. >> so what we're assuming is he went on foot from the time he got out of your vehicle to that cabin, that's the assumption. >> right. >> i'm just trying to figure out the distance. rick, this may be a dumb question, but you have a guy pointing a gun at you, you knew who it was. did you feel in danger or feel that this is a transaction, he's acting rationally? >> well, i felt endangered as far as knowing what his try was, and that i had a gun pointed at my head. however, he said he didn't want to hurt me and i believed him. he wanted me to get out of my truck and walk up the road with my dog, and that's what i did. he needed a vehicle and he took my truck. >> how do you feel now, having had this experience with him and knowing what's happened subsequently, how do you feel?
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>> i feel, you know, unfortunate. i feel like he might have had some compassion for me and my dog, make sure you take your dog. i liked that. i'm totally a dog guy and that was a big thing for me, you know, and one thing is, i've been kind of inundated with e-mails on facebook and people calling me a hero. i just want to be clear that the real heroes are the law enforcement officers that are out there doing this job every day. we just had a funeral in riverside today from the officer that was killed the other day. now we're going to have another one in san bernardino soon, because mr. dorner determined that i wasn't a target, but he was able to find one of his targets down the road. and now we have one less sheriff's deputy in the county. >> it's an important thing to remember. rick, i appreciate you talking to us. thank you. >> okay, thank you. let us know what you think right now. follow me on twitter.
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next, more revelations agent how the hunt for dorner unfolded and how it ended. also, what made dorner tick and why some aren't surprised that he exploded. a top local reporter joins us, along with veteran john miller as our special "360" coverage continues. i need to rethink the core of my portfolio. what i really need is sleep. introducing the ishares core, building blocks for the heart of your portfolio. find out why 9 out of 10 large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. risk includes possible loss of principal. is moving backward. [ engine turns over, tires squeal ] and you'll find advanced safety technology like an available heads-up display on the 2013 lexus gs. there's no going back.
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breaking news tonight after nine days of terror, a special "360" report continues. authorities identifying the deputy killed yesterday. detective jeremiah mackay, just 35, a father of a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-month-old son. another lawman remains in the hospital tonight. he's expected to fully recover but will need additional surgery. as for the fire that consumed the cabin, the sheriff said it was not deliberately set to drive out dorner. he said more testing will be done to confirm the charred corpse is dorner. but as far as law enforcement is concerned, the manhunt is over. joining me now is one of the reporters who hasn't had much sleep, joel ruben of "the los angeles times." joel, you guys have done remarkable reporting on this story. particularly just in the last 24 hours. what are the most significant developments that you've learned today? >> well, i think just hearing the san bernardino sheriff say
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that while they can't 100% say for sure it is dorner's body that they found, that the manhunt is over, as you mentioned, which is the -- which equates to it was him, as we talked about last night if they had any doubt that perhaps it wasn't him, that they would not have stood down this mass of manhunt. also, the questions that have erupted over twitter of the fire that erupted at the cabin, and hearing the sheriff say unequivocally they did not intentionally set that fire, whether that extinguishes, sorry the pun, extinguishes the conspiracies out there we'll see. >> we have learned and i think can believe with some confidence that the incendiary device that was used was not used to set the
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fire but was used in order to deploy this agent that is meant to drive dorner out of the cabin. >> this comes at a time when the officers involved in dismantling the cabin wall by wall, they were using a demolition vehicle where they could sort of take the walls down one by one so that they knew what they were dealing with inside. in the process of doing that there's a lot of radio clhatter between the officers. at one point there's talk of deploying the burners, which led a lot of people to conclude that it was an intentional ignition of fire. so shortly after the talk of the burners, there is a report by one of the officers of a fire breaking out and quickly engulfing the cabin.
