This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/12/obama-dallas-memorial-five-officers-killed-protest-shooting

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Obama heads to Dallas vigil for five officers killed in protest shooting Obama calls for peace at Dallas memorial service for five police officers
(about 2 hours later)
Barack Obama arrived in Dallas on Tuesday to speak at an interfaith memorial service for the five police officers killed in a mass shooting on Thursday night. Barack Obama on Tuesday paid tribute to the five officers killed in Dallas last week, as he insisted that racial discrimination still existed in the US and protesters against police violence could not be dismissed as “troublemakers or paranoid”.
The president’s predecessor, George W Bush, who lives in the city, will also speak at the event, which first lady Michelle Obama, former first lady Laura Bush and Vice-President Joe Biden will attend. At an interfaith memorial service for Michael Smith, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson – killed by Micah Johnson at a rally against police violence on Thursday night – the president called for action to stop conflict between police and protesters and black and white, admitting previous approaches, including his own, are failing.
“I’m not naive. I have spoken at too many memorials in the course of this presidency,” Obama said. “I’ve seen how inadequate words can be at bringing about lasting change. I see the inadequacy of my own words.”
He listed the problems that needed addressing: racial strife, drug addiction, mental illness, and the easy availability of guns.
Solving those problems was beyond the capabilities of police, he said. And he drew a long and loud round of applause when he agreed with a sentiment expressed previously by Dallas police chief David Brown: “We ask police to do too much,” Obama said, “and we ask too little of ourselves.”
The foe, he said, was not people who held opposing views or attended protests. But rather, “business as usual. Inertia. Old habits. Expediency.”
The difficulty, he said, was “oversimplification that reduces whole categories of our fellow Americans not just to opponents but to enemies.”
The oversimplification cuts both ways, he said. Police must acknowledge that every institution, include police departments, are vulnerable to racism and bigotry. At the same time, he said, people on the other side of the argument must recognize the nature of policing dangerous neighborhoods where officers are required to make instant decisions.
“We know there is evil in his world,” he said. “It’s why we need police departments.”
But centuries of subjugation, of slavery, of Jim Crow segregation, did not stop in the 1960s, he said. “Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime,” he said. “Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggle. But, America, we know that bias remains. We know it … We have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some time … If we’re honest perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads or felt it in our own hearts. We know that.”
And some feel to a far greater extent “discrimination’s sting”, he said. “No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police department. We know this.”
He added: “Study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently.”
Dismissing those who point that out as “a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism” – “it hurts”. “Surely we can see that – all of us.”
“Even those who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter, surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family,” Obama said, or appreciate that Philando Castile’s life “mattered to people of all races, of all ages”. He was referring to two black men shot dead by police last week in Louisiana and Minnesota. On board Air Force One en route to Dallas on Tuesday, the president phoned relatives of the two men.
He called on listeners to worry less about which side you are on and “more about joining sides to do right”.
The president also paid tribute to each of the dead officers, sketching out personal details about each one.
Ahrens “bought dinner for a homeless man” the night before he died. Krol “came a thousand miles from his home state in Michigan to be a cop in Dallas”. Smith was a churchgoer who played softball with his two girls. Zamarripa had “dreamed of being a cop” and liked to post photos with kids on social media. Thompson was married two weeks ago, his and his wife’s “whole life together waiting before them”.
“Like police officers across the country, these men and their families shared a commitment to something larger than themselves,” the president said.
When anyone thinks “all police are biased or bigoted, they undermine those people who are acting for our safety”, he said. And those calling for violence against the police “do a disservice to the cause of justice they claim to promote”.
He praised Dallas PD as a department that has been at the forefront of improving relations between police and the community, and said that in the aftermath of the shooting, Rawlings and Brown, “a white man and a black man, with different backgrounds, working not just to restore order … but working together to unify the city, with strength and grace and wisdom”.
Earlier, Brown was cheered and given a standing ovation as he recalled how as a teenager he would try to communicate with girls using Stevie Wonder lyrics, and then recited the lyrics of Wonder’s 1977 hit As, telling the mourners: “I’ll be loving you until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky … I’ll be loving you always.”
“Chief Brown, I’m so glad I met Michelle first, because she loves Stevie Wonder,” responded Obama to laughter and applause as he took the lectern.
Former president George W Bush, who lives in Dallas, struck a note of conciliation and hope in his speech, and offered a word of admiration for law enforcement.
“Their courage is our protection,” he said. The police of Dallas, he said, have been “mighty inspirational to the rest of the nation”.
Several times Bush compared Dallas, and Texas, to one enormous family. “Most of us imagine that if it were called for we would risk our lives for a spouse or child,” he said. The difference for police officers, he said, is that they risk their lives for strangers.
Bush called for more public unity, decrying the state of conflict between activists and police, right and left, black and white. “Argument turns too quickly into animosity,” he said.
The crowd took to its feet and applauded when he said, “We judge others by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”
First lady Michelle Obama, former first lady Laura Bush, vice-president Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden all also attended.
An address following a mass shooting has become, in some ways, the hallmark of Obama’s presidency. A month ago he spoke in Orlando, Florida, following the massacre of 49 club-goers there. Last year, after a gunman shot nine people dead in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, the president sang Amazing Grace. Following the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting he told the nation: “We’re going to have to come together.”An address following a mass shooting has become, in some ways, the hallmark of Obama’s presidency. A month ago he spoke in Orlando, Florida, following the massacre of 49 club-goers there. Last year, after a gunman shot nine people dead in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, the president sang Amazing Grace. Following the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting he told the nation: “We’re going to have to come together.”
