These three beloved men died doing their duty Sunday: trying to protect the people of Baton Rouge. The incident occurred 10 days after a similar shooting in Dallas which took the lives of five police officers as they supervised a peaceful protest over the fatal police shootings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
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“There’s no doubt whatsoever these officers were intentionally targeted and assassinated”, said Louisiana State Police Col. Michael Edmonson during a news conference Monday. He liked being a police officer, “and he always tried to be fair”.
“These men are husbands, fathers, sons and brothers”, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said.
“We believe while this individual was in the city he was looking for locations to specifically target police officers”.
A recent series of shootings involving police have exposed deep fault lines through USA society surrounding racial prejudice and gun violence. Baton Rouge Police Department Officer Markell Morris holds a bouquet of flowers and a Superman action figure that a citizen left at the Our Lady of the Lake Hospital where the police officers were brought July 17, 2016.
“It’s like predestination”, said Cavalier, who remembers calling Jackson shortly after he saw the post. Two other persons of interest were taken into custody and are being questioned. Long, who was black, was reported to have attacked police on his 29th birthday.
Gov. John Bel Edwards called them heroic and said they ran toward danger Sunday morning.
The surge in police fatalities, recorded by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, follows a particularly deadly month for law enforcement after the high profile killings of police officers in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge.
The suspect was dressed all in black and, some reports said, wore a mask.
A witness told local media the gunman carried what appeared to be an AR-15 assault-style rifle.
Long visited at least three barber shops on July 7 in the Oak Cliff area where he introduced himself by his pseudonym, Cosmo Setepenra, and passed out his holistic health book titled The Cosmo Way, Vol. 1 The Detox. It is also filled with posts targeting white people.
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Montrell Jackson, 32, posted an emotional message about policing shortly before an assassin killed him and two other police officers. He was married with four children. I swear to God I love this city, but I wonder if the city loves me in uniform. “This city MUST and WILL get better”, Jackson wrote. “The sad part about it is in all of those attacks multiple officers were present anyway, but you got to do everything you can to let the men and women in this department know you’re here for them”, Ross said.