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today at the press conference the sheriff was asked about that term, burners, and what they were. he said that is a colloquial term for a type a heating agent involved. the heating agent i've been told by members of the lapd s.w.a.t. who are familiar with it, the heating agent is not used to set a fire but to deploy the tear gas in a more potent way, but it can cause fires and that seems to be what happened. >> the other thing that's raised a lot of questions is last night there seemed to be discrepancies between what the lapd and the sheriff's department in san bernardino were saying. have the agencies cleared up their stories? does it make sense to you now? do you know what was going on last night? >> no, i'm not sure we'll ever get a clear answer. i think we can speculate it was just a very chaotic situation and i think there was a lot of -- obviously a lot of frayed
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nerves and whenever you get several agencies involved covering a huge territory and especially covering a story that everybody in the world is paying attention to, you're going to get a lot of attention between the agency. i think, and this is just me speculating, the l.a. county didn't want to get out ahead of the san bernardino sheriff's department, it was their operation and perhaps san bernardino was putting pressure on lapd to back off and then these reports came out and some of them attributed to the lapd saying that a body had been found. i think there was probably just a lot of frayed nerves going on and everybody just wanted to back off. so the lapd took the someone confusing stance that a body had been found. we had sources telling us that a
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body had been found. it may have been that they were reporting their confusion that the body was inside because of their confidence they had seen dorner inside. we'll still trying to figure it all out. >> i appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. john miller, what have you learned? >> one of the things was they said we're in the going to remove the protective details of the people on the hit list. that's 58 members of the family and that was more than 400 officers. these are the gangs division,
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the narcotics divisions from all of the areas of the lapd had been mobilized to do a plain clothes surveillance portion, as well as a high profile uniform portion. frankly, this is something we haven't gotten into while it was going on, but i think we can say it now, the threat was so high and some of the locations were so difficult to protect that entire families were moved into police stations. the police stations themselves have what they call station defense posture, the kind of posture they would put out by disorder or riot. where the station is defended by an armed group on the perimeter. this was they'fairly unlike any experienced before. when you saw some of those families go home, you saw kind of a great exhaling today in los angeles.
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>> and is it clear to you how long -- we may not know this, you may not know this -- how long dorner was in that other cabin where he allegedly took two people hostage. was that the only cabin he had been staying in? why wasn't me found if there were door-to-door searches? >> it could have been he was in there the whole time. it could have been he was in there an hour before. the idea that it looked out on
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to the ranger station which for a time served as the command post and he would have had a view of operations harkens to something he said in his manifesto, which was that incident command posts will be a target rich environment. here he is holed up in an apartment that almost has a view directly on the command post on the other side of the road with a automatic sniper rifle with .50 caliber sniper bullets. you have to ask yourself two questions. one, when his truck broke was that the first place he could find to get into? or two, did he choose it because it would give him an observation post and potentially a target. >> are you aware how far the broken down truck was from that location? >> i was told it's not that far away. i haven't been there. this might have been the first place he encountered. or he might have hid and found his way back to it. about the search, because you asked about that, they would check houses and if there was any forced entry, they would go in and check that house to determine did that have anything to do with him, was he still there? if there were houses unlocked, they would check those. but where there was sign of no forced entry, generally that was
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a sign to them that this was in tact. in general there were some exception. they didn't make a forced entry to places already locked. so you could consider a scenario where he would have found an unlocked place or found a hidden key, made an entry and locked it behind him. and that's the kind of building, given the amount they had to deal with, 660 cabins and other things that they might not have ever gotten to. >> we found the correct audio referencing lighting up the house. i want to play that and have you talk about it. >> >> we're going to go forward with the plan with the burn. >> copy. >> the burner is deployed and we have a fire. >> copy 7. burner is deployed and we have a fire. >> guys be ready on the number four side. we have fire in the front. he might come out the back. >> so some people who listened to this said that is evidence they believe that the police were wanting to light the house on fire, maybe to smoke him out
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or to kill him inside. >> so from a tactical stand point, and when you listen to that audio, you have to have those concerns and those questions, whether that's terminology or whether that's intent. those questions will all be asked. that's part of this process here. but from a tactical standpoint, you've got cold gas and you've got hot gas. they deployed both in these cases. >> tear gas? >> right. the difference between the cold gas and hot gas is that the hot gas burns at a higher temperature. it's more intense and it will drive a suspect out sooner and faster. that's the upside of it tactically. the risk factor is it doesn't always catch fire. it does burn the gas out of the -- it's called a tactical pocket grenade. it does burn the gas out and the gas is stronger. it has a higher risk of fire depending on how it's deployed and what it hits going on, whether it gets tied up in the curtains or rolls across the
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floor. depending on those circumstances, it has a higher sense of fire than cold gas. >> you know the suspicion of law enforcement in this, that they were angry that a detective was killed on that very day shortly before that. so the conspiracy theory, the suspicion is that in anger they would want to kill him. do you think there is evidence of that, or would they have wanted to get him out alive? >> i think if you look at it from -- no one can know the answer to that, unless we get into their minds. if you look at it from purely a tactical sense, they deployed the regular tools that they would in a rare circumstance like this where you had heavily armed man who was known to have already killed a number of people and who by the fact that he was caring on you by a .50 caliber armor piercing rounds
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intending to kill more people. so this is where you're going to use the tactical available tools that you have to get him out of there, no matter how harsh they may be. now, if those devices started to fire, we have to consider there was nothing keeping him in that residence. he could have come out the back door with his hands up. he could have waved a white flag. he determined to stay in there. he apparently determined as it seems from the audio we've heard to probably shoot himself and take his own life. but in these things, there is a modicum of control that the perpetrator has, and he exercised that. >> john miller, always good to have you. thanks. >> good to be here. a lot more to talk about, including christopher dorner's allegations against the lapd. just ahead, the burned out cabin remains an active crime scene. the family that owns the property, today they tried to check out the damage for themselves. we'll be right back. pocket agen. you can also get a quote and pay your premium with this thing.
