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from the "All-lives-matter."-President-Obama dept.
Snipers in Dallas: [5] Cops Dead; [6] More Cops Wounded
The Atlantic reports:
Two gunmen shot eleven police officers in Dallas, Texas [at 8:58 PM July 7], killing at least four of them.
[...] At a Thursday night press conference, Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown said [...] officers had one of the suspects "cornered", but did not offer further details.
"Tonight, it appears that two snipers shot ten police officers from elevated positions during the protest/rally", Brown said in an initial statement. "Three officers are deceased, two are in surgery, and three are in critical condition. An intensive search for suspect is currently underway." The police department later said an eleventh officer had also been injured and a fourth officer had been killed.
[...] The shootings occurred during a protest against police killings earlier this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. Hundreds rallied in downtown Dallas, near the corner of Main Street and Lamar Street. Local news footage captured what sounds like several gunshots being fired, and the crowd scattering.
[...] No motive has yet been established and it's unclear whether the shooting was related to the protest.
The New York Times just broke the story about the latest in the police killings of black men. It seems the tide has been turned. [Five] Dallas police officers were killed tonight at a protest in that city over these shootings.
I am not surprised, nor am I particularly shocked. No doubt there will be more to come on this topic as the evening progresses. Hopefully something good comes out of this, but I am inclined to doubt it.
takyon: Some more details: One suspect was killed by an explosion intentionally caused by a police robot. He reportedly told a negotiator that he was upset about Black Lives Matter, the recent police shootings, and wanted to kill white people, especially police officers. He said he was not affiliated with any groups and acted alone. Other suspects have been arrested, and a "person of interest" (often identified as a suspect by the news media) was arrested early in the night after he was photographed with his unloaded AR-15. He handed his weapon to an officer shortly after the shootings, and later turned himself into the police for questioning.
President Obama spoke about the shootings shortly after arriving in Poland for a NATO conference. In part, he mentioned that, "When people say 'black lives matter,' that doesn't mean blue lives don't matter, it just means all lives matter — but right now the big concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents [...] This isn't a matter of us comparing the value of lives. This is recognizing that there is a particular burden that is being placed on a group of our fellow citizens. And we should care about that. And we can't dismiss it. We can't dismiss it."
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday July 08 2016, @09:01PM
Exactly. I immediately took it at face value that he was just declaring war on cops. Afterwards, it seems like he was declaring war on "White" cops, and then all "Whiteys".
You're right that we don't know yet, and it does say something about me. Specifically that I'm convinced now that officers are out-of-control scared thugs that are unable to see a black man as anything other than a "Super Predator". Additionally, I don't feel safe even being white, as I fully well know it is not just black men being shot and killed. If you are poor, or homeless, then while you might not be black specifically, you are still less than human.
I took the motive at face value from the media, because it was a reasonable assumption. I have empathy for the shooter, because if we place ourselves in his shoes, his entire life was plagued with racism and fear because of the consistent injustices and brutalities performed by officers combined with the shield of the Thin Blue Line. Rodney King happened in 92', which means there has been over 20 years of the proof of these injustices being shown to us. As technology evolves, it makes it seem like murdering black people has been a hobby of cops since the founding of this country, which is catastrophic if we want peace. While I condemn the man for what he did, I would be deliberately putting my head in the sand to say that I didn't understand why. What he did was horrific, but his reasoning was understandable and lamentable.
I ask myself if zero black men were killed in the last 5 years under suspicious circumstances by cops, would this man still have lost all hope and turned to violence? Yeah, I did assume a few things about his motives initially. Specifically, the same motives I would feel if my "people" were constantly under attack, getting killed, and wholly deprived of dignity by those in authority.
I was actually afraid of this. Back-to-back murders of black men by cops in two days? Yeah, I expected a backlash again. This isn't the first time that a black man has ambushed officers after an incident. This ever worsening Us vs Them is escalating into a all out war with black men now picking targets. Yeah, that is an assumption about their motives, but its closer to an educated guess than bigotry and character assassination. That fact scares me more than anything.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.