During a long standoff with police, Johnson told negotiators that he was upset over recent police-involved shootings of blacks and wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers.
Advertisement
Rawlings said the decision to use the robot was ultimately made by Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
He told CNN that Johnson, a military veteran, appeared to have practised detonating explosives.
The shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, was “determined to hurt more officers” and bomb-making materials as well as a journal that were found in his home seem to suggest he had been practicing detonations.
More than 200 people were arrested in chaotic scenes during a new night of protests over U.S. police violence towards blacks as authorities revealed Sunday that the Dallas shooter had apparently been plotting a major bomb attack. While most passed peacefully, fireworks, bottles and rocks were thrown at police in St Paul in clashes along a main interstate highway. A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers.
His father James said it was after military service that Johnson began studying black history. Louisiana law allows weapons to be carried openly.
His death was followed by the police killing in Minnesota of Philando Castile, a young black man who worked at a local school serving food to children.
On Sunday evening, protesters faced off with police officers wearing gas masks in Baton Rouge where, according to reports, at least 48 people were taken into custody after demonstrators clashed with officers following a peaceful march to the state capitol.
Dallas’ WFAA-TV, citing a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation, reported that authorities think Micah Johnson changed his attack plan so the shootings would coincide with Thursday’s protest against police brutality.
Facing accusations that his sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged attacks on police, Mr. Obama issued an appeal from Spain for protesters in the U.S.to refrain from violence.
Police shut down the street in front of headquarters to conduct a search of their parking garage for a suspicious person.
“My son is a hero”, father Rick Zamarripa said.
“The police in Baton Rouge have been truly very bad tonight”, Mr Mckesson said in a livestreamed Periscope video on Saturday night. They chase people just for kicks. “The protesters have not”.
Other protests took place in Nashville, Indianapolis and Washington DC.
Obama is expected to visit Dallas on Tuesday.to pay tribute to the victims of the police shootings.
Brown’s own story, marked by personal tragedy, encapsulates the painful tensions surrounding policing, race and gun violence in America.
Advertisement
Whether it was outside Dallas Police Department headquarters, where thousands had covered two squad cars with notes, flowers, balloons and candles or all over the city as a multiracial group of Dallas police officers comforted civilians, many in the the city came together in mourning. “And at a time like this, it’s our administration standing today with the police department, with the law enforcement community across this country, to say we mourn the loss of five fearless heroes in Dallas, and we’re going to keep working together at this”.
