The gunman opened fire at the Dallas demonstration that followed the deaths of two black men at the hands of police.
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Police killed Johnson using a bomb transported by a robot following an intense stand-off on Friday morning. “I’m not ashamed to say it”, Brown said, adding that the $150,000 robot was damaged but still functional.
Brown’s comments came the same day the family of Micah Johnson, the suspected shooter, broke their silence, saying their son was never the same after he served six years in the Army Reserves and deployed to Afghanistan.
Micah Johnson used the peaceful Black Lives Matter rally, which was protesting against the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, as an opportunity to kill five officers and maim seven others.
His father, James Johnson, said haltingly and through tears: “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better”.
Bomb-making material, rifles and a combat journal were found at the home of Johnson, who was himself killed.
“He knew what he was doing. This wasn’t some novice”, Brown said. “We don’t think he learned that in the military. We don’t have any evidence of that”.
The chief also said that authorities are downloading more than 170 hours of officers’ body camera footage and collecting “countless hours” of dashcam video.
Protesters spoke out against police shootings of black Americans.
A smaller group protested in the California state capital of Sacramento.
Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign event on Monday, mentioned the events in Dallas and said it’s “time for hostility against police and all law enforcement to end immediately”. Get off that protest line and get an application in.
Officers stood in a line, as others assembled in a circle around a police vehicle covered with balloons and flowers.
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In a related development, U.S. President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush are scheduled to attend a private memorial for the slain officers in Dallas on Tuesday. Plans for the other officers killed were not yet clear.
