When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of then-living fugitive Christopher Jordan Dorner on Feb. 10, they were surrounded by other city and police officials from LA, Irvine, Riverside, the FBI and the U.S. Marshal's Office. As part of the demonstration of collective Southern California determination (and fear) was Irvine's relatively new Mayor Steven Choi.
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Dorner, as everyone knows by now, did not get arrested or convicted, dying in a fire that followed a Big Bear firefight with law enforcement. When Beck later pointed out that technicality would have to be addressed when it came to the million-dollar promise, some cried foul, none louder than those civilians who believe the information they fed authorities led to the end of former La Palma resident Dorner's bloody rampage.
Beck later clarified at a press conference that, were it up to him, the reward money would be distributed but that all those who contributed toward the fund would have to give their blessings.
One of them was Choi–or, actually, the City of Irvine. The mayor on Tuesday night asked his council colleagues to approve kicking in $100,000 from its public safety fund into the Dorner reward kitty because it was the right thing to do. His proposal received unanimous approval, although council members Beth Krom and Larry Agran did mention they'd been kept out of the loop through the entire evolution of the LAPD reward process.
Police Chief David Maggard was enlisted to shepherd the money into the LA reward coffers. His department had been a lead agency in the Dorner case because the ex-LAPD officer's presumed first victims were Irvine couple Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence, who were found slain in the condo complex parking structure on Feb. 3. Authorities believe Dorner went on to kill a Riverside police office and San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy and injure officers from those agencies and the LAPD before the cabin fire Feb. 12.
As we reported earlier today, the City of LA separately gave $40,000 to two women as compensation for officers having mistakenly shot up their truck, and slightly injuring them, when they believed Dorner was inside.
Christopher Jordan Dorner Nightmare Fallout: $40,000 to Ladies Whose Truck Cops Shot Up
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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.