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hollywood couldn't have scripted a more dramatic end game for the manhunt for christopher dorner. snowy mountain backdrop, the fugitive holed up in a cabin, surrounded, outnumbered, the cabin bursting into flames. millions watched it unfold on tv, including the cabin's owner. here's what he told me. kyle, for the pictures that you're seeing, does it seem as if the entire cabin is pretty much on fire? >> yeah, from what i can see, it actually looks like maybe the barn is too, there's a barn about ten feet away from it. i can't quite tell, though. this is just material stuff. i feel bad for the people who have lost loved ones and what not. >> an important point, but you can imagine how anxious he is to
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see what if anything is left of their cabin. randi kaye spent the day with him. trying to get off that mountain. >> reporter: less than 12 hours after he watched his family's cabin burn to the ground, kyle martin is determined to see what's left. before making the two-hour drive up here to the big bear mountain area, kyle checked online to see if highway 38 was open. it was at highway 38 and glass road where the shootout took place, between the suspect and the fish and game officers. >> i do know it's closed. i do know it's open to residents. as far as how close they'll let me get, i don't know. i think it's still a homicide scene, so we'll try our luck. >> reporter: when the standoff started, kyle's sister texted him to tell him s.w.a.t. teams were on their road at their cabin. she had recognized the tennis courts. what did you think when you saw your cabin, your cabin burning on live tv?
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>> it's kind of funny, because when we first heard it, i was in the car and listening to the radio, and then it was kind of surreal. and then when we finally got home, i turned on the tv just to see it burning, yeah, it kind of hit home. memories. after about i would say five minutes, it kind of sunk in and just looking at it, i'm going through my head, the nation is watching our cabin burn. >> reporter: kyle's family has had the cabin since 2004. they rented it out often. it was their family business. for nearly a week, kyle had been watching the manhunt play out on tv. he admits the thought crossed his mind, what if christopher dorner ended up at his cabin? >> i even jokingly around, not ever thinking he would go there, say if anything, that would be a good place for someone to hold up if they wanted to. >> reporter: because you knew it empty and secluded? >> it was empty and secluded and rarely do you get visitors. >> reporter: this was not the first time police had been to kyle's cabin. in fact, they had just been
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there two days before the fire. the scary thing is, at that time, kyle's aunts were staying at the cabin. so if this had gone down then, kyle's family might have been harmed. as we made our way down highway 38 toward glass road, kyle's luck runs out. road closed. >> it's closed. they're not going to let us through. we can turn around up here. >> reporter: you want to give it a shot? >> yeah. i'm just going to ask. i was wondering if residents can get through? >> certain residents, yes, with proper i.d. where are you going to? >> it's the main house, the cabin. >> what street? >> 7 oaks road. >> you've got to go down glass road? nope, not there. >> not even if i'm the owner of the house? >> they're not letting anybody in.
