re: “Vigilantism is the inevitable result when people no longer have any faith in the legal system’s ability to impose justice.”
There’s “vigilantism” and there’s just plain murder. Dorner murdered the daughter of his lawyer and her fiance - two people who had nothing to do with what he claims happened to him. He also indiscrimitely killed a police officer (who was a former Marine)and was just sitting in a vehicle with another officer (who was also murdered).
Yes. And that happened AFTER Dorner exhausted the legal system.
For some unfathomable reason the San Bernardino PD and the LAPD didn’t even want to give the system a chance to work on Dorner.
The even went as far as shooting up innocent civilians rather than risk having to take him to court.
When they had him cornered and rendered harmless to the general public, they chose to deploy “seven burners” to incinerate him alive “as planned” rather than allow the courts to process him through the system to a conviction and punishment.
One could very reasonably argue that this was also a vigilante action.
One could not defend this by saying it was the act of a single mad man.
Nor could one defend it by saying it was an accident.
It was a deliberate act.
IF the police, the people who are most familiar with the ins and outs of the justice system, have so little faith in it that they feel compelled to conspire to murder one of their own rather than risk the outcome of a trial, how much faith should the rest of us have?
Don’t read this as supporting Dorner in any way, shape or form.
I dispair over the efficacy of our legal system.
It is only a matter of time before enough people in our society have as little faith in the justice system as the police do and vigilantism becomes the norm.