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Micah Johnson’s Journal Discussed Shooting Tactics, Dallas Official Says Micah Johnson, Gunman in Dallas, Honed Military Skills to a Deadly Conclusion
(about 3 hours later)
DALLAS — The gunman who killed five police officers here studied the “shoot and move” combat tactic that he apparently used, writing about it extensively in a journal that detectives are poring over, a senior local official said on Saturday. He is also said to have practiced military exercises in his backyard. GARLAND, Tex. — There was a time when he was known as a well-mannered young man — a regular at his church and a pleasant presence on a tree-lined, suburban, multicultural street in a neighborhood called Camelot. He grew up to serve his country in Afghanistan.
Investigators found the “fairly voluminous” journal in the home of Micah Johnson, the sniper who shot at officers on Thursday night in downtown Dallas, the official, Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive, said in an interview. While the journal did not specifically lay out plans for that assault, he said, it showed how the gunman planned to adapt the combat tactic. But on Thursday night, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, an African-American, drove his car to a rally against police violence and began killing officers in downtown Dallas, hoping to single out the white ones. In the process, he also managed to bring his war back home, killing at least one fellow military veteran and heightening fears that the nation he had been deployed to protect overseas was now failing to address its growing racial divide at home.
The journal described “what we call ‘shoot and move’ tactics — ways to fire on a target and then move quickly and get into position at another location to inflict more damage on targets without them being able to ascertain where the shots are coming from,” Mr. Jenkins said. The Dallas police remained on edge Saturday. In the late afternoon, officers drew their weapons and cleared an area near the back of their headquarters after a report of a suspicious person in a department parking garage. The agency later said that no one had been found.
The tactic described reflects the approach Mr. Johnson used in Dallas, moving from one vantage point to another, leading the police to believe at first that there were multiple gunmen. “It’s talking not only about how to kill, but how to keep from being killed,” said Mr. Jenkins, who also said he had not read the journal, but that he had read and heard summaries. In the past several days, as demonstrators jammed the streets in a number of American cities, protesting police violence, new details emerged about Mr. Johnson’s life. They revealed a young man who had returned in disgrace from his stint abroad in the Army Reserve, but then continued a training regimen of his own devising, conducting military-style exercises in his backyard and reportedly joining a gym that offered martial arts and weapons classes.
Neighbors have told investigators that Mr. Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan, had an interest in weapons, and officials have said that a cache of arms, ammunition, bomb-making material and body armor were found in his home in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb. After the shooting, he was cornered by the police, who eventually killed him early Friday. A Dallas County official also revealed Saturday that Mr. Johnson — who killed five officers and wounded seven others, as well as two civilians, before the police killed him with a robot-delivered explosive device — had kept an extensive journal and described a method of attack in which a shooter fired on a target and then quickly moved to another location to confuse an enemy.
The journal “shows that he’s well prepared,” said Mr. Jenkins, who as the county judge is both the county’s top executive and its director of homeland security and emergency management. “He had an interest, according to his neighbors, in weaponry. He was doing military exercises, according to one neighbor witness, in his backyard for a couple weeks before this.” Although it did not seem to be a precise plan for Mr. Johnson’s ambush, it was strikingly similar to the tactics he used.
Mr. Johnson served in an engineering brigade, but he would have had combat training. During the attack, which left five officers dead and seven officers and two civilians wounded, he used a semiautomatic SKS rifle — an old Soviet design — and a high-capacity handgun. “It’s talking not only about how to kill but how to keep from being killed,” said Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive and director of homeland security and emergency management, who said he had not read the original journal but had reviewed summaries of it. “It shows that he’s well prepared.”
“It appeared that he was an excellent marksman and was calmly shooting, as opposed to someone who’s just holding a gun up and aiming it and pulling the trigger in the direction of where they think people are,” Mr. Jenkins said. Mr. Johnson showed an affinity for radical black-power organizations on his Facebook page. Organizers of the Black Lives Matter network and others have denounced Mr. Johnson’s shooting spree. In a news conference Saturday in Warsaw, President Obama said it was “very hard to untangle the motives” behind the shooting.
David O. Brown, the Dallas police chief, has said that during the standoff with the police, the gunman said he had set out to kill officers, particularly white ones. “As we’ve seen in a whole range of incidents with mass shooters, they are, by definition, troubled,” Mr. Obama said. “By definition, if you shoot people who pose no threat to you — strangers — you have a troubled mind. What triggers that, what feeds it, what sets it off, I’ll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents.”
A large part of downtown Dallas remained closed on Saturday as investigators began a second day of piecing together the details of the attack, an investigation that has included more than 200 interviews. More than 20 square blocks remained cordoned off. On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in a statement that Mr. Obama had called him to offer condolences. Mr. Abbott said he had thanked the president and reiterated the need for Americans to unite after the shooting.
