Officers are negotiating with a suspect who has been in a shootout with SWAT officers at a downtown Dallas parking garage, Brown said.
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Dallas authorities say 11 officers were shot during a protest against police shootings Thursday night, with five cops confirmed dead, CBS News reported. “I ask everybody focus on one thing right now and that is Dallas police officers, their families, those that are deceased, those that are in the hospital fighting for their lives”.
Early Friday, dozens of officers filled the corridor of the emergency room at Baylor Medical Center, where other wounded officers were taken.
Graphic images were captured on video by Dallas television station KDFW.
Dr. Jeff Hood, another protest organizer, also expressed horror at the shootings and condemned violence against police officers.
Three of the injured officers were in critical condition undergoing surgery Friday morning.
Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an expert on security issues, said on Twitter that he believes this is the “first use of a robot in this way in policing”. The shooting was the deadliest single incident for US law enforcement since September 11, 2001.
The scene was chaotic, with officers with automatic rifles on the street corners. Three of the dead officers were with the Dallas Police Department, and the fourth was an officer with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit force, reports said.
One of the gunman is “cornered”, the Dallas Police Department said in a press conference. He went on to say he was upset with white people and specifically wanted to kill white police officers.
Roughly 100 officers were in the area “to protect demonstrators and the surrounding area”, Rawlings said. Protesters chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot”, the line made famous in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, about two years ago.
“I was talking to police, laughing and joking with police officers”.
Four of the officers who were killed were with the Dallas Police Department.
“One suspect did do some of the shooting, but we will not be satisfied until every lead is exhausted, if someone else is out there we will find you, and bring you to justice, we want to keep the suspects guessing”, said Brown. “He threatened other bombs and we felt that was the safest way to get in and it was”, he said.
Crowds milled in the streets outside the convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was fatally shot while police grappled with him in a parking lot Tuesday. “(…) We’ve got to make sure that we love each other this way, and not argue with each other”.
In interviews throughout the day, Reynolds complained that other officers responding to the scene were more concerned about the officer who fired the shots than Castile.
One of those slain has been identified by Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, as transit officer Brent Thompson, 43, who had joined the agency in 2009.
“Vicious, calculated” and a “despicable attack” is how President Obama described the ambush.
“In times like this we must remember – and emphasize – the importance of uniting as Americans”, Abbott said.
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“So I’m forced to confront that this kind of racism exists, and it’s incumbent upon all of us to vow and ensure that it doesn’t happen and doesn’t continue to happen”, he said.
