Barack Obama hastily concluded his first visit to Spain and potentially his last to Europe as USA president Sunday in the wake of the Dallas shootings. But the city warns drivers to expect significant delays Tuesday.
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Mr Obama will meet privately with relatives of the police officers, at an event that will also be attended by Vice President Joe Biden, and by George W Bush and his wife Laura. He is visiting on invitation of the mayor of Dallas, the White House said.
The sense of crisis deepened last week when a black man shot dead five white cops in Dallas, shocking the nation and the world.
“Well I’ve obviously got some experience with this as a parent and as somebody who’s been around”, Johnson said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Obama also met with the socialist leader, Pedro Sanchez, and two other opposition leaders while in Madrid.
“Any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime”, Obama said at a news conference in Madrid. Investigators are now trying to decipher the writing by looking through evidence from his suburban Dallas home.
“It is in the interest of police officers that their communities trust them”, Obama said.
“I wish I was staying longer”, Obama said earlier Sunday prior to a meeting with King Felipe VI”.
Johnson had practised military-style drills in his garden and trained at a private self-defence school that teaches special tactics, including “shooting on the move”.
Arriving in Europe late Thursday night, Obama immediately sought to address rising tensions at home by delivering a statement on the shooting deaths by police of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
In Memphis Sunday, demonstrators shut down a bridge and hundreds were arrested during demonstrations in Baton Rouge over the weekend.
Instead of spending two days sightseeing in southern Spain and tending to more official business in the capital of Madrid, the White House scrapped some of Obama’s events including a staple of his foreign travels, a question-and-answer forum with young adults and crammed the rest of his schedule into Sunday. While in Spain Sunday, the President condemned citizens who attack police officers, saying they are performing a “disservice to the cause” of criminal justice reform.
“I would hope that police organisations are also respectful of the frustrations that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness”.
In recent months, videos of deadly mass shootings, or of white police officers killing black civilians, have become routine.
Obama arrived in Spain late Saturday after attending a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Poland. He cut his visit to Spain short by a day and has spoken daily during the trip about the attacks, calling for police and protesters to “listen to each other”.
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He will also hold talks with King Felipe at the royal palace, before heading back to the United States, a country that now seems as divided in its politics as Spain.