Two squad cars outside Police Headquarters have become memorials, covered in flowers, balloons, posters and handwritten notes. On Friday evening, as person after person slowly and quietly approached the cars to add their own tributes, a Dallas police sergeant wiped her eyes, and a handful of people gathered in a circle to pray. Mr. Johnson spent some of his childhood at the home of his father and stepmother in Garland, Tex., about a half-hour drive north of downtown Dallas. Their neighborhood, Camelot, is a collection of one-and two-story ranch-style houses of late-20th-century vintage, and their house is set in the middle of a tree-lined block, where a number of neighboring houses this weekend still displayed American flags from the Fourth of July weekend. The neighbors walking by or working on their lawns were black, white, Hispanic and Asian.
Courtney Williams, 37, an electrician who lives in Forney, just east of Dallas, said he had known Mr. Johnson during his teenage days, when Mr. Johnson would stay with his mother in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas. The two young men attended the same church, and Mr. Williams recalled Mr. Johnson as a “well-mannered” youth who was active in church events and the typical pursuits of a teenager.
“Video games, the whole nine yards,” he said. Mr. Johnson showed no interest in weapons, Mr. Williams said.
“He was just a quiet kid,” Mr. Williams said. “No attitude, no trouble with school. Just a normal kid.”
Mr. Williams lost touch with Mr. Johnson after the younger man graduated from John Horn High School in Mesquite, Tex., where he had shown some interest in the military, going so far as to participate in the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. He was not, it seemed on Saturday, a standout: Horn’s former J.R.O.T.C. instructor said he had little recollection of Mr. Johnson.
He enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2009 and was assigned to a unit — a component of the 420th Engineer Brigade — near Dallas. More than four years later, the unit deployed to Afghanistan. But before the soldiers left for the Afghan theater, they stood in formation not far from the streets where Mr. Johnson would someday stage a siege.
An officer urged them to take care of their families and cultivate their faith. He also emphasized the importance of adapting on the fly.
“Continue to build the flexibility to adjust to changing and unforeseen situations faster than the enemy can adapt,” Capt. Michael C. Coyle said. “This is how we will succeed.”
But Mr. Johnson did not succeed. While overseas, a female soldier in Mr. Johnson’s unit accused him of sexual harassment. When the Army considered kicking him out, he waived his right to a hearing in exchange for a lesser charge.
Soon he was back in Texas, living with his mother. Ron Price, 49, the former president of the Dallas school board, lives in Mesquite, about four blocks away. He used to see Mr. Johnson in the neighborhood and exchange hellos. He said he noticed nothing really remarkable about him.
“He was just another guy at the gas station,” he said.
But Mr. Jenkins said a neighbor had seen Mr. Johnson doing militarylike exercises in his backyard in Mesquite in the last couple of weeks.
He had also attended a “self-defense and personal protection” gym, the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts in Richardson, Tex., the gym owner and chief executive, Justin Everman, told The Daily Beast. The gym’s Twitter account says it provides “reality-based training for today’s urban environment.”
Along with more traditional martial arts classes, the gym also teaches seminars in “urban everyday carry and improvised weapons” and “weapons defense.”
Mr. Everman said many of the gym’s members were police officers, and he stressed that “we have completely no affiliation with him whatsoever.”
“It’s disgusting, what he did,” he told The Daily Beast. “I’m disgusted.”
In addition to reading summaries of the journal, Mr. Jenkins said he had heard descriptions of its contents from other officials.
Some of it was given over to very specific combat and sniper tactics, including details, Mr. Jenkins said, of “what we call ‘shoot and move’ tactics — ways to fire on a target and then move quickly and get into position at another location to inflict more damage on targets without them being able to ascertain where the shots are coming from.” The so-called shoot-and-move tactic is used by the military’s special forces.
“When you couple ‘shoot and move’ and other tactics in his writings, his practice in the yard, his interest in weaponry, it seems to me that this was a well-prepared individual,” Mr. Jenkins said.
He added, “It appeared that he was an excellent marksman and was calmly shooting, as opposed to someone who’s just holding a gun up and aiming it and pulling the trigger in the direction of where they think people are.”
Mr. Johnson used a semiautomatic SKS rifle and a high-capacity handgun, he said. Mr. Johnson drove his vehicle to the demonstration and parked it, but was on foot at many points throughout the attack, he said.
Mr. Johnson’s knowledge of “shoot and move” — and the fact that a few of the protesters in the crowd who were not involved in the shooting were armed and carrying rifles — has helped shed light on how the theory that there were multiple shooters emerged.
In Texas, gun owners can legally and openly carry what are known as long guns, including shotguns and rifles. The carrying of handguns is regulated in Texas and requires a state-issued permit, whether concealed or openly carried, but the carrying of rifles is largely unregulated and requires no permit. The so-called open carrying of rifles has become common at many demonstrations in Texas in recent years.
