7/7 Dallas Shooting

[Iamwhomiam]

In one of the first press conferences after the supposed assailant had been killed, the Chief gave SWAT the discretion on how to proceed in order to "wrap it up quickly." The call to use explosives was purely the onsite SWAT commander's.

They were rightfully pissed off cops. Legal assassins.

I don't doubt many officers there would have wanted to be the one to off the murderer of their blue brethren. It is a natural reaction, and one many of us learn to subdue. Cops, not so much.

[DrEvil]

Did they ever even consider using tear gas? It incapacitates anyone in an instant. Not only can you not see, you cannot breathe.

This. They could have bombarded him with tear gas and flashbangs and then moved in with ballistic shields or bomb-squad suits for that matter, but instead they used half a friggin' pound of C4. They clearly wanted him dead, which is understandable since he just killed several of their colleagues, but it's still a straight up execution. Same as that guy who declared war on the cops a while back and was burned alive while the cops watched and did nothing.

You're begging the question there.

But yes, they were judge, jury and executioner.

I was trying to see it from the cop's point of view. For them, this was a guy who just killed several of their colleagues/friends. Regardless of what actually happened that's what they thought at the time, and acted accordingly.

But I see your point about circular reasoning. One should always try to learn from the masters.

[Blue]

I was trying to see it from the cop's point of view. For them, this was a guy who just killed several of their colleagues/friends. Regardless of what actually happened that's what they thought at the time, and acted accordingly.

That's a strange statement - the part about regardless of what actually happened that's what they thought at the time...how do you know what they thought?

And as far as a cop's POV. They are fucking trained as part of their job in how to deal with situations where fellow cops are down and how to respond in a professional manner. Not emotional like regular civilians would respond. But I guess the Blue Wall of Brotherhood can't be criticized for acting like their lives matter MORE.

[daedelus]

Keep in mind that the police KNEW that there were other people in the building other than their assailant. So tear gas would've likely been out because of the students and admin sheltering in place.

Mind you that doesn't make sense when taken in context of using a pound of C4 to eradicate the problem, but....

Maybe they had plenty of time to evacuate the building prior to using the C4?

I'm still patiently awaiting some sort of map of where the various officer fatalities occurred. If MXJ was the sole shooter, and we are now going with the "he shot everyone (but one) from the street level in front of El Centro (Lamar St. entrance) then it would be a seemingly trivial matter to show that the officers were hit from the arcade in front of the college. Right?

[MacCruiskeen]

Students and staff were all* evacuated long before the "stand-off" was ended with a robot bomb (or something). As an excuse not to use tear gas, "safety of students" would just be laughable.


*I believe two people hid in a cupboard all night.

[Iamwhomiam]

Re: * Yes, that's right, as it was reported earlier.

While they may have training, most is a bear minimum annually. SWAT trains more often.

I doubt many of those involved had ever used their guns before or had ever experienced being under fire or especially, being under fire after having seen their partner shot dead.

Most training comes down to keeping a cool head. Unfortunately, being humans, they seek revenge, not justice.

[stickdog99]

Students and staff were all* evacuated long before the "stand-off" was ended with a robot bomb (or something). As an excuse not to use tear gas, "safety of students" would just be laughable.


*I believe two people hid in a cupboard all night.

Yes. C4 is so much safer.

[MacCruiskeen]

Students and staff were all* evacuated long before the "stand-off" was ended with a robot bomb (or something). As an excuse not to use tear gas, "safety of students" would just be laughable.


*I believe two people hid in a cupboard all night.

Yes. C4 is so much safer.

Serious question: Did anyone close to El Centro ever actually report hearing an explosion? I may have missed this, so please post any such reports you know of. (The "standoff" was ended by the "robot bomb" sometime around 5 am, right? There must have been loads of people in the vicinity still awake and worried. Randy Biart was filming from a big hotel. And in summer in Texas many people will surely have had their windows open all night)

Also:

As an excuse not to use tear gas, "safety of students" would just be laughable.

This is of course not to say that they won't use that laughable excuse, if asked. (Not that any "reporter" is likely to ask them.)

[Iamwhomiam]

Ha! And I thought you meant their excuse not to use tear gas was ludicrous due to the fact they receive specialized training in gassing only masses of assembled students.

[stefano]

Reposting because I think stefano might have missed this.

