SUMMARY: President Barack Obama will be in Dallas Tuesday for an interfaith service to mourn the five police officers cut down in last week's sniper ambush. The killings have done little to muffle growing national protests against police violence as rallies, marches and human roadblocks spread from cities like New York and Baton Rouge to St. Paul and Memphis. Gwen Ifill reports.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):The nation is still grappling tonight with a series of tragedies, recent police killings of black men, and the sniper attack in Dallas.
It follows a long weekend of crowds confronting police and of mass arrests. Protesters are taking to the streets across the country. But in Dallas, the anger is tempered by grief for the five officers killed Thursday night.
Police Chief David Brown said today he is running on fumes.
DAVID BROWN, Chief, Dallas Police Department: My brain is fried. The memorization it takes to run a major city police department just on a normal process day with all things that happen is overwhelming. So this transpiring along with the normal things that are continuing to happen in the city is difficult at best.
GWEN IFILL: Doctors who tried to save Thursday's victims grew emotional at a hospital news conference today.
DR. BRIAN WILLIAMS, Parkland Memorial Hospital:This killing, it has to stop, black men dying and being forgotten, people retaliating against the people that are sworn to defend us. We have to come together and end all this.
GWEN IFILL: Meanwhile, detectives are reviewing more than 170 hours of body camera video, plus 300 witness and officer statements. They're searching for more background on Micah Johnson, the gunman who opened fire during an otherwise peaceful protest.
His parents told TheBlaze Web site today that his time in the Army Reserve wasn't what he thought it would be. They say he changed from a fun-loving extrovert into a hermit. Johnson died after a lengthy standoff with police.
Chief Brown said today he has no regrets about the decision to kill him with a robot-delivered bomb.
DAVID BROWN: We knew through negotiations this was the suspect, because he was asking, how many did he get? And he was telling us how many more he wanted to kill. This wasn't an ethical dilemma for me. I would do it again.
GWEN IFILL: In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, authorities arrested nearly 200 protesters demonstrating over the killing of Alton Sterling, captured on video last week, apparently by two officers.
Among those arrested, prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, who was released Sunday.
DERAY MCKESSON, Black Lives Matter Activist:The only people that were violent last Saturday night were the Baton Rouge Police Department. The protesters remain peaceful both here and across the country. Again, I remain deeply disappointed in the Baton Rouge Police Department.
GWEN IFILL: Last night, Baton Rouge officers in riot gear kept protesters from entering Interstate 110 with what activists described as heavy-handed tactics. Hundreds also marched over the weekend in St. Paul, Minnesota, where picture was shot to death during a traffic stop; 21 officers were injured Saturday night.
Today, city leaders said they were caught off guard.
MAYOR CHRIS COLEMAN, St. Paul, Minnesota: The folks that were out there will all tell you that the restraint that our officers showed was second to none, but at some point when our officers are being bombarded by concrete and rebar, to the point where they are being injured, we need to respond.
SUMMARY: These are especially difficult times for black law enforcement officers who, painfully sometimes, see that the complaints that some of their fellow cops are racist are real. Hari Sreenivasan holds a frank discussion with Lieutenant Thomas Glover, the president of the Black Police Association Of Greater Dallas, who makes a special plea for President Barack Obama to make a difference.
SUMMARY: The image was stark as President Barack Obama tried to comfort a country still reeling from days of bloodshed, protest and racial tension. Five chairs, holding flags and police caps, to represent the five officers killed by a sniper's bullets. In eulogizing the fallen, Obama also made the case that racism, institutional and otherwise, is real — and cannot be dismissed. Judy Woodruff reports.
SUMMARY: The deaths of several black men at the hand of police and the sniper slayings of five police officers in Dallas brought the issue of race and policing back to the front pages. Jeffrey Brown talks to Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University, Dallas Police Deputy Chief Malik Aziz and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn about what has to be done to bring real change.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And now back to this week's violence.
From Minnesota to Texas, it has brought long-simmering tensions to the spotlight, sparking a national dialogue on race and policing.
Jeffrey Brown picks up that conversation.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): And for that, I'm joined by three people closely involved with this.
Malik Aziz is the deputy police chief for Dallas. Edward Flynn is police chief for Milwaukee. His force has faced scrutiny and protests tied to past police shootings there. And Michael Eric Dyson is a writer and professor of sociology at Georgetown University. He is the author of “The Black Presidency,” and wrote a piece today's The New York Times called “Death in Black and White.”
Welcome to you all.
Malik Aziz, I would like to start with you.
And as we start the conversation, could I ask you first, are you able to now to confirm that it was one shooter last night in Dallas?
MALIK AZIZ, Deputy Chief, Dallas Police Department:Well, all I can really confirm right now is that it's — we know that it's at least one shooter.
And with our investigative unit, who is one of the best in the nation, they're turning over every rock and looking in every crevice to make sure that the Dallas police, as you heard our chief, David Brown and the mayor say earlier, that they believe it's a lone shooter. We just want to make sure.
So, we haven't concluded any investigation. We're just on the surface. So, right now, we have that one lone shooter, and we're going to make sure that he is the only one before we release any definitive totality of statements.
JEFFREY BROWN: Tell us, Commander Aziz, your own feelings, the feelings of members of the force about what happened last night.
MALIK AZIZ: Well, I can say, extend my heartfelt condolences and heartfelt sympathy to the family, friends, loved ones, my brothers and sisters in blue across the nation and abroad, that our hearts here in Dallas today are very heavy, a very somber attitude, one of disbelief.
And it is one of those days. I have been in law enforcement 27 years here in the city or county of Dallas, and I have never had a day like yesterday. It's a day of days, and the worst day of our career and my career and many others, and one of the worst in the nation.
So our men and women are hurt today, but I must say the outpouring of the residential and business community in Dallas, our awesome citizenry, and they have shown why they're one of the best cities in the world, that Dallas is one of the best cities in the world. They have shown us so much love and support, and so much love and support in the nation and abroad.
JEFFREY BROWN: Chief Flynn in Milwaukee, what impact has there been in your force or perhaps in other forces from what happened last night?
EDWARD FLYNN, Chief, Milwaukee Police Department:Well, I think it's a recognition — and it's certainly a topic of discussion among our officers — of the great conundrum that surrounds American policing, which it is very important for us, most specifically, to protect the rights of the people most displeased with us.
We have done that many times here in Milwaukee, and that takes place in city after city across the country. Dallas is a fine police department, but it's not an anomaly among American big cities. Going all the way back to the mid-'90s, when the Clinton administration passed the omnibus crime bill, policing has embraced the notion of community-based policing, reaching out to disadvantaged neighborhoods and doing our best to create alliances with those neighborhoods to work with them to create safe environments.
And that's what we endeavor to do. And there is no group of people in America more committed to protecting black lives than America's police officers in our urban centers. We're the one group of people, in fact, that regularly risk our lives to do that.
SUMMARY: More emerged Friday about Micah Johnson, the Army reservist believed to be behind the sniper slayings of five Dallas police officers in a city that was, by all accounts, making strides in cop/community relations. Until this week's tragedy, the Dallas Police Department had the fewest officer-related shootings of any large U.S. city this year. Hari Sreenivasan reports from Dallas.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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