Former first lady Laura Bush, former US president George W Bush, first lady Michelle Obama and US President Barack Obama join in singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” during the interfaith memorial service, honouring five slain police officers at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday.
Advertisement
Bush said. Former president George W. Bush, who lives in Dallas, is also scheduled to speak.
Johnson, 25, used a high-powered rifle to kill five police officers and wound nine others in a sniper attack late Thursday.
Bush was followed by Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who received a standing ovation after Mayor Michael Rawlings called him “my rock”.
The shooting came at the end of a peaceful protest by hundreds against the two recent police killings of black men Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
No one expressed his appreciation for the men more memorably than Brown, who has emerged as the steady and charismatic face of the Dallas police.
Some police officials blame the president for the rise in racial tension, saying he is insufficiently supportive of law enforcement.
Obama landed in Dallas Tuesday to help the grief-stricken city begin to heal less than a week after its officers were killed and others wounded by an Army veteran-turned-sniper.
The president has already met privately with law enforcement at the White House.
Obama honoured the bravery of police officers and said fewer people were being mourned at the service because of the courage of the officers killed. A folded flag and a police hat rested on each chair. Beyonce offered a tribute to the slain officers, sharing her thoughts via Instagram.
He acknowledged Americans are unsettled by another mass shooting and are seeking answers to the violence that has sparked protests in cities and highlighted the nation’s persistent racial divide.
Mr. Obama said the goal of the meeting is to find “ways we can both keep people safe and ensure justice for all Americans”.
“The pain we feel may not soon pass, but my faith tells me they did not die in vain”, Obama said.
The death toll in Dallas was the highest for law enforcement on a single day in America since the September 11, 2001 attacks, when 72 officers died, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
When he has doubts, Obama said, he remembers a passage from Ezekiel, in which the Lord promised to take “your heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh”.
Under President Bill Clinton, the Crime Bill of 1994 provided money to hire tens of thousands of new police.
Now it’s Obama’s turn to be slimed by what Bush correctly identifies as a culture of reactionary narcissism, where you and yours are always right and all others are dirtbags. “So that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie, who’s kind of goofing off but not unsafe”.
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 former president was praised for his speech during the service however.
Data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project shows that police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans.
“That really was the tell-tale sign of his ideology” against police, Yates said. “These men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were”.
Thompson is the first officer in the 27-year history of the department to be killed in the line of duty.
It’s more than just the symbolism that troubles them. The Baton Rouge police officers were responding to a report of a man with a gun.
“There is no contradiction between us supporting law enforcement”.
“These men and women are here because we have a common disease – the absurd violence on our streets”, he said.
If Obama’s attendance at the memorial offered some solace to police, it didn’t seem to satisfy some black activists.
Mr Obama’s choice of travelling companions underscored the theme.
“At our best, we know we have one country, one future, one destiny”. “Coming here, he’s putting a Band-Aid on a very large, open wound”. He spent part of his time reciting Stevie Wonder’s “I’ll Be Loving You Always” to express his affection for his officers.
Advertisement
Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk.
