When Dallas Police Chief David Brown took the podium during Tuesday’s memorial service for the five fallen officers, Brown was the picture of poise and calm for an entire country seemingly besieged by a summer of violence.
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Mr Brown said killing Mr Johnson was “not an ethical dilemma”, and he would do it again to protect his officers.
Some experts have raised concerns about this new method of neutralizing a threat.
But a number of civil libertarians say that the use of the robot sets a perilous precedent for law enforcement in which a suspect’s right to surrender may be curtailed.
“They took an inner city kid like me with flaws and made me their police chief”, he said.
Brown also clarified Monday where Johnson was killed, saying it happened on the second floor of a community college and not a parking garage as authorities previously described. Brown did not provide more details, including the location of negotiations that came before the bomb. In February 2011, he swiftly fired and criminally charged another officer in after that cop was caught on camera kicking and using pepper spray on a handcuffed person.
So what was going on in the brain of Micah Johnson?
Afterwards, investigators found more weapons, along with bomb-making materials, in the Mesquite, Texas home where Johnson lived.
Dallas officer Bervin Smith has known Brown for 20 years and says his past hardships have strengthened his resolve to do the job. Micah Xavier, the attacker shot and killed five Dallas police officers, injured 9 other officers, and two civilians. They are still trying to find out what the letters stand for.
Chief Brown spoke alongside George W. Bush and President Obama during the memorial. He will also speak privately with the families of the slain officers.
He stated that he regularly cares for victims who were shot, but it felt personal that more black men were dying at the hands of police offers and that it affected him.
In tears, his father, James Johnson said: “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better”.
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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.
