Perhaps the best prescription to come from an institution in the wake of the Dorner case. Transparency is something we strongly advocate for at CopWatch, and it is nice to have allies in this struggle. While the NRA advocates for guns in schools and police have their elaborate funerals and fundraisers to capitalize on the public, the editorial board of the Daily Bulletin has seen fit to look at some of the factors underlying Chris Dorner's activities, police secrecy being the one they take on here:

While the public has a right to know what the agencies that enforce the law in their name are doing, the agencies themselves often don't respect laws supposedly guaranteeing that transparency. Here, P-E reporter Brian Rokos discusses his personal battle as a journalist to wrest information from the clutches of Sheriff Stan Sniff. He links to a pdf of the letter Sniff sent him in which he attempts to justify withholding the information:

This was an incident that happened on October 16, 2011. Avila was beaten by Pomona police officer O'Malley, and filed a complaint about the incident. Shortly afterwards, he was sitting in a car with a woman in an alley at 8:30 in the morning. He was shot by a Pomona PD officer (not O'Malley). He was unarmed. The results of the investigation, if any, have yet to be released.

This is some pretty big news in the police accountability world. Riverside County is one of the largest counties in California, if not the United States, which, coupled with the large number of municipalities that contract out to the sheriff and the large rural areas, gives the sheriff jurisdiction over a huge expanse. This step toward secrecy is unfortunate, if not unexpected. Expect something more about this.