While talking to negotiators after the shootings, Johnson asked how many officers he had killed, Brown said. “Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about”.
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He also wounded at least nine other officers and two civilians before he was killed.
The chief said that “based on evidence of bomb-making materials and a journal” found in Johnson’s Mesquite, Texas, home, “we’re convinced that this suspect had other plans”, for what may have been a larger attack.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown clarified Monday where Johnson was killed with a bomb delivered by a remote-controlled robot, saying that it happened on the second floor of El Centro College, not a parking garage as authorities previously described.
Brown said Monday police officers in the United States are under tremendous strain.
Johnson’s mother, Delphine Johnson, said in an interview that her son had wanted to be a police officer as a child, and that his six years in the Army Reserve, including a tour in Afghanistan, were “not what Micah thought it would be… what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectations”.
“He just basically lied to us; playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more and that there were bombs there”, Brown said, explaining that negotiations had broken down.
This attack began during protests over the police killings of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot near St. Paul, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling, who was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. He said they improvised the whole plan in about 15 or 20 minutes.
Brown said officers across the country are “on edge” in the wake of the targeted attacks, and said he himself had received a death threat over the department’s Facebook page. In then end the suspect was dead and the extension arm of the robot was damaged, but the robot is still functional. “Detectives are also collecting all dashcam video”.
Officials are working to determine the meaning of the message “RB,” which they say Johnson scrawled in blood at two locations inside the downtown building.
Johnson’s military training helped him to shoot and move rapidly, “triangulating” his fire with multiple rounds so that police at first feared there were several shooters.
He said another police department will assist with security when Obama visits the city this week.
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Brown said 13 officers used force against the suspect – 11 officers used their firearms and 2 officers who used the explosive device.
