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Families and Fellow Officers Honor Victims of Dallas Sniper Families and Fellow Officers Honor Victims of Dallas Sniper
(about 5 hours later)
DALLAS — Hours after the nation mourned Dallas’s five slain police officers — with the president and his predecessor presiding over a memorial service and urging unity in the face of growing racial discord — friends, strangers and fellow officers here began shouldering the more intimate burden of saying goodbye to the officers, one by one. DALLAS — From a young age, Brent Thompson pushed the bounds of life so hard that he almost always found a way to get hurt.
Services were held Wednesday for Officer Brent Thompson of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit force and Sgt. Michael J. Smith and Sr. Cpl. Lorne B. Ahrens of the Dallas Police Department. Services for the other two officers killed last week by a sniper will be held on Friday and Saturday. There was that time as a youngster when he nearly broke his neck playing in a hammock. Or when he wrecked his brother’s Mustang after begging him for the keys. Or the time he broke his arm during motorcycle training for the Police Department.
At Prestonwood Baptist Church, hundreds of uniformed officers from around the country rose as bagpipes played and the family of Corporal Ahrens entered the church. It was his fearlessness and desire to serve his country that led Mr. Thompson to join the Marines and, after returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, to become a police officer, his longtime pastor, Rick Lamb, said Wednesday.
With the Dallas mayor and police chief among the mourners, two officers remembered Corporal Ahrens, a 48-year-old father of two, for his bravery, friendship and deep dedication. “When you were on the radio screaming for help, you could count on Lorne to be the first to be there,” Sr. Cpl. Debbie Taylor said. So it came as no surprise to people close to Mr. Thompson, 43, that when gunfire started ringing out during a protest here last Thursday, he was one of the officers running toward the shooting. This time, however, Mr. Thompson suffered the ultimate injury. He and four other officers were killed when a black Army veteran upset over killings by the police across the country opened fire, targeting white officers, the authorities said.
Speaking before his coffin, she said that Corporal Ahrens, a 6-foot-4, 300-pound man, could tear off iron burglary bars and kick down fences in pursuit of someone, but could also show great kindness to a scared child at a crime scene. The grim process of moving forward from one of America’s deadliest mass shootings of police officers began on Wednesday when Mr. Thompson, who worked for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police, and Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens of the Dallas Police Department were given their final send-offs during funerals that were by turns emotional and quippy.
Sr. Cpl. Eddie Coffey said Corporal Ahrens had not not seemed to know how strong he was, telling a story of how he had once bent a police car door by accident during training. A private service was held Wednesday for another Dallas officer, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, and a public memorial is planned on Thursday. Services for the fourth victim, Officer Michael Krol, will be Friday, and the funeral for the fifth victim, Officer Patrick Zamarripa, will be Saturday.
“You were his best friend and his dedicated wife,” Corporal Coffey said to Katrina Ahrens, as she sat with her 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. Even as mourners, including hundreds of officers who came here from across the country, took tentative steps forward, they acknowledged the cathartic backdrop against which Wednesday’s services took place: in a country rived by a debate over race and policing, upended by vast protests and nationwide soul searching.
Officer Thompson, 43, was remembered for pushing the bounds of life so hard that he almost always found a way to get hurt. “Though I’m heartbroken and hurt, I’m going to put on my badge and my uniform and return to the street along with all of my brothers and sisters in blue,” Mr. Thompson’s wife, Emily, who is also a police officer, said with a shaky but steely voice. “To the coward that tried to break me and my brothers and sisters, know your hate made us stronger.”
There was the time as a youngster when he nearly broke his neck playing with his parents’ hammock. Or when he wrecked his brother’s Mustang after begging him to hand over the keys. Or the time he broke his arm during motorcycle training for the police department. The couple had married about two weeks before the shooting. Only about 12 hours before Mr. Thompson was shot, his wife had filed their marriage license with government authorities, Mr. Lamb said. About 8:15 that night, the couple spoke on the phone.
Yet it was his fearlessness and desire to serve his country that led Mr. Thompson to join the Marines and, after returning from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, to become a police officer, his longtime pastor, Rick Lamb, said Wednesday. “My shift’s over in 45 minutes, and then I’ll be home,” Mr. Thompson told his wife, according to Mr. Lamb. “He told her he loved her, and that’s the last time that he ever spoke to her.”
“Though I’m heartbroken and hurt, I’m going to put on my badge and my uniform and return to the street along with all of my brothers and sisters in blue,” Mr. Thompson’s wife, Emily, whom he married just over two weeks before his death, said with a shaky but steely voice. “To the coward that tried to break me and my brothers and sisters, know your hate made us stronger.” Mr. Thompson leaves behind six children from a previous marriage. He was a music enthusiast who occasionally played guitar and would send his children songs with his cellphone to see if they could recognize the tune.
