“We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours”.
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The Dallas police department has employed a robot developed by Northrop Grumman subsidiary Remotec to resolve a standoff crisis that involved a shooting suspect, Fusion reported Tuesday. “Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger”. “The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb”.
The police chief also said the shooter had material for explosives and talked of using homemade bombs during the standoff.
The man who ambushed and killed five Dallas police officers last week has ties to Mississippi. Johnson, 25, was killed when authorities used a robot to detonate an explosive as negotiations faltered. He said the man shot three robots that were sent in and that he ultimately made a decision to use heavy equipment to tear down part of the building, allowing officers to fire tear gas into it before the man killed himself. “This time, it was used to deliver the bomb that killed one of the shooters – likely an unprecedented move in American policing”, writes journalist Cyrus Farivar for the ArsTechnica blog.
“I’m an old school cop, until you show me we’ve exhausted every lead, I’m not going to be convinced we know everything”, Chief Brown said. Chief Brown carried out a plan law enforcement experts say they’ve never seen done before by local officials.
Police forces around the country are on high alert following Thursday’s massacre that also injured seven, in addition to the five officers who were killed in the line of duty. Chief Brown says he’d use the robot or other unconventional tactics again in a similar situation.
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Farivar says the thinking shouldn’t end there. They were shot by an Army veteran-turned-sniper during a brazen act of violence that Obama denounced as a “vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement” by a “demented” individual. “Well, ask the policymakers to do something and I’ll give you an opinion”. “We should all be very clear how these things get deployed”.