[Johnson didn't have bomb-making stuff at his house, cops had lied about it]

Why? I think you might be misunderstanding my position on this. I certainly don't believe the cops are telling the truth about this thing, and particularly not about how it ended. I think it's overwhelmingly likely that there many ways it could have ended with Johnson arrested alive, but that the cops wanted to kill him. And using a bomb robot to blow him up is creepy in the extreme. But - apart from the killer robot angle - that's sort of everyday sinister, if you know what I mean - just more evidence of deadly systemic racism in America. US cops execute a black civilian every week over there. Of course a cornered black copkiller's going to come out feet first. And then afterwards they're going to lie about how terrifying and monstrous he was, they had no choice!

I think they're telling the truth about him being the only shooter, though, and about where he died. And those elements still fit if he was a MC killer of some kind.

[Iamwhomiam]

Well, it might not have been C4. Maybe they used a particle beam weapon. So they told us it was C4 so we wouldn't get upset they were using military weaponry.

[Cordelia]

I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
by Redditt Hudson on July 7, 2016

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.

It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.

And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty. Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was acquitted of all charges against him in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, both black and unarmed. Thirteen Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at them. Brelo, having reloaded at some point during the shooting, fired 49 of the 137 shots. He took his final 15 shots at them after all the other officers stopped firing (122 shots at that point) and, "fearing for his life," he jumped onto the hood of the car and shot 15 times through the windshield.
"About that 15 percent of officers who regularly abuse their power: they exert an outsize influence"

Not only was this excessive, it was tactically asinine if Brelo believed they were armed and firing. But they weren't armed, and they weren't firing. Judge John O'Donnell acquitted Brelo under the rationale that because he couldn't determine which shots actually killed Russell and Williams, no one is guilty. Let's be clear: this is part of what the Department of Justice means when it describes a "pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive force."

Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from 2014 asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.

Here's what I wish Americans understood about the men and women who serve in their police departments — and what needs to be done to make the system better for everyone.
1) There are officers who willfully violate the human rights of the people in the communities they serve

As a new officer with the St. Louis in the mid-1990s, I responded to a call for an "officer in need of aid." I was partnered that day with a white female officer. When we got to the scene, it turned out that the officer was fine, and the aid call was canceled. He'd been in a foot pursuit chasing a suspect in an armed robbery and lost him.

The officer I was with asked him if he'd seen where the suspect went. The officer picked a house on the block we were on, and we went to it and knocked on the door. A young man about 18 years old answered the door, partially opening it and peering out at my partner and me. He was standing on crutches. My partner accused him of harboring a suspect. He denied it. He said that this was his family's home and he was home alone.

My partner then forced the door the rest of the way open, grabbed him by his throat, and snatched him out of the house onto the front porch. She took him to the ledge of the porch and, still holding him by the throat, punched him hard in the face and then in the groin. My partner that day snatched an 18-year-old kid off crutches and assaulted him, simply for stating the fact that he was home alone.

I got the officer off of him. But because an aid call had gone out, several other officers had arrived on the scene. One of those officers, who was black, ascended the stairs and asked what was going on. My partner pointed to the young man, still lying on the porch, and said, "That son of a bitch just assaulted me." The black officer then went up to the young man and told him to "get the fuck up, I'm taking you in for assaulting an officer." The young man looked up at the officer and said, "Man ... you see I can't go." His crutches lay not far from him.

The officer picked him up, cuffed him, and slammed him into the house, where he was able to prop himself up by leaning against it. The officer then told him again to get moving to the police car on the street because he was under arrest. The young man told him one last time, in a pleading tone that was somehow angry at the same time, "You see I can't go!" The officer reached down and grabbed both the young man's ankles and yanked up. This caused the young man to strike his head on the porch. The officer then dragged him to the police car. We then searched the house. No one was in it.

These kinds of scenes play themselves out everyday all over our country in black and brown communities. Beyond the many unarmed blacks killed by police, including recently Freddie Gray in Baltimore, other police abuses that don't result in death foment resentment, distrust, and malice toward police in black and brown communities all over the country. Long before Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown last August, there was a poisonous relationship between the Ferguson, Missouri, department and the community it claimed to serve. For example, in 2009 Henry Davis was stopped unlawfully in Ferguson, taken to the police station, and brutally beaten while in handcuffs. He was then charged for bleeding on the officers' uniforms after they beat him.
2) The bad officers corrupt the departments they work for

About that 15 percent of officers who regularly abuse their power: a major problem is they exert an outsize influence on department culture and find support for their actions from ranking officers and police unions. Chicago is a prime example of this: the city has created a reparations fund for the hundreds of victims who were tortured by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command from the 1970s to the early ‘90s.

