The gunman who killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, La., Sunday was specifically seeking out law enforcement officers, authorities said Monday.
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Even as Baton Rouge was mourning the three officers, news came Tuesday that a police officer in Kansas City was shot and killed while sitting in his patrol vehicle.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie called it a “hell of a shot” and Wade Duty, who is the co-owner at Precision Firearms in Baton Rouge doesn’t disagree.
But Long, who was black, said in a series of social media messages posted in recent days, some from Dallas, that he was fed up with the mistreatment of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement, and praised the attack on Dallas police.
Two of the slain officers were from the Baton Rouge Police Department: 32-year-old Montrell Jackson and 41-year-old Matthew Gerald.
While State Police Col. Mike Edmonson made it clear that police officers were Long’s main target, his motive for attacking police is still somewhat unclear. Jackson also wrote he loves Baton Rouge but wonders if the city loves him. “After he was finished here, I have no doubt he was heading to our headquarters and he was going to take more lives”.
The initiative comes in light of recent violence in Baton Rouge, including Sunday’s fatal shooting of three law enforcement officers and the July 5 shooting death of 37-year-old Alton Sterling.
The next weekend, police in riot gear arrested almost 200 protesters.
“I do not think this has set us back”, Crump said.
“Clearly the landscape has changed since Dallas”, he added. One of the injured officers remains on a ventilator.
“It is so important that everyone regardless of race or political party or profession, regardless of what organisations you are a part of, everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further”, Obama said in an address to the nation from White House after the shooting.
That shooting, captured on cellphone video, provoked widespread protests about police treatment of the black community. Johnson told negotiators he wanted to kill white cops – before he was killed by a police robot bomb.
The email was time-stamped less than an hour before Long was first spotted by police carrying a gun and clad all in black. The city was on high alert, officials said.
Gautreaux, the East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff, said he was convinced that if the Baton Rouge SWAT team had not arrived when it did, two additional deputies who were wounded would be dead and the gunman would have escaped to attack more officers.
“The men and women of law enforcement in this town are hurting bad. This is why. Because we are up against a force that is not playing by the rules”, Dabadie told the news conference.
Long joined the Marine Corps in 2005, worked as a data network specialist and served in Iraq before being discharged as a sergeant in 2010, according to the usa military.
In the letter, Long said he expected people who knew him wouldn’t believe he would commit “such horrendous acts of violence”. He left a digital trail of his thoughts under the name “Cosmo”.
According to SITE, a group that monitors extremist movements, he “ascribed to multiple fringe movements and conspiracy theories online, and expressed an unwillingness toward “peaceful protests”. People need to show more respect for police officers, but police officers need to show more respect for residents, he said. On July 7, another former USA serviceman espousing militant black nationalist views killed five Dallas officers.
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Jose Jackson spoke of his son’s integrity, and how his passion for helping other people had motivated him to become a police officer since his childhood.