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and that may be a while. >> reporter: the deputy directed kyle to the san bernardino county sheriff's department, who tells him the same thing. his cabin is still an active crime scene and he has to wait. he still didn't go for it? >> no. >> reporter: are you frustrated? >> no. because i understand what they're doing. up kn you know, i don't want to get in their way. >> reporter: kyle is trying to have a good attitude, but his family has been through a lot. his father died last year, and his grandfather died last week. so this is hard to handle. he feels for those who have lost loved ones during this man hunt. >> cabins can be rebuilt, but the lives that this guy took and injured for that matter, my condolences out to them. you know, they're in a far worse spot than i am and my family. >> reporter: randi kaye, cnn, big bear mountain. >> that is certainly true. believe it or not, christopher dorner has what you might even call fans online. there's a fair amount of support and empathy being expressed. what's behind showing support for a killer? we'll look into that next.
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audience. dan simon reports. >> sheriff mcman has asked that all the helicopters pull back or leave the area of the barricaded suspect. >> reporter: as police ask the helicopters to back off and as the cabin went up in flames, social media lit up, with users crying conspiracies. so u.s. authorities have burned someone to death in a cabin and let it burn through the basement so no body is left. another says, come on, how is dorner's body burned beyond recognition? but they found his license he just so happened to be carrying? i think dorner killed someone and left their body in that fire. others blasted the police. >> we're going to go forward with the plan with the burn. >> reporter: blaming them for the cabin fire. lapd was prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner yesterday. they burned him alive. apparently burning people alive is considered appropriate behavior for the police.
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from the very beginning, dorner found plenty of sympathizers. >> i just want to start off by saying i perfectly support 100% what christopher dorner is doing. >> i read this manifesto and i basically believe him. >> reporter: on facebook, more than 18,000 likes for a page titled "we stand with christopher dorner." on instagram, the rapper have soul spoke for many when he said "this was a necessary evil. god bless you, sir." >> please like anti-heroes and we have a heroes rooting for people like bonnie and clyde and butch cassidy. >> reporter: usc professor karen
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snort. >> one of the things social media has allowed us to do is join conversations and not be as accountable for our opinions. >> reporter: in other words, people may express things online they wouldn't necessarily say to their friends in public. others just like to be provocative. still, this user poses a question many today are asking. >> why is america showing so much support for him? >> reporter: dan simon, cnn, san francisco. >> it was dorner's rage at the lapd that led to the path of death and destruction over the past nine days. brian bentley says he understands dorner's frustration. he was on the force for ten years in the '90s and has been outspoken for what he calls ram pant racism. he says he was fired for writing a book, detailing what he said was misconduct, racism that he witnessed with the lapd. brian bentley joins me now. you were on the lapd for ten years in the 1990s when the department was dealing with a number of scandals. i know you don't condone in any way what dorner did but
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you say you understand some of dorner's anger. how so? >> of course i understand, because as a police officer, i learned the hard way. there isn't a place to express your opinion if you're a whistleblower. you're automatically become an outcast. you automatically are harassed by supervision. there is nowhere to turn. you can't go to attorneys, because if you're fired you don't have the money. if you don't have the money, you don't have the money to seek counseling to get help. so you feel like there's nowhere to turn. when i wrote my book, the purpose of my book was because i felt there wasn't an outlet for me to express what i was dealing with. i turned to writing as opposed to doing what he did. some of the things i wrote about, i had never -- i hadn't seen them since i wrote about it until dorner expressed his feelings and his manifesto. >> do you believe the lapd has changed, though? because minority recruitment is up significantly. they have made huge efforts of outrage to the community in l.a. do you think there's been significant change? >> i know there has not been
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change. there has not been a significant change. it's different from when i came up. my training officer looked at me in my eye the first day and told me you're black, you don't belong on this job. my job is not to train you, it's to get you fired because you slipped through the cracks. that opinion is still there. that view of the department still runs -- it runs through that department. and there's lots of proof to that claim. >> we have breaking news. the couple who say they were held hostage by christopher dorner yesterday spoke out just a short time ago about their ordeal. listen to this. >> hello, everyone. we would like to make a statement regarding the incident that occurred here yesterday afternoon. first of all, i'd like to introduce ourselves. this is my house jim reynolds and i am karen reynolds, and