The victims were electrically shocked, suffocated, and beaten into false confessions that resulted in many of them being convicted and serving time for crimes they didn't commit. One man, Darrell Cannon, spent 24 years in prison for a crime he confessed to but didn't commit. He confessed when officers repeatedly appeared to load a shotgun and after doing so each time put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Other men received electric shocks until they confessed.

The torture was systematic, and the culture that allowed for it is systemic. I call your attention to the words "and officers under his command." Police departments are generally a functioning closed community where people know who is doing what. How many officers "under the command" of Commander Burge do you think didn't know what was being done to these men? How many do you think were uncomfortable with the knowledge? Ultimately, though, they were okay with it. And Burge got four years in prison, and now receives his full taxpayer-funded pension.
3) The mainstream media helps sustain the narrative of heroism that even corrupt officers take refuge in

This is critical to understanding why police-community relations in black and brown communities across the country are as bad as they are. In this interview with Fox News, former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir never acknowledges the lived experience of thousands and thousands of blacks in New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, or anywhere in the country. In fact, he seems to be completely unaware of it. This allows him to leave viewers with the impression that the recent protests against police brutality are baseless, and that allegations of racism are "totally wrong — just not true." The reality of police abuse is not limited to a number of "very small incidents" that have impacted black people nationwide, but generations of experienced and witnessed abuse.

The media is complicit in this myth-making: notice that the interviewer does not challenge Safir. She doesn't point out, for example, the over $1 billion in settlements the NYPD has paid out over the last decade and a half for the misconduct of its officers. She doesn't reference the numerous accounts of actual black or Hispanic NYPD officers who have been profiled and even assaulted without cause when they were out of uniform by white NYPD officers.
"No matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism"

Instead she leads him with her questions to reference the heroism, selflessness, risk, and sacrifice that are a part of the endeavor that is law enforcement, but very clearly not always characteristic of police work in black and brown communities. The staging for this interview — US flag waving, somber-faced officers — is wash, rinse, and repeat with our national media.

When you take a job as a police officer, you do so voluntarily. You understand the risks associated with the work. But because you signed on to do a dangerous job does not mean you are then allowed to violate the human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of the people you serve. It's the opposite. You should protect those rights, and when you don't you should be held accountable. That simple statement will be received by police apologists as "anti-cop." It is not.
4) Cameras provide the most objective record of police-citizen encounters available

When Walter Scott was killed by officer Michael Slager in South Carolina last year, the initial police report put Scott in the wrong. It stated that Scott had gone for Slager's Taser, and Slager was in fear for his life. If not for the video recording that later surfaced, the report would have likely been taken by many at face value. Instead we see that Slager shot Scott repeatedly and planted the Taser next to his body after the fact.

Every officer in the country should be wearing a body camera that remains activated throughout any interaction they have with the public while on duty. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for officers when they are on duty and in service to the public. Citizens must also have the right to record police officers as they carry out their public service, provided that they are at a safe distance, based on the circumstances, and not interfering. Witnessing an interaction does not by itself constitute interference.
5) There are officers around the country who want to address institutional racism

The National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform and Accountability is a new coalition of current and former law enforcement officers from around the nation. Its mission is to fight institutional racism in our criminal justice system and police culture, and to push for accountability for police officers that abuse their power.

Many of its members are already well-established advocates for criminal justice reform in their communities. It's people like former Sergeant De Lacy Davis of New Jersey, who has worked to change police culture for years. It's people like former LAPD Captain John Mutz, who is white, and who is committed to working to build a system where everyone is equally valued. His colleagues from the LAPD —former Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey, now a frequent CNN contributor (providing some much-needed perspective), and former officer Alex Salazar, who worked LAPD's Rampart unit — are a part of this effort. Several NYPD officers, many of whom are founding members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, the gold standard for black municipal police organizations, are a part of this group. Vernon Wells, Noel Leader, Julian Harper, and Cliff Hollingsworth, to name a few, are serious men with a serious record of standing up for their communities against police abuse. There's also Rochelle Bilal, a former sergeant out of Philadelphia, Sam Costales out of New Mexico, former Federal Marshal Matthew Fogg, and many others.