“When the shooting first happened, you had people in the crowd who were carrying long rifles and dressed in camouflage,” Mr. Jenkins said. “And then the shooting happens, and those people begin to disperse and move quickly, and they have guns and they’re not police officers and there’s a shooting, and so one of the things that people would investigate quickly is did they have anything to do with whatever is happening.”
Mr. Jenkins said that Mr. Johnson did not appear to have advance knowledge of the march route. Parts of the march route were determined on the spot without planning, he said.
Throughout a sweltering Saturday, a swath of downtown Dallas remained a closed-off crime scene as investigators began a second day of piecing together the details of the attack, an investigation that had included more than 200 interviews. More than 20 square blocks remained cordoned off.
Two squad cars outside Police Headquarters have become memorials, covered in flowers, balloons, posters and handwritten notes. On Friday evening, before the officers went on heightened alert, person after person slowly and quietly approached the cars to add tributes. A Dallas police sergeant wiped her eyes, and a handful of people gathered in a circle to pray.
“I miss you already Brother, but you are home with the angels now,” said a note about Officer Brent Thompson. The authors wrote, “You were, are, and always will be our hero.”“I miss you already Brother, but you are home with the angels now,” said a note about Officer Brent Thompson. The authors wrote, “You were, are, and always will be our hero.”
Officer Thompson, who worked for the regional transit system’s Police Department, is the only officer killed in the attack who has been publicly identified by the authorities. But law enforcement officials and family members said on Friday that Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith and Patrick Zamarripa had also been killed. As Mayor Mike Rawlings visited Police Headquarters on Saturday, he told reporters: “We’re all human here, and I think that people feel each other’s pain. And that’s what makes it great, that’s what makes you hopeful that we can do this, that we can move from senselessness, absurdity that’s like a Camus novel, to something that has redemption and hope in it. And that’s ultimately what we need to do.”
“We’re all human here, and I think that people feel each other’s pain,” Mayor Mike Rawlings told reporters on Saturday as he visited Police Headquarters. “And that’s what makes it great, that’s what makes you hopeful that we can do this, that we can move from senselessness, absurdity that’s like a Camus novel, to something that has redemption and hope in it. And that’s ultimately what we need to do.” He stopped to speak with a woman kneeling by one police car, and told her, “Pray hard, sister.”
He stopped to speak with a woman kneeling by one police car and told her, “Pray hard, sister.”
After the assault, which came amid a peaceful protest about police shootings, law enforcement officials had a protracted standoff with Mr. Johnson before killing him with a robot-delivered explosive device.
“He had a choice: to come out and we would not harm, or stay in and we would,” Mr. Rawlings said. “He picked the latter.”
The investigation may be lengthy, and it is likely to disrupt daily life here in the coming days. In a memorandum to top Dallas officials, Eric D. Campbell, the assistant city manager, said that “portions of the crime scene locations in the downtown area will remain closed to the public until Wednesday.”
President Obama is cutting short a visit to Europe and will visit Dallas early in the week, the White House said. Mr. Obama, speaking on Friday in Warsaw, condemned what happened in Dallas as “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”
The president on Saturday spoke by telephone with the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, and offered his condolences, according to a news release issued by the governor’s office.
Others have denounced the attack, including organizers of Thursday’s protest and the Black Lives Matter Network.
“This is a tragedy — both for those who have been impacted by yesterday’s attack and for our democracy,” the Black Lives Matter Network said in a statement. “There are some who would use these events to stifle a movement for change and quicken the demise of a vibrant discourse on the human rights of black Americans. We should reject all of this.”
As Dallas grieved, and as the United States reeled from a week that brought two high-profile killings of black men by the police and then the deadly attack on the Dallas officers, discord continued. There were major protests late Friday.
Demonstrators gathered in Louisiana and Minnesota, the states where Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed. In Baton Rouge, the protest over the killing of Mr. Sterling drew hundreds of people to Police Headquarters. In St. Paul, chalk art on the street called for “Justice 4 MN.”
But the protests extended well beyond Baton Rouge and Minnesota, where Mr. Castile was shot in a suburb of St. Paul.
In Atlanta, thousands of demonstrators marched through the city’s downtown. Some protesters sought to block traffic, and Mayor Kasim Reed warned on Twitter that the authorities had “intelligence that some are encouraging violence.”
Although the march in Atlanta remained peaceful, local news organizations in Phoenix reported that the police there had used pepper spray and fired bean bags amid a tense protest.
A large vigil and protest closed a main street in downtown Nashville. Protesters against police shootings marched to Police Headquarters in Baltimore.
On Saturday, President Obama expressed optimism that the strife in the past week had not left the United States as racially divided as it was during the 1960s.
“There is sorrow, there is anger, there is confusion about next steps,” Mr. Obama said. “But there is unity in recognizing that this is not how we want our communities to operate. This is not who we want to be as Americans.”