A very intelligent read on the police scanner chatter from Jonathan Turley's web forums

[geek tragedy]

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/11/two-women-delivering-newspapers-sought-by-lapd-after-being-mistaken-for-christopher-dorner/#comment-501909

At the beginning they announce they are forcing open a window to shoot the tear gas in (they refer to these as “burners”)

They then began planning to set up perimeter and to open a door (I don’t know how this is being done)

The mention going ahead to use the burner (gas canister(s)) and prepare to execute.

Several seconds goes buy and they indicate they have deployed the gas and that a fire has resulted. (1:30)

Dispatcher reports 7? burners deployed and that they have a fire. (might have been using a repeating CS projectile gun)

It seems that there are two incident scenes or two groups being handled over the channel. One scene / group involves a search of some property referring to an RPG round, blood stains and a relative. The other scene / group is where the suspect is holed up with the CS gas deployment and fire. I don’t have enough information to know for sure.

2:20 an officer reports the front of the house is on fire and state that “he might come out the back.”

Officer instructs officers at the front of the house to watch their “backdrops” meaning if they have to fire their rifles, to be aware there are other officers behind the house.

62Sam1 (probably a person in a leadership role judging by the ending “1? instructs the dispatcher to have fire department respond and stage. “Stage” means to respond to the location but wait at a specified location away from danger until instructed by LEOs to come forward.

301. Officer reports hearing one gunshot from the residence.

Dispatcher confirms / officer tells her to have fire stage.

Supervisory officer tells perimeter units to stand by.

NE corner is fully engulfed

(Multiple units talking at once) ..break fully engulfed. (speed of house burning is rapidly increasing as evidence by two units trying to report this)

reports structure beginning to collapse

4:10 tactical supervisor and other unit discuss whether it is safe to bring fire department in.

Tactical person reports it is too dangerous to have fire respond due to an unsecured corner of the house and that live ammo is popping off. This is caused by the fire heating up bullets until they burst. This is too dangerous of a situation to bring the fire department in.

(Multiple units covering) …fully engulfed

More ammo continues to pop off

Announcement that the house has a basement, another tactical issue.

~+~ Analysis ~+~

Undstand that the only information I have is this recording of the radio channel. More information will become available from the fire investigation and autopsy.

I do not belive at all there was any intention by the police to set the house on fire in order to burn up the suspect. The other recording made of officers talking about burning him up was adrenalin and being amped up and talking to themselves after having been through an ordeal with a fellow officer killed. This was not radio traffic. This is stress talking. It happens occasionally and is upsetting to some in the public. It is not related to the tactical units deploying the tear gas.

Back to the tac channel recording. I was surprised at how fast the fire started and spread to engulf the entire house. It was extraordinarily fast. There is a strong possibility that an accelerant was involved, either put there by the suspect who might have known that CS would be shot in or that there was something in the cabin that was highly flammable. The suspect had already torched his vehicle so it was possible he might have intended to do the same thing with the cabin and had gasoline inside. I don’t have enough info to be sure here. The fire investigation will reveal what the cause was hopefully with certainty.

I believe it is most probable the suspect committed suicide by shooting himself after the fire spread large enough. He did not want to come out of this and be arrested.

There was a significant amount of live ammo that was in the house with the suspect and it was popping off. Given the fact that the suspect had already killed another LEO, the house was on fire, and ammo was popping off it would have been far too dangerous to attempt a rescue of the suspect when in all likelihood he was dead alread from the suicide shot.

AS for the talk of the driver license not being burned, I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on this at this stage as the fire investigation will continue.

Another thing. There were multiple LE agencies on scene, state, federal, local and national news media on site. With all that scrutiny they would have not deliberately and intentionally tried to burn this man to death. That did not happen. I will bet that BATFE will investigate the fire and more details will come out later.