Lorne Ahrens before the funeral services in Plano, Texas on Wednesday.
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In the Dallas suburb of Plano, mourners were told of Ahrens’ work with the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department and time as semipro football player before moving to Texas and joining the Dallas police force.
Protests against police violence continued on Wednesday.
The lawsuit describes the protests as peaceful and blames law enforcement for escalating the situation. Civilians, officers and family came to pay their respects, light candles or leave flowers or balloons in their memory.Sam Eichenwald for NewsweekAfter speaking on behalf of his former partner, Patrick “Patricio” Zamarripa, police Officer Josh Rodriguez returns to his seat visibly shaken.
Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, 48, and DART Officer Brent Thompson, 43, and will be honored with memorial services Wednesday morning.
Smith joined Dallas police in 1989. Shortly after 6 p.m., the Dallas police chief, David Brown, arrived and stood in line with everyone else.
Since Tuesday night, Dallas police have buried their five slain colleagues, one funeral following the other in quick and numbing succession.
“Anytime another officer falls, we lose a brother or sister, and it’s just like losing a family member”, explained Lt. Paul Robeson, who oversees the Honor Guard.
“When the bullets started flying, the men and women of the Dallas police, they did not flinch and they did not react recklessly”, he said, praising the officers. Ahrens was known as a gentle giant and a voracious reader whose intelligence was equal to his size.
Thursday’s funeral took place at the Watermark Church in Dallas.
After a Dallas memorial service, Thompson’s funeral will be at a church in Corsicana, the town south of Dallas where he lived. He was a father of two and husband to a fellow Dallas Police Department detective.
Obama then addressed fears gripping a nation caught in a bitter debate over policing after the recent police killings of two black men, Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana, earlier in the week.
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It was Micah Xavier Johnson, an ex-Army reserve deployed to Afghanistan, who became the protagonist of the shooting, arguing that he was “upset” with the American system of justice and wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers”.
