Christoper Dorner's murderous rampage–which began with the now deceased La Palma resident's Feb. 3, 2013, slaying of an engaged couple in their Irvine condo complex parking structure–was famously motivated by his firing from the Los Angeles Police Department. Now, Dorner's white former training officer is suing her city, alleging she was made a scapegoat of the black rogue lawman's racism claims. Sergeant Teresa Evans alleges racial harassment creating a hostile work environment, discrimination and retaliation in her lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
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Dorner became a suspect in the slayings of Irvine's Monica Quan and her fiance Keith Lawrence on Feb. 4, 2013, when the 33-year-old Navy reserve officer's infamous “manifesto” was published online. In it, he accused Evans of orchestrating his firing because he had allegedly witnessed her subjecting an African American to excessive force by kicking him three times.
The manifesto also accused Quan's father, retired LAPD Captain Randal Quan, of failing to adequately defend Dorner as his counsel in the police disciplinary process that ended in termination in 2009.
Evans and Randal Quan were reportedly the first to suspect Dorner had killed the Irvine couple, something each immediately reported to the LAPD before the manifesto hit the Internet.
Dorner, who promised warfare on LAPD officers and their families in his manifesto, went on to be blamed for the killing of two Southern California law enforcement officers during the manhunt for him that ended with his apparently haven taken his own life in a Big Bear cabin surrounded by cops and engulfed in flames on Feb. 12, 2013.
Evans' suit maintains she was harassed by LAPD supervisors due to the “racial tension sparked by Dorner” as well as her own complaints that she was being discriminated against because of her race. She further claims she was denied overtime and transferred from a prestigious assignment to one with less stature, leaving her ability to earn a promotion “completely destroyed.”
What made this even more unfair, according to Evans' complaint, was the LAPD knew of Dorner's past misconduct while with the department, which included accidentally shooting himself in the hand, assaulting a classmate during training and failing a psychological exam. Oh, and he also apparently lied to the department that he had seen combat in the Navy.
The LAPD is not yet commenting on the pending litigation that seeks unspecified damages.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.