These men and women are ready to reach out to the thousands of officers around the country who have been looking for a national law enforcement organization that works to remake police culture. The first priority is accountability — punishment — for officers who willfully abuse the rights and bodies of those they are sworn to serve. Training means absolutely nothing if officers don't adhere to it and are not held accountable when they don't. It is key to any meaningful reform.
"Police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new."

Racism is woven into the fabric of our nation. At no time in our history has there been a national consensus that everyone should be equally valued in all areas of life. We are rooted in racism in spite of the better efforts of Americans of all races to change that.

Because of this legacy of racism, police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new. It has become more visible to mainstream America largely because of the proliferation of personal recording devices, cellphone cameras, video recorders — they're everywhere. We need police officers. We also need them to be held accountable to the communities they serve.

This morning in Baltimore, a 4th officer tried and found not responsible for Freddie Gray’s death:


Baltimore officer acquitted of all charges in Freddie Gray case

"BALTIMORE — A judge on Monday found the highest-ranking officer charged in Freddie Gray’s arrest and death not guilty on all counts, dealing a devastating blow to prosecutors, who have now tried four of the six officers initially indicted without winning a conviction.

Judge Barry G. Williams acquitted Lt. Brian Rice, 42, of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office after a week-long bench trial, finding that Rice did not commit a crime when he loaded Gray into a police transport van without seat-belting him. Gray suffered a fatal neck injury as he was being taken to a police station.

The verdict renews questions about whether the state should move forward with charges against the remaining officers or drop them. Two of Rice’s co-defendants were recently acquitted, and a third is awaiting retrial after a jury deadlocked in his case in December. Another two officers are set to be tried in the coming months.

Reading his verdict in a packed courtroom, Williams said that while Rice's failure to seat-belt Gray "may have been a mistake and may have been bad judgment," it didn't amount to a crime. Prosecutors, he said, failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rice acted with gross negligence, putting Gray's life at risk."
Continued.........
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.html


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YV0EtkWyno

[MacCruiskeen]

This is about the best thing I've read so far about this case. From July 13 (numerous links in the original):

Micah Xavier Johnson: 5 Questions About the Alleged Dallas Sniper

If the idea of Micah Johnson working by himself to kill members of the Dallas Police Department is incredibly hard for you to believe, you are not alone.


By: Kirsten West Savali Posted: July 13, 2016

https://www.theroot.com/articles/cultur ... as-sniper/


Micah Johnson, in a photo posted to Facebook by a soldier who served in the Army with him Anthony Redmon via Facebook


If police and media reports are to be believed, Micah Xavier Johnson is a killer.

Not only is he a killer, but he is the archnemesis of all that is good in the world because he planned an intricate plot to murder Dallas police officers in retaliation for the white supremacist police state’s systemic slaughter of black and brown bodies. The most recent, high-profile examples of this are the killings of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile, 32, in Falcon Heights, Minn., which have sparked protests all over the country.

But what do we really know about Johnson? Nothing. We know nothing other than the narrative the Dallas Police Department, in concert with the FBI, has fed us.

The scant details:

He was an Army veteran who served a tour in Afghanistan.

He was honorably discharged, even with a sexual assault allegation against him.

The alleged victim in the sexual assault case was allegedly more concerned about his mental health** than his receiving punishment.

He allegedly had little contact with family but lived with his mother.

There allegedly was evidence that he was making bombs in his home, which, allegedly, matches statements he is said to have made about having placed bombs all over Dallas.

Oh, and, of course, just before a police robot attached with a C4-detonation device was used to blow him up, he allegedly wrote a mysterious note in his own blood—“R B”—and managed to inform police that he hated white people, particularly white police officers.

So, for a second, let’s suspend disbelief and entertain the possibility that a 25-year-old reclusive Army veteran, who is also a dashiki-wearing black power activist, is the lone sniper responsible for the deaths of more law-enforcement officers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States.

I have no doubt that a black man living at the intersections of racism and American militarism, having to contend with pledging not only allegiance but also his life to a country that has a target on his back and those who look like him, could experience trauma. There have been several studies that link systemic and institutionalized racism with post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. How it must feel for black veterans to risk their lives for a country that hates them for their freedom—while sending them to take the freedoms (and lives) of others on its behalf.

