First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, will also meet privately with the families of the victims on Wednesday.
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The dead officers included Michael Smith, 55, Patrick Zamarripa, 32, Lorne Ahrens, 48, Michael Krol, 40, and Brent Thompson, 43.
The slain officers were killed Thursday night when a lone gunman ambushed the them near the end of a peaceful march against two recent police shootings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Bush challenged the idea that the forces pulling Americans apart are stronger than the forces pulling them together. “We want the unity of hope, affection and high objective”, he said. “I confess that sometimes I, too, experience doubt”, said Obama “I’ve been to too many of these things”. “I know we will make it because of what I have experienced in my own life, what I have seen of this country and its people”.
Obama called the work of police officers “like no other”, adding that the Dallas Police Department is more progressive than most. They “saved more lives than we will ever know”, he said.
Tuesday’s memorial service showed a tired president whose hopes for change had been thwarted.
In his introduction, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told service attendees that the dignitaries were there to help battle the “common disease” of violence and to honor “our men and women in blue, our peacemakers in blue”.
“We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and risky job fairly and professionally”, he said.
Obama went out of his way to stress that “the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and unsafe job fairly and professionally”.
“We turn on the TV or surf the internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners”, the first black USA president said.
He also acknowledged what Dallas police have been saying over the past several days, that their new community policing policies and tactics have reduced complaints of excessive force by 64 percent.
President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that a week of violence and racial tension exposed the deepest fault lines in American democracy, but urged Americans not to despair because the nation would overcome its divides. “The tragedy is very fresh in our minds – too fresh for some”, said the officer, who asked not to be named out of respect for those grieving.
“They were upholding the constitutional rights of this country”, which is founded on laws and freedom to assemble, Obama said.
Police officers arrive at the memorial service honoring the five slain police officers. The black Army veteran portrayed the attack on the officers as payback for the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban Minneapolis.
Before an audience made up mostly of law enforcement officials, Obama noted that the officers on the scene of the attack, reacted to the gunfire by shielding civilians.
“Even those who dislike the phrase ‘black lives matter, ‘ surely, we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family”, Obama said, addressing the law enforcement community at large. “We know like for every other American that their courage is our protection and shield”.
Bush said the slain officers died “for the safety of strangers” and “are the best among us”.
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Pasco said Obama drew a parallels between the actions of the Dallas shooter and Dylann Roof, the man prosecutors say espoused white supremacist beliefs before fatally shooting nine black people inside a church in Charleston, South Carolina in June 2015.