The president faces a doubly difficult task in Dallas, however, as he navigates two intersecting social fault lines: gun violence in America, and the rising confrontation between police and the people they are meant to protect, particularly African Americans. The president faced a doubly difficult task in Dallas, however, as he navigated two intersecting social fault lines: gun violence in America, and the rising confrontation between police and the people they are meant to protect, particularly African Americans.
Obama cut short a visit to Europe to return for the address; during his travels he expressed “anger” about the shootings in Dallas along with the recent deaths of black men in shootings by police in Louisiana and Minnesota. Obama will also meet the families of the policemen and others who were wounded, the White House said. On Wednesday, Obama will host a meeting with law enforcement officials, activists and civil rights leaders to discuss ways to repair “the bonds of trust” between communities and police.
He seemed careful to draw a distinction between the perpetrator of the Dallas shootings, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, and the broader discontent among protesters against police violence in general, cautioning the American public to not believe “the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country”. The memorial will be one of a series throughout the week in Dallas. Before Obama’s arrival, the citizens of Dallas turned out in their thousands on Monday night to pay tribute to the five dead officers.
Obama told senior law enforcement officials on Monday that he saw the Dallas shooting as a hate crime, or one motivated by bias, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who was in the closed-door meeting at the White House.Obama told senior law enforcement officials on Monday that he saw the Dallas shooting as a hate crime, or one motivated by bias, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who was in the closed-door meeting at the White House.
Pasco said Obama drew parallels between the actions of the Dallas shooter and the Charleston killings, which prosecutors have said were perpetrated by a man who espoused white supremacist beliefs, Dylann Roof. Johnson, who was black, said that he wanted to “kill white people”, particularly police, according to a police account of their unsuccessful negotiations with him.Pasco said Obama drew parallels between the actions of the Dallas shooter and the Charleston killings, which prosecutors have said were perpetrated by a man who espoused white supremacist beliefs, Dylann Roof. Johnson, who was black, said that he wanted to “kill white people”, particularly police, according to a police account of their unsuccessful negotiations with him.
White House officials on Tuesday did not dispute Pasco’s account of the meeting.White House officials on Tuesday did not dispute Pasco’s account of the meeting.
On board Air Force One en route to Dallas on Tuesday, the president phoned family members of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the two black men killed by police in Louisiana and Minnesota last week.
Obama will also meet the families of the slain policemen and others who were wounded, the White House said. On Wednesday, Obama will host a meeting with law enforcement officials, activists and civil rights leaders to discuss ways to repair “the bonds of trust” between communities and police.
The memorial will be one of a series throughout the week in Dallas. Before Obama’s arrival, the citizens of Dallas turned out in the thousands on Monday night to pay tribute to the five police officers killed by Johnson on Thursday. Nine officers were also wounded in the shooting.
The police invited the public to a candlelight vigil outside city hall, and the memorial offered residents a glimpse of police in rare form: open, personal, emotional.
At sunset, rows of officers stood and saluted the families of the deceased as they entered the plaza outside city hall. The family members were many; the attack during a protest against the deaths of African American men in confrontations with police officers marked the worst mass shooting of police in more than three decades.
The department’s top commanders spoke, but the vigil was designed as a chance for Dallas itself to offer condolences. A bank of television cameras was kept to the side of the plaza so members of the public, who stood for the hour-long service, could have an unobstructed view of the podium.
Police from the neighboring city of Arlington provided security so officers from the Dallas police department and area transit police department could mourn their colleagues.
Chaplain Sean Pease opened the service by reading a section of scripture from 1 Corinthians normally reserved for weddings. It took on a new significance in the context of violent confrontations between police and protesters:
“Love is patient, love is kind … it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs,” he said. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Ron Pinkston, president of the Dallas police association, read each of the men’s names as an honor guard brought forward large photographs of them.
Family members put their arms around each other, and wept quietly into handkerchiefs.
“To the families,” Pinkston said with a halting voice, “we want you to know we will always be there for you.”
The crowd had remained silent throughout the service, but when the police chief, David Brown, stepped to the podium, the audience erupted in cheers and applause.
Before Thursday’s attack, Brown was known for transforming a troubled police force into a model of transparency and forthrightness. Since the shooting he has won acclaim for maintaining that stance; at a news conference on Monday morning Brown appeared stoic and straight-backed, but confessed he was “running on fumes”. His feelings, he said, were “raw”.
At the vigil he began his address by recalling how, as a boy, he would sprint home to hear the opening lines of the Superman television show. His obsession led him to work among real-life heroes, he told the crowd.
“We have an example of how to conquer this tragedy,” he said. “When the good Lord was crucified and arose again on the third day, alive, he said, ‘O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?’”
He lowered his voice further. “We’ll not only be loving you today. We’ll be loving you always.”
Then he addressed the crowd again.
“Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,” he said. “Look, it’s a train. It’s a plane. No – it’s Patricio Zamarripa. Look – it’s Brent Thompson. It’s Michael Krol. It’s Lorne Ahrens. It’s Michael Smith.”
A friend or partner stood for each of the victims, and offered small, human details.
During quiet moments Smith liked to make little paper frogs for his daughter.
Zamarripa was a huge fan of Texas Rangers baseball.
Krol loved to play pool.
Thompson, who worked for the city’s transit police department, was a former marine.
Ahrens was such a big man his partner wondered whether he could fit in a squad car, but he was fast on his feet.
The crowd lit candles and held them up as bagpipes played, and kept them aloft as the families filed out.
Once the ceremony was over, people seemed reluctant to leave the plaza, mingling and talking, taking pictures with the officers’ oversized photographs, meeting officers who were injured during Thursday’s attack.
Outside the police headquarters downtown there were two police cars parked on the street, but they were invisible; passersby had buried them in flowers.
Reuters contributed to this reportReuters contributed to this report