But he also heard from Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, who expressed frustration with the distrust between the black community and his officers, and Teri George, the mother of a Baltimore police officer injured during riots last summer. Disturbing videos of the events have “left us wounded and angry and hurt”, he said.
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At a memorial for slain police officers, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that a week of deeply troubling violence has appeared to expose “the deepest fault lines of our democracy”. “We must reject such despair”. Bush said that Americans know we have one country and don’t want the unity of grief and fear, but hope. I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, fool me once, shame on…shame on you.
Cunningham said the Dallas Police Department exemplified that commitment to their community when officers used themselves as human shields to protect bystanders from possibly being shot.
At a memorial service for the five officers slain here on Tuesday, Mr Obama sought to unify a nation grieving and yet divided over fatal shootings involving police. At the time, Bush had joined hands with his wife, Laura Bush, and the current First Lady Michelle Obama as a member of the dais.
Another said: “George Bush laughing and dancing during the Dallas cop memorial while standing next to the Obamas is white privilege on hallucinogens”. “And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common objective”.
City leaders, police officers and their families gathered inside the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center to pay tribute to Brent Thompson, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Patrick Zamarripa and Michael Krol.
For more coverage of the local messages of support for Dallas police, check out our July 16 edition. “Just as hate knows love’s the cure, you can rest your mind assure, that I’ll be loving you always”.
The legislation, called the Back the Blue Act of 2016, would create a new federal crime for killing a federal judge or law enforcement officer, with a minimum penalty of 30 years imprisonment and the possibility of the death penalty. It’s a posture neither side has completely accepted.
These are words from a policymaker who has thought long and hard about these issues, at least since his days as a state Senator in IL, where Obama championed a law to document racial profiling. Also critical, he said, was to better train police to avoid “implicit biases”.
Some protesters, meanwhile, questioned why Obama rushed home from Europe to attend the service in Dallas before meeting with the communities grieving their dead in Minnesota and Louisiana. The same police officers he has insulted are the same ones who are trying to keep the peace on the streets in some of this nation’s toughest neighborhoods. “We’re not even close to being there yet”, he said.
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“We ask police to do too much, and we ask too little of ourselves”, Mr Obama said during his remarks, which capped an emotional interfaith service just 1.6km from where the five officers died last Thursday.
