In hunting down Christopher J. Dorner, hell-bent on murderous revenge over being fired from the Los Angeles Police Department, officers twice fired without warning on three innocent civilians, wounding two of them.

That innocent people get shot by cops who think their own safety is paramount, whose actions show they value their own lives more than those of people they are sworn to protect, is part of a major problem in America that has not abated much despite decades of efforts to make policing more professional and less brutish. It is the policy of police departments that police cannot kill innocents to save themselves, in effect, that sometimes your sworn duty is to die. But, on the streets, it is far too often another story entirely.

The victims of this Feb. 7 police violence bore no resemblance to Dorner or his vehicle. The deranged Dorner drove a gray Nissan Titan pickup, while LAPD fired a fusillade into a bright blue Toyota Tacoma pickup from behind, while minutes later Torrance, Calif., police rammed a black Honda Ridgeline pickup and then fired three shots.

Dorner was a large, even hulking, black man. In the blue truck were two Hispanic women. Torrance police shot at a surfer, a white male slight in stature.

Luckily none of these innocents died, though one of the women was shot in the back.

Both LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and the Torrance police quickly issued statements excusing this murderous conduct, a rush to judgment that shows how “to protect and serve” sometimes means “to protect our own.” But valuing police lives more than those of others has a long history in policing and especially in Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. So does a long history of racism in police departments that many officers of all colors have fought with limited success.

Over the last three decades LAPD officers have shot people who tossed a typewriter at them from further than the machine would fly, as well as people who threw, or just threatened to throw, knives from distances of 10 feet or more, posing not much of a risk to the officers. They have shot people who were naked and unarmed, or who police said they thought were armed because of a glint of metal or because they mistook a water pistol for a real gun.

LAPD officers, of course, have also come under actual and scary attacks, like the 1997 shootout in North Hollywood with armored bank robbers whose assault rifles spewed more than 1,100 rounds over 44 terrifying minutes before both were fatally shot by courageous officers with far less powerful weapons.