This is speculation, of course. I won’t presume to know Johnson’s mental state—and he was incinerated by a police bomb without benefit of a trial, so we will never know. Dead men tell no tales. Still, before we throw this alleged sniper out with the trash, let’s consider a few questions:

1. Why Didn’t Police Buy Him a Hamburger?

After Dylann Roof, an open white supremacist who plotted to intensify an American race war, was welcomed into Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., with open arms, he prayed with parishioners before, authorities charge, he opened fire on them, killing nine. He was eventually captured, and police officers promptly gave him a bulletproof vest—you know, in case any big, scary black people wanted revenge—and bought him food from Burger King because he was hungry.

Johnson, however, didn’t “have it his way”; instead, he was blown up with the violent use of remote force.

2. A Robot Bomb, Though?

“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,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said during a news conference. “Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb.”

This is the first time that the use of robots in such a way by law enforcement has been made public. There is no evidence, no proof of his statements. There will be no trial. The murky legalities of this, not to mention the potential civil liberties violations, may or may not play a larger role in future conversations, adding another level of debate surrounding the overmilitarization of police in the U.S.

3. Where Did the “Triangulating” Snipers Go?

First, authorities said there was a squad of snipers “triangulating” around the police and there were several suspects in custody. The bullets were coming from everywhere, they said; there was no escaping them. Now, the suspects, including the mysterious “light-skinned African-American woman,” have all vanished, and we are to believe that Micah Johnson, injured enough to scrawl a secret message in his own blood, coordinated and carried out a vicious, racially motivated attack against the Dallas Police Department all on his own.

4. Where Were the Police Cameras?

Police cameras are supposed to be the hot ticket in the streets, though I’ve always considered them a placebo for justice. They are supposed to monitor the police and provide a true record of events if a situation turns violent and/or fatal. But for some convenient reason, they never seem to be on and functioning properly when it’s time to protect black people from being killed in the first place.

In the case of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, for instance, the body cameras of both of the officers who killed him fell off.

They. Fell. Off.

And I’m saying “killed” here, not “allegedly killed,” because we actually saw them do it; just like we saw Daniel Pantaleo use a banned choke hold on Eric Garner. Just like we saw Timothy Loehmann gun down 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a park in under two seconds. Just like we saw Michael Slager gun down Walter Scott.

In the case of Micah Johnson, we have a possible terrorist inside a parking garage, a robot bomb on standby, law enforcement from pillar to post, and no one has a camera—not one? All we have is the police narrative, which should be fine, right?

Because we all know police never lie.

5. Where Are His People?

Though Johnson’s parents eventually spoke out, no one else seems to know much about him. His parents speak about Johnson’s disillusionment with the U.S. government and with the military, but they say he was a “good son.” Apparently Johnson was “reclusive,” so there are no friends, siblings, play cousins, partners, teachers, Army buddies or co-workers who can say anything about him. There are no exes to tell us how complicated it all was. There was the one alleged post from an alleged sister on Facebook that has vanished into the ether. There are the images pulled from Facebook, and there is the official police narrative.

That’s it. That’s all we have.

These questions may seem to veer into conspiracy-theory territory, but black people in America have been gaslighted for so long that we rightfully require more than the word of police officers to believe any story, especially one full of holes and used to silence a movement, vilify a cause and destroy black people’s determination to be free of an oppressive, carceral state.

Does this mean that Johnson was innocent? Absolutely not. It does mean, however, that we don’t know that he was guilty. It does mean that, as Toni Morrison taught us, “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

The narrative created around Micah Johnson—whether it is fact or fiction, or somewhere in between—isn’t one of black pathology but of American pathology. Black people should not feel the need to apologize by proxy for the deaths of police officers, especially when fighting for the lives of black people who have fallen victim to state violence is deemed “hate.” The reality we face is too urgent, the consequences too dire, to chase phantoms not of our own making.

And that’s the one answer that we know for sure.

** There are dangerous stigmas attached to people living with mental illness, which have potentially adverse affects on their ability to thrive and safely navigate society—an assumption of their violence being one of them. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Only 3 percent to 5 percent of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.” If you or someone you know needs help, click here to contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness for resources.

Kirsten West Savali is a cultural critic and an associate editor at The Root. She was named to Ebony magazine’s 2015 “Power 100” list and awarded a 2015 Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship. Her provocative commentary explores the intersections of race, social justice, religion, feminism, politics and pop culture. Follow her on Twitter.

https://www.theroot.com/articles/cultur ... as-sniper/

[Cordelia]

"3. Where Did the “Triangulating” Snipers Go?"

To their next assignment in Baton Rouge.

[Iamwhomiam]