Law enforcement agencies from across Southern California, led by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, hunted Dorner after he implicated himself with an online manifesto in two murders.
Six days later, on Feb. 12, 2013, Dorner was killed during a shootout in a cabin near Angelus Oaks in the San Bernardino National Forest.
According to leaders of public safety departments who responded to both incidents, the lessons learned during the manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer turned cop killer helped stop IRC attackers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik before they could harm more people after killing 14 and wounding 22 others.
Consistency and communication across different departments are key, according to San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, so that responding officers are able to work together the moment they arrive.
“Although our folks don’t all train together, they get the same type of training,” he said. “When you see three or four people show up from different agencies, people who’ve never even met each other, but they group up and go into that building, looking for the active shooter, that’s incredible. It didn’t matter who was from what agency, one of them took charge and the others fell in and they took care of business and did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
Local agencies have been discussing what went wrong in the Dorner manhunt for years, during monthly meetings of the leaders of law enforcement agencies in San Bernardino County.
Those discussions have led to more coordination and communication among the agencies, according to San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.
Lessons learned from the Dorner manhunt
The massive response from law enforcement in the hunt for Dorner became too much, according to McMahon.
Officers and even individual agencies “self-deployed,” rather than waiting to be asked for assistance by the Sheriff’s Department.
“We didn’t have a large amount of self-deployment in the beginning. We had a number of people that showed up that we put to work, and it wasn’t overwhelming,” McMahon said, referring to the hunt for Dorner in 2013. “And it was a number of folks that we felt needed to be there — (U.S.) Forest Service, Irvine (Police Department) — folks that had some connection to the case.”
That changed three years ago, when wardens with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted a stolen vehicle near the Big Bear area. Dorner, who killed Monica Quan, the daughter of a former LAPD captain, her fiance Keith Lawrence, Riverside police Officer and San Bernardino County sheriff’s Deputy Jeremiah MacKay, led the wardens on a high-speed chase and fired at them before escaping on foot. Police agencies converged on the narrow mountain roads.
“On the last day, we had an overwhelming amount of self-deployment that was not even manageable,” McMahon said. “That wasn’t just a lesson for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department; that was a lesson for law enforcement in general, not only in San Bernardino County (or) Southern California, but across the entire country.”
Self-deployment is not always a bad thing, according to Burguan, whose officers were involved in the standoff at Angelus Oaks.
“There’s a difference between disciplined and undisciplined self-deployment,” he said. “We pay cops a lot of money, and we expect them to accept responsibility for the things that they do. And part of that responsibility is knowing when you’re needed at some place, and going, and knowing when just to be disciplined and stay back and doing what needs to be done here.”
Both kinds of self-deployment happened with the Dorner manhunt and later at the IRC shooting.
“There were people who were self-deployed and were tactically deployed,” or put to work, in civilian-speak, “and those that got in the way,” Burguan said.
And on Feb. 12, 2013, there were a lot of people in the way, either on the roads or on the airwaves.
“Along with that self-deployment comes radio connectivity or communication problems,” McMahon said. “Under normal mutual aid requests, when you request other agencies to come in, if they don’t have the same radios that you do, you provide them with your radios, so there is some level of communication. That didn’t occur in Big Bear, either, because they just showed up. We didn’t know they were coming. It was just overwhelming. We were just trying to manage the incident.”
The geography of the San Bernardino Mountains doesn’t help, according to McMahon.
“The radios don’t work the best there, even under the best of circumstances,” he said.
In its report on the Dorner case, the Police Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to improving policing, called communication problems on the case “pervasive,” noting many of those who self-deployed did not have radios that connect to those of the San Bernardino agencies already there.
“Though an actual number will probably never be known, it has been estimated that hundreds of self-deployed law enforcement personnel converged on the remote mountain area during those final hours,” the report reads in part. “Many of those personnel had no radio contact with San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department and sheriff’s officials had no way to communicate with them or coordinate their actions.