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um -- sorry. we are the owners of mountain vista resort. the first thing that we would like to clarify is that we were the victims that were in with him yesterday and our house keepers were not involved at all. he never saw them, they never saw him. the unit that he was in was a unit that we have been using for over three years as a long-term rental. and it has been unoccupied since january 29th. and since that period of time, we have been trying to refurbish it and clean it up and working on it off and on between the
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busy winter season. so the last date that we were actually in there working was february 6th. >> wednesday. >> yeah, that was wednesday. >> we were planning to go back thursday and continue working but that's when they found his truck and all the excitement and so we just stayed in the house and did the go back. >> the chaos. we were watching all of you and everyone, like the command center being set up. so we didn't do any work. >> so would he have been here through thursday watching the command post and watching the press briefings? >> he could have been but we doesn't kn
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don't know for sure that he was. and the first time we had gone in there since because we had a heavy weekend and all the snow was yesterday. and it was just jim and i that had gone in there. and that's when we found he was in there and that's when all of this had started. >> did he steal your car? >> yes, he took our car. >> yes, he did. >> what happened when he saw you? >> well, when we had come in, he was in the upstairs part and that's where the living room is and one bedroom upstairs. >> in the back. >> and we had come into the living room and he opened the door and came out at us. and he his gun drawn. >> he yelled "stay calm" and ran out. >> so you were not tied up? >> yes, we were. >> not at that point. >> reporter: i just want to clarify that it was the both of
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you. because the reports was it was two women. >> that has been wrong. it was the two of us. >> reporter: did he come back in with the two of you? >> he was in there with us. we didn't get away from us. he spoke with us, tried to calm us down. >> when he jumped out and hollered "stay calm," karen screamed and started running and he ran after her. he caught her on the staircase and brought her back. >> reporter: it sounded like he tried to calm you down. >> yes, he did. >> you could see that big gun sticking up there. >> he had his gun drawn the whole time. >> he had the gun drawn showing -- >> reporter: did you know it was him? >> oh, yes. >> reporter: how long were you in there with him? >> about 15 minutes. >> reporter: it felt a lot long longer. >> it felt a lot longer.
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he talked to us and said very frequently he would not kill us. that's exactly how he said that. he told us about the man in the boat in san diego. >> said he didn't kill him, wasn't going to kill us. he said it was a means to the we end and that's what he wants from us, he needs transportation out of big bear. he continued to say quite frequently he would not kill us. and he just us to do what he asked. and so he had bound our hands first while we were still in the living room -- >> he had some plastic ties, big, big wraps on and he made us put our hands behind our back and tied our hands. he made us go to the back bedroom.
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first he had us lay on the bad and cross our feet, then he had me lay on the floor and then he tied the hands real tight and cut my circulation off. and he did her, had her lay down, did the same thing. >> reporter: did you think he was going to kill you then? >> not -- >> when he had me laying on the ground, i thought he really did. i thought he changed his mind, he was just going to get us in there and was going to do it. but he came back with a couple of washcloths, stuck one in each of our mouths. then -- >> he went back into the living room. he came back in with a cord and tied it -- >> got a couple of extension cords. >> put a pillow case around our head -- >> through the mouth, around the back and tied it real tight. >> reporter: why are you talking now? why are you telling us all this
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now? what's the motivation? >> get the record straight. there's a lot of misinformation out there. >> yeah, a lot of misconception. we have people -- you know, we have guests who think our place has burned down because the cabin that he has died in -- well, we think it's him but, you know, has burned down. all the things about it being -- the women were here and working but they were not involved at all with him. >> reporter: how do you think he got in? after he tied the pillow cases to your head, did he leave? when did you know it was safe to do something? >> first he kneeled down beside me and said you're going to be quiet, right, don't try and get loose, give me time? i said oh, yeah, sure.
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were really bound. >> couldn'tçó get it open.r >> i was able toçó roll on to m knees and scoot over to the bed and actually get on to my feet. and like kind ofq shuffled to where he was and got the door open. >> did you have aok cellñi phon ç#kith you that you were able t] call? >> we had taken cell phones -- we had cell phones with us when we went in. we always have our cell phones when we're working out on the property. but i actually found my cell phone was still in my pocket there i realized it wasn't in my pocket. i mean, like iñi could feel tha it wasn't ñrñithere. so i thought, like, while we were on the sof@ó he had got
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