A flag flies at half-staff over Dealey Plaza, Saturday, July 9, 2016, in Dallas.
Advertisement
The anti-cop gunman who killed five Dallas police officers was seen by neighbors doing military-style training in his backyard before he went on his deadly ambush.
“He was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers”, he told police as they were trying to get him to surrender, according to Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
Brown also said police arrested 20 to 30 people who had been involved in protests in Dallas that night who were wearing gas masks and bullet-proof vests and had AR-15s slung across their shoulders.
“When we start suggesting that somehow there’s this enormous polarization, and we’re back to the situation in the ’60s, that’s just not true”, Obama added. He said violence against police officers is a “reprehensible crime” that needs to be prosecuted. “I am not justifying what he did, but I see why he did it”, she said.
Dallas Police Department spokeswoman Sr. Cpl.
“I’ve had texts from all over the world”.
“I think he just got exhausted”.
While there is virtually nothing but support for the victims of the seemingly senseless killings, the incident itself is generating debate on a larger scale around the world about what is happening in the United States when it comes to people’s personal safety.
‘When you look at it, these kinds of events happen in America quite often.
The New York Times reported Johnson served in the Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015 and he left as a private first class.
Johnson’s brother, Micah, shared her anger at police shootings, and also belonged to several Black militant groups on Facebook.
An unspecified number of suspects in custody, including one black woman, were “not being real cooperative”, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said.
A total of 12 officers were shot, 5 fatally.
The president planned to visit Dallas in a few days and to convene a White House meeting next week with police officers and community and civil rights activists.
But other politicians say the attack is connected to the growing tide of activism over controversial shootings by police.
Obama acknowledged the “tough week” following the controversial shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the sniper attack during the Black Lives Matter protest on Thursday, but expressed optimism that Americans would come together.
Scuffles broke out at one point after protesters said a bus driver made a derogatory remark towards them.
The past week’s violence has shocked a country seemingly inured to its epidemic of gun violence and injected new urgency into the national debate on race relations and how white police deal with black suspects.
“The demented individual who carried out those attacks in Dallas, he’s no more representative of African-Americans than the shooter in Charleston was representative of white Americans or the shooter in Orlando or San Bernardino were representative of Muslim-Americans”, Obama said, referring to a string of mass shootings in roughly the past year.
Advertisement
For CRI, I’m Victor Ning.
