Racial tension following police violence against African-Americans continued ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Dallas, where five police officers were gunned down last week.
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Former First Lady Laura Bush and Vice President Joe Biden are set to attend as well.
“I’m your best hope”, Obama remarked at one point, according to the Fraternal Order of Police’s James O. Pasco, one of the meeting’s attendees.
“I and those that loved Mike the most choose to honor his legacy by choosing – because it is a choice – not to let our anger drag us into a darker place, but instead we choose to continue Mike’s fight for good and to not let the evil prevail”. “We’re all in this together”.
The president also plans to organize a meeting Wednesday at the White House with law enforcement officials, activists, academics, civil rights leaders and local political leaders to discuss criminal justice reform. It then becomes the responsibility of law enforcement officials to deal with the ramifications and keep the peace.
Police Chief Jon Belmar says the officer is on leave.
The National Association of Police Organisations blames Mr Obama for waging a “war on cops”.
This will be the eleventh time President Obama has traveled to a community in the wake of a mass shooting.
The president has called for calm.
President Bush will deliver brief remarks.
“They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too numerous communities they serve”, Obama wrote in a Facebook post.
“We must have that discussion about race in America”. He said there should be only peaceful demonstrations by those protesting last week’s fatal shootings of black men by the police in Louisiana and Minnesota. In choosing to the deliver a speech, rather than a private visit with families, Obama has tasked himself with ministering to Americans as they make sense of a frustrating cloud of issues swirling around the shootings.
Each week seemingly brings a new shaky image of a police officer shooting dead a black American – images that quickly go viral and revive tough questions about race and policing. “One of the things it can do is put our police officers in harm’s way, and we have to be very careful about doing that”.
“There’s a lot of work to be done, with this police department specifically”.
In recent years, after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Obama has chosen his words more carefully.
In addition to the five slain officers, seven officers and two civilians were wounded.
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They also seemingly triggered the deadly rampage in Dallas by black Afghanistan war veteran Micah Johnson, as a protest against police brutality was wrapping up.
