DALLAS
— The heavily armed sniper who gunned down police officers in downtown
Dallas, leaving five of them dead, specifically set out to kill as many
white officers as he could, officials said Friday. He was a military
veteran who had served in Afghanistan, and he kept an arsenal in his
home that included bomb-making materials.
The gunman turned a demonstration against fatal police shootings this week of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana from a peaceful march focused on violence committed by officers into a scene of chaos and bloodshed aimed against them.
The
shooting was the kind of retaliatory violence that people have feared
through two years of protests around the country against deaths in
police custody, forcing yet another wrenching shift in debates over race
and criminal justice that had already deeply divided the nation.
A Split Second
Two witnesses to the shooting at a
march against police brutality on Thursday evening in Dallas described
the moment gunfire and panic broke out. Five police officers were
killed.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date July 9, 2016.
Photo by Gerald Herbert/Associated Press.
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Demonstrations
continued Friday in cities across the country, with one of the largest
taking place on the streets of Atlanta, where thousands of people
protesting police abuse brought traffic to a standstill.
Jeh
Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, said in New York that there
was apparently just one sniper, though there were so many gunshots and
so many victims that officials at first speculated about multiple
shooters.
Officials
said they had found no evidence that the gunman, Micah Johnson, 25, had
direct ties to any protest or political group, either peaceful or
violent, but his Facebook page showed that he supported the New Black
Panther Party, a group that has advocated violence against whites, and Jews in particular.
Searching
the killer’s home on Friday, “detectives found bomb-making materials,
ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition, and a personal journal of combat
tactics,” the Dallas Police Department said in a statement.
How the Dallas Shooting Unfolded
The attack was the deadliest against law enforcement officers in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
By YOUSUR AL-HLOU and JOHN WOO on Publish Date July 8, 2016.
Photo by William Widmer for The New York Times.
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Three
other people were arrested in connection with the shooting, but the
police would not name them or say why they were being held.
In
addition to the five officers who died, seven officers and two
civilians were wounded. The Police Department said that 12 officers had
returned fire during a wild series of gun battles that stretched for
blocks.
After
the shooting subsided, Mr. Johnson, wielding an assault rifle and a
handgun, held the police off for hours in a parking garage, claiming —
apparently falsely — to have planted explosives in the area, and
threatening to kill more officers. In the end, the police killed him
Friday morning with an explosive delivered by a remote-controlled robot,
the Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, said.
During
the standoff, Mr. Johnson, who was black, told police negotiators that
“he was upset about Black Lives Matter,” Chief Brown said. “He said he
was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was
upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white
people, especially white officers.”
He
refused to rule out the possibility that more people were involved,
saying, “We’re not satisfied that we’ve exhausted every lead.”
Mr.
Johnson, who lived in the Dallas area, served as a private in the Army
Reserve from March 2009 to April 2015, according to records released by
the Pentagon. He was listed as a carpentry and masonry specialist, and
served in Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014.
The
sequence of events this week provoked anger and despair, dealing blows
both to law enforcement and to peaceful critics of the police, who have
fended off claims that the outcry over police shootings foments violence
and puts officers’ lives in danger.
“All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” Chief Brown said.
Chaos After the Gunshots in Dallas
Five Dallas police officers were
killed and seven others were wounded, along with two civilians, in a
sniper attack during a demonstration on Thursday night against police
shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana.
By YARA BISHARA and MALACHY BROWNE on Publish Date July 8, 2016.
Photo by LM Otero/Associated Press.
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Just
hours after President Obama, reacting to video recordings of the
shootings in Baton Rouge, La., and Falcon Heights, Minn., spoke in
anguished terms about the disparate treatment of the races by the
criminal justice system, he felt compelled to speak again, this time
about the people who attacked officers.
“We
will learn more, undoubtedly, about their twisted motivations, but
let’s be clear: There are no possible justifications for these attacks
or any violence towards law enforcement,” he told reporters Friday morning in Warsaw, where he was attending a NATO summit meeting, after speaking by phone with Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas.
