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In 2005, while still enlisted in the military, Dorner applied to the LAPD and earned a spot in one of the department’s training academy classes. An officer in Dorner’s class who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to discuss the case, recalled Dorner as “one of our problem children” who frequently pushed the bounds of authority.

A few days into training, the recruits were explicitly told to only wear white or black shoes for a conditioning run, the officer said. Dorner, however, showed up in bright neon sneakers. “He thought he knew it all, that rules just kind of didn’t apply to him,” the officer said. “He was not a team player.”

According to the officer, Dorner was kicked out of his academy class at least one time, when he accidentally shot himself in the hand. Internal disciplinary records show that Dorner was suspended for two days for an accidental discharge in 2005. He finished his training with another academy class, the officer said, and joined the force as an officer in February 2006, police records show.

Months later, the Navy called him back into service and he departed for a 13-month deployment in Bahrain. When Dorner returned to the LAPD in July 2007, he had not yet completed his mandatory probation year and was partnered with Teresa Evans, a training officer in the San Pedro area.

Evans would later tell internal affairs investigators that Dorner confessed to her on the first day they worked together that he was unhappy with the way the LAPD handled a complaint he made against some of his classmates in the academy, according to police records. He believed the LAPD was a racist organization and told Evans he planned to sue the department at the end of his probation period, Evans reported.

Dorner repeatedly made mistakes in the field, Evans said. Shortly after becoming partners, they responded to a report of an armed man and Dorner stood in the middle of the street to confront the suspect without any cover, she said. Evans said she told Dorner that she was going to recommend that he be removed from the field unless he improved his performance, according to the internal affairs records.

Dorner, she said, repeatedly asked to return to the academy for more training after his return from military service and was upset that the department had not granted the request. On one occasion, Dorner cried in the patrol car with Evans and demanded the additional training, she said.

The struggling officer’s ultimate undoing began on a morning when he and Evans were dispatched to a report of a man who had refused to leave a local hotel.

The officers found the mentally ill man seated on a bench. When he refused a command to stand up, Dorner took the man’s wrist and pulled him up, records show. A struggle ensued and Evans had to grab Dorner’s Taser stun gun from his belt to subdue the man.

Nearly two weeks later, Evans criticized Dorner harshly in an evaluation report that included a long list of areas in which he needed improvement, including using common sense and good judgment. About the same time, Dorner called an LAPD sergeant whom he knew from the Navy and claimed he had witnessed Evans kick the man while he was being handcuffed. The sergeant told Dorner to report the incident to higher-ups or said he would do so himself. Dorner reported the misconduct, records show.

The department’s internal affairs unit launched a probe into Dorner’s allegations. Three hotel employees who witnessed much of the incident said they never saw Evans kick the man. And when the man arrived at the police station, he did not mention being kicked in the face when a physician treated him for his facial injuries. Investigators concluded there was no truth to Dorner’s claim.

The witnesses’ statements and Dorner’s delay in coming forward “irreparably destroy Dorner’s credibility,” the department concluded in disciplinary records. Dorner was charged with making false statements and a false personnel complaint.

At Dorner’s discipline hearing, the father of the man the partners arrested testified that his son had told him he had been kicked by an officer. Nonetheless the discipline board found that Dorner had lied about the incident and fired him.