“Because the Sheriff’s Department could not communicate with these hundreds of personnel, not only was their presence not helpful, the sheer volume of police cars on the narrow, two-lane roads actually hampered the mission of the San Bernardino SWAT team that was managing operations at the cabin on Seven Oaks Road. Some senior police officials who were at the scene felt it was a miracle that more officers were not injured in the resulting chaos of hundreds of independently operating personnel.”
Lessons applied Dec. 2
The Police Foundation report’s criticism of both the self-deployment and communication issues were taken to heart by agencies across Southern California, according to McMahon. And when dispatchers got the call about the attack at the IRC, things were different.
“We did not have the volume of out-of-county and out-of-area units that came in,” Burguan said. “We had a significant response from the Sheriff’s Department, but of course, they’re here in town as well. We had a significant response from (San Bernardino County Probation), and they’re here in town as well. And then there was a smaller response from our neighboring agencies and from school (police departments) and that kind of stuff.”
That wasn’t because outside officers and agencies didn’t want to get involved.
“Talking to guys out at the west end of the county ... They had cops that wanted to come, and from a command standpoint, they said, ‘No, we’re holding back until we’re requested,’?” Burguan said. “There was a lot more of that discipline in play, versus Big Bear, where there was just people who went there.”
The Los Angeles Police Department — which had self-deployed to Big Bear — was prepared to come Dec. 2 too, Burguan said, but held off, awaiting word from his department.
“So there was a little bit more of that coordination and communication,” he said.
That meant the smaller number of officers and agencies that self-deployed ended up being a help, rather than a hindrance.
Some of the improvement was due to geography.
“(At) Angelus Oaks, the shootout happened at the cabin, in a small confined area, mountain roads, with not a lot of room for people to go in there,” Burguan said.
In contrast, the IRC attack occurred “on city streets; it was relatively easy to shut down. We probably had more cars on this one, but the roads were so much bigger and so much wider that we were able to get equipment through still. So it made that part a little bit easier,” Burguan said. “I think if this attack had happened in the mountains, we may have had similar issues.”
This time around, there were fewer communication issues because, other than the California Highway Patrol, all of the responding agencies on Dec. 2 used similar radio systems.
“We have 800 radio systems in this county, and so even though we’re on different channels, our dispatchers have the ability to patch the channels together,” McMahon said.
Even so, not everyone who responded Dec. 2 could be on the same channels, and dispatchers split responders up into different radio groups, depending on which part of the response they were working on.
Lessons learned Dec. 2
Looking back on Dec. 2, Burguan knows his department needs some equipment upgrades.
“Right now, we issue everyone soft body armor, that’s normal,” he said. “That’s kind of the best day-to-day thing to wear, both from a comfort and protection balance. But when you get to the point where you’re dealing with rifle fire, you’re going to want a bit more.”
Private corporations are already donating to the San Bernardino Police Foundation to help pay for the additional body armor, he said. Burguan also would like to see officers equipped with litter blankets used to transport the wounded.
“There’s been a renewed push by officers to get some more long guns in the field, and that creates its challenges as well, but we need to manage our way through that,” Burguan said. “We’ll find a way to put some more long guns in the field.”
The San Bernardino Police Department is also going to look at ways to work better with emergency medical technicians, with whom the police already trains.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department continues to work with area law enforcement agencies on a “response plan to an ‘active shooter’ incident,” spokeswoman Tracey Martinez said via email.
The Police Foundation has just begun its analysis of the Dec. 2 response, with a final report expected in spring.
“It’s too early on to really tell exactly what we can do better and what really went well,” McMahon said.
Investigations, including the officer-involved shooting that ended in the deaths of Farood and Malik, are still ongoing, he said. In addition, the Police Foundation report likely will reveal successes and failures that may not be obvious now.
“But on its face, everything went very, very well,” McMahon said. “There will be, undoubtedly, something, or more than one thing, that we could have done a little bit better, whether it’s coordination (with) fire and medical personnel and our folks, but who knows how that’s all going to shake out.”
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