After yesterday’s standoff between law enforcement and Chris Dorner came to a fiery end, there were many questions that remained unanswered. The one weighing most heavily on the minds of those following the case is whether or not police started the fire that burned alive the man believed to be Chris Dorner.

There is evidence to suggest that police intentionally started that fire, the evidence being audio from the San Bernardino police scanner and one reporter’s recording on the ground.

But this falls short of confirming what actually happened. And since the news media bowed down to requests from the San Bernardino Sheriff to stop airing or even tweeting about the standoff in case Dorner was watching for tips, we are left to speculate over the audio recordings.

The first is from Carter Evans, a KCAL reporter who was on the scene during the gun battle between police and Dorner on Big Bear mountain. Audio of the mayhem surrounding Evans was aired live by KCAL affiliate CBS, which I listened to and live tweeted as police yelled at Evans to leave and shouted about “burning the mother fucker out”:

Oddly enough, CBS LA did not include the “burn the mother fucker” part of the recording in the video on its website and I’ve  failed to locate a single clip of it since. But a recording of that moment was uploaded to YouTube, though most of it is inaudible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1T6cG7FC71c

This wasn’t the only instance where police were heard making references to “burning”. As I watched media coverage of the standoff, others, including my friend and journalist Max Blumenthal, were live-tweeting what they were hearing on the San Bernardino police scanner:

Max has since created a Storify of his tweets to demonstrate the media’s failure to report on the very likely scenario that police purposefully burned the cabin down. Max is no conspiracy theorist and neither and I. But based on these on these recordings we should at the very least demand answers from police on how things went down.

Here is a recording of the police scanner transmission, though I cannot confirm it is genuine because I didn’t hear it live.

I tweeted last night that these recordings aren’t enough to 100 percent confirm what happened because police can easily spin what they meant by “burning”, “burner” and “burn”. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see this from the Guardian reporting just that:

The term “burner” had led to speculation that the fire had been started deliberately, but burner is thought to be police slang for tear gas, and may refer to “BurnSafe” containers for CS gas canisters, made by the Covina-Thomas Company in Covina, California. On its website the company lists among its recent customers the LAPD, although not the San Bernardo County sheriff’s office, which led the raid.

Perhaps this is true and police did not start the fire. Unfortunately, we can’t know that because, like I mentioned earlier, the media failed to do its job by turning off the cameras. I believe that was a huge mistake given that police throughout southern California have been out of control throughout this manhunt as we have seen them shoot, without warning, at pick-up trucks and drivers (two Latina women and white man) that neither resemble Dorner nor drove the same color or make car as him.

Police have also sent swat teams to raid public spaces based on tips that a man resembling Dorner was spotted. For example, on Monday, in Tarzana, California, “Heavily-armed officers swarmed a KFC restaurant in Tarzana after receiving a tip saying someone who resembled Dorner was inside,” reported CBS News. The African-American man was released after “Authorities soon realized the man barely even resembled Christopher Dorner.”

Given law enforcement’s demonstrated propensity to shoot first and ask questions later, the last thing the news media should have done was turn their cameras off. Thanks to their stunning willingness to bow down to police during a shady manhunt, there is no video evidence to determine who started the fire. Instead we are left to rely on the word of police department’s that have known histories of corruption and brutality.

Thus far the only news outlets that have attempted to report on the cause of the fire are the Guardian and the Huffington Post, that I’m aware of.

Don’t get me wrong, Dorner is no hero. He allegedly murdered several people and that’s unacceptable never mind his reasons. But that doesn’t mean the constitution no longer applies to him. Regardless of his crimes, Dorner was still entitled to due process.

This man posed a threat to the LAPD not only because he was violently targeting police officers but because he sought to exposes their culture of corruption. Now that he is gone, law enforcement will try to pretend it never happened, which is why the media must continue to investigate. However, that’s going to be a difficult task if the largest and most well resourced outlets continue following the orders of the people they’re supposed hold accountable.