Earlier: Sailer On The Obama-Inspired Mass Shootings Of 2016: "Invade, Invite, Implode"
Five years ago, a veteran shot Dallas police officers monitoring a peaceful protest march in Dallas, killing five. Since then the city has struggled to retain officers, while activists say their relationship with the department has gotten worse. @[KERA] https://t.co/d2S7mAgRkp
— NPR (@NPR) July 8, 2021
My recollection is that five years ago today a Black Lives Matter terrorist massacred Dallas cops, but I guess he was just a “veteran.” I mean, NPR wouldn’t spin inconvenient history to make it sound too boring to remember, would they?
On that grim day, social justice activists led a nonviolent march through the streets of downtown Dallas, protesting recent police killings of Black men Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.
Toward the end of the rally an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran, Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire. Johnson was angry at police officers for killing Black men, but was not part of the protest. …
Obviously, the terrorist couldn’t have been part of the “nonviolent” protest because he was violent. It’s logic. Read a book.
For This Activist, The Fight For Police Reform Continues
Dominique Alexander was the key organizer of that July 7 protest. He said the event created a sharper divide between organizers and the police department because he feels Black activists were blamed by city leaders for the shooting that collided with the protest.
“So I had to deal with some of the most racist bigotry,” he said. “Some of the most horrible situations.”
Alexander has led protests in Dallas for more than seven years and co-founded Next Generation Action Network (NGAN), a social justice group that’s become the face of the Black Lives Matter movement in the city.
Years later, Alexander says tension between activists and police continues.
“So many people were affected by it. so much trauma,” he said. “It was definitely hard to see something like that happened.”
Protests against police brutality surged after the death of George Floyd.
“The reality is that, man, people are tired,” Alexander said. “And the reality is that when I look at 2016 to now, a lot hasn’t changed.”
He is asking for more police oversight and an investment in city dollars to social services that help communities of color.
NPR doesn’t mention that the massacre happened only hours after President Barack Obama interrupted his European trip to make a speech for the cameras decrying police brutality.
Back in 2016, the NYT’s Gruesome Twosome of tenure-worthy scholar Nikole Hannah-Jones and John Eligon explained in the news section that, you know, maybe those dead white cops had it coming after all?
Have the Dallas Police Improved? Depends on Whom You Ask
By JOHN ELIGON and NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES JULY 12, 2016… In the wake of last week’s sniper shooting that left five Dallas police officers dead, many people have lamented that it happened in this city, with a black police chief who even critics say has made inroads with the community and worked to steer his force away from its history of racism and abuse. Since Chief David O. Brown took over the department in 2010, excessive-force complaints have dropped 64 percent, and he has started de-escalation training and a successful community policing program.
But for all the progress that the Dallas police have made, this remains one of the most segregated big cities in the country, with yawning racial gaps in housing, schools and employment. Decades of discriminatory federal, state and local policies have concentrated the city’s black population in deeply poor and underdeveloped neighborhoods south of Interstate 30, which serves as a line of demarcation between opportunity and neglect. While downtown Dallas is flush with glassy skyscrapers and high-priced restaurants, large tracts of the city’s southern sector are empty and ragged.
“People look at the Black Lives Matter movement as people protesting against police brutality,” said Terry Flowers, the executive director and headmaster of St. Philip’s School and Community Center in South Dallas. “I think it is much larger than that. People are protesting against a social engineering of inequity. In the broader community here, there is tension. You get pulled over by a police officer, there is automatic tension.”
So while the Dallas Police Department has gained national acclaim, the extent to which these reforms have changed how black residents view the police, and the extent to which they have altered the way the city’s most marginalized residents interact with the police, depend largely on whom you ask.