The
White House said Mr. Obama would travel to Dallas early next week, at
the invitation of the city’s mayor. Later in the week, the president
will host a discussion between the police and community leaders to help
find solutions to racial disparities and ways to better support police,
aides said.
Attorney
General Loretta E. Lynch, who was in Washington, said that the week’s
violence had left many people with a justifiable “sense of helplessness,
of uncertainty and of fear,” but that “the answer must not be
violence.”
“To
our brothers and sisters who wear the badge, I want you to know that I
am deeply grateful for the difficult and dangerous work that you do
every day to keep our streets safe and our nation secure,” she said. To
the protesters, she said, “Do not be discouraged by those who would use
your lawful actions as a cover for their heinous violence.”
But
William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of
Police Organizations, appearing on Fox News, said that there was “a war
on cops,” and that the Obama administration was to blame for appeasement
of those who attack the police.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest for law enforcement officers in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
“Our
profession is hurting,” Chief Brown said, calling the actions of his
officers nothing short of heroic. “Dallas officers are hurting. We are
heartbroken. There are not words to describe the atrocity that occurred
to our city.”
Graphic
How the Attack on the Dallas Police Unfolded
Five officers were killed and seven others were shot during a protest in downtown Dallas.
The shooting erupted just before 9 p.m., only a few blocks from Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated
in 1963. It cut short an emotional but peaceful demonstration,
unleashing chaos as terrified marchers, including families with
children, ran for cover, while police officers ran toward the shooting,
guns drawn and firing back.
“I
grabbed my shirt because I was close enough, I thought I might have
been shot,” said Jeff Hood, a minister who took part in the march. “I
was screaming, ‘Run, run!’”
Bystanders captured extraordinary video
of the shootout on downtown streets, with officers taking shelter
behind patrol cars and pillars, and tending to their fallen comrades,
amid the boom of gunfire and the flash and glare of squad cars’
emergency lights.
The
violence struck near one of the city’s busiest districts, filled with
hotels and restaurants as well as county government buildings, and
hundreds of people spent much of the night trapped in buildings that
were placed on lockdown.
The Dallas Gunman: What We Know
Micah Johnson, the gunman who carried
out Thursday night’s attack in Dallas, leaving five police officers
dead and seven wounded, was a military veteran who appears to have
identified with black power groups.
By AINARA TIEFENTHÄLER on Publish Date July 8, 2016.
.
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The dead included four officers of the Dallas city police, and one from Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
Jane
E. Bishkin, a Dallas lawyer who represents five of the wounded
officers, said that they were expected to recover, but that one of them,
a woman, had suffered a serious injury to her left arm and might be
disabled as a result.
After
Mr. Johnson was cornered on the second floor of a parking garage,
negotiators spent hours trying to get him to surrender, Chief Brown
said, but he “told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going
to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there
are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown.”
“The
negotiations broke down, and we had an exchange of gunfire with the
suspect,” the chief said. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb
robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the
suspect was.”
The
three other suspects were a woman who was taken from the garage and two
others who were taken in for questioning after a traffic stop, but they
were not providing much information, the chief said.
ATF & police investigators carrying out large bags containing evidence from suspect house in Mesquite @wfaachannel8 pic.twitter.com/uzJJBMfhB5— Charlotte Huffman (@WFAAcharlotte) July 8, 2016
On
Friday, a large part of downtown remained off limits to civilians as
detectives, and agents from the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, combed through the sprawling crime
scene.
Protests in Dallas
Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched through the streets of Dallas on Thursday.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date July 8, 2016.
.
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Chief Brown suggested that the gunman had some knowledge of the march route.
“How
would you know to post up there?” he said. “We have yet to determine
whether or not there was some complicity with the planning of this, but
we will be pursuing that.”
But
Dominique R. Alexander, a minister and head of the Next Generation
Action Network, who said he had planned the march, said his group did
not condone any violence.
“I was right there when the shooting happened,” he said. “They could have shot me.”
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