The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau said it was “monitoring the developing events” in Dallas, and Boston police said all its patrols would be conducted by two-officer units “in the best interests of officer safety”.
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“Laura and I are heartbroken by the heinous act of violence in our city last night”, he said in a statement from Crawford, Texas.
Three other suspects are in custody, Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown said. She did not say whether all of the planned protests are in response to this week’s deadly police-involved shootings.
About 800 people participated in the demonstration, which came in the wake of two recent fatal shootings by police.
President Barack Obama held a press conference on the violence from Poland, where he was attending a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit meeting, condemning the shootings as “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement”. “We saw no other option than to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension to detonate where the suspect was … other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger”.
“[They were] working together with rifles, triangulating at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going”, Brown told a news conference, adding that a civilian was wounded. “The suspect said he was upset about ‘Black Lives Matter.’ He said he was upset about the recent police shootings”.
The slain officers include four Dallas Police officers and one officer for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system; one was a newlywed. The official did not say how the suspect died. Protests were also held in several other cities across the country Thursday night after a Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a auto with a woman and a child.
Early Friday morning about a dozen officers stood at attention outside Parkland Hospital as the bodies of three fallen officers were moved. Chief Brown describes sniper suspect’s motivesSearch warrants are being executed now at the Johnson family home. Two civilians were also wounded, authorities said. Thompson was the first DART officer killed in the line of duty in the history of the agency.
Four of the officers killed in the attack are from the Dallas Police Department. Dallas officers are hurting.
The bloodshed marked the deadliest day for law enforcement in the United States since the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001.
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President Barack Obama said America is “horrified” by the shootings, which have no possible justification.
