Hunt continues for former LAPD murder suspect
Reward of $1m offered as massive search continues for former navy officer and Los Angeles policeman Christoper Dorner.
Police in the US state of California are still hunting for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected of murder who has continued to elude arrest for more than a week.
Despite a $1m reward for any information leading to his capture, there were no new developments on Monday in the search for Christoper Dorner, said Al Jazeera correspondent Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles.
Dorner claims he was unjustly fired from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and has vowed to take revenge on police officers he holds responsible.
The search centres on a mountainous area where Dorner’s burned-out pickup truck was found on Friday near the popular ski resort community of Big Bear Lake.
“We will do this for as long as this takes,” LAPD chief Charlie Beck said.
Beck has also reopened the case that led to Dorner’s firing, saying the force has nothing to hide.
Dorner first exchanged gunfire with two officers, grazing one in the head. He later ambushed two more policemen in their patrol car at a stoplight, killing one and badly wounding the other.
A former navy lieutenant, Dorner also is suspected in last weekend’s slayings of a campus security officer and his fiance, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain singled out for blame in the manifesto for Dorner’s dismissal.
Online sympathisers
Meanwhile, Dorner has gained online sympathisers who said the 33-year navy reservist is fighting back against corrupt police officers.
He threatened to unleash “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare” on police officers and their families in revenge.
For much of its history the LAPD has had a reputation for excessive force, corruption and racism, author John Buntin told Al Jazeera.
“The department famously described itself as the ‘thin blue line’, the ‘new centurions’ that stood between chaos, which implicitly had an African-American face,” Buntin said.
The force was placed under federal government supervision in 2001 after widespread abuses.
After reforms, recruitment of more non-white officers, and improved training, federal oversight was lifted four years ago.
A poll by the Los Angeles Times newspaper last June showed 77 percent of LA voters approve of the police force’s job performance.
“There is a long and painful history for everyone involved,” Buntin said. “Los Angeles has changed and the LAPD has changed. It is a majority minority city now, as is the force.”