The goodbyes for Sergeant Smith began Tuesday night at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in the suburb of Farmers Branch, about 15 miles north of the downtown Dallas streets where he and four colleagues were gunned down on Thursday by Mr. Johnson, who was black and said he was looking to kill white police officers. The funeral reflected the nuances of the conversation on race and policing that has enveloped the country.
A private service was held Wednesday for Sergeant Smith, and a public memorial is planned for Thursday. The service was held in the Potter’s House, the West Dallas megachurch where T. D. Jakes is the pastor. A noticeably diverse cast of officers filled the seats. Among them was Emily Thompson’s patrol partner, a black man, who stood next to her as she read her words of remembrance about her husband. As Brenda Lee, who is black and works for the Transit Police, sang “I Can Only Imagine,” her voice resonated with a gospel flair. Several people stood, some raising their arms in worship, when she hit the long notes. And among the final speakers was the chief of the Transit Police, James D. Spiller, who is black.
President Obama, speaking in Dallas, said Tuesday that the shooting — and the earlier deaths of African-American men in Minnesota and Louisiana at the hands of police officers — had opened “the deepest fault lines of our democracy.” It was a diverse showing in remembrance of a white man from a small town 55 miles south of Dallas.
But there were no perceivable cracks at Sergeant Smith’s visitation. Black, white, Hispanic and Asian mourners lined up outside of the church in the pummeling summer sun, waiting patiently for a chance to have a quiet moment to pay their respects. The officers in the Dallas Police Department wore their dark blue uniforms. Friends and strangers came in T-shirts, work shirts and flowery dresses. Shortly after 6 p.m., the Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, arrived and stood in line with everyone else. “Brent respected and loved all people, regardless of what color they were, where they came from,” Mr. Lamb said.
In a hallway leading to the chapel, an officer approached. They embraced. But the reality was that Wednesday’s services were taking place beneath a cloud of national racial tension, and about 30 miles away from Mr. Thompson’s funeral, F.B.I. agents in camouflage and tactical gear were providing security outside Mr. Ahrens’s service in Plano.
“How you doing, man?” the chief said quietly. “Take it slow.” Friends and colleagues of Mr. Ahrens, 48, recalled his seemingly quixotic journey from his native Los Angeles to Dallas. He drove here with nothing but his dog and a few possessions stuffed into his Toyota.
Sergeant Smith, 55, was a longtime member of the Dallas police force. Mr. Obama described him as a man of faith and a father of two girls, with whom he loved to play softball. “Today, his girls have lost their dad, for God has called Michael home,” he said. He slept on the floor of his apartment early in his police training because he had no bed. When a woman named Katrina first approached him, he was too shy to speak. She later became his wife, and they went on to have two children.
His body lay in a coffin lined with snow-white fabric. Two members of the Dallas Police Honor Guard stood at either side. Some visitors stopped and made the sign of the cross. Officers saluted stiffly, then walked down a side aisle, their faces grim. Plainsong played quietly in the background. There was an occasional sound of muffled weeping, and the sound of backs being slapped by open palms. “Your dad was doing what he was supposed to do,” the Rev. Rick Owen, senior pastor of Mr. Ahrens’s church, Pathway Church in Burleson, Tex., told the fallen officer’s 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son during the service.
In an atrium, a photo of Sergeant Smith, bespectacled, uniformed, with a police radio pinned to his left shoulder, was set among a guest book and crowded displays of flowers. One spray came from the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation. Another came with a ribbon that read SPECIAL NEIGHBOR. The Dallas mayor and police chief sat in attendance as Mr. Ahrens was remembered as a lover of guns and heavy metal music who did not know his own strength. He once bent a police car door on accident during training.
Outside, near an American flag agitated by the whipping wind, the Dallas mayor, Mike Rawlings, spoke briefly with reporters. “I don’t know the pain of the family, they don’t know our pain,” he said. “But if we all join hands together and lift each other up, somehow the pain is salved just a little bit.” “When you were on the radio screaming for help, you could count on Lorne to be the first to be there,” Sr. Cpl. Debbie Taylor said.
On Monday evening, Chief Brown stood before hundreds of officers, their families and residents at a vigil outside City Hall, once again seeming to carry the weight of the grief of his department and his city on his shoulders. The funerals drew officers from places as far-flung as South Carolina and Indiana.
He began his remarks by saying that as a child, he used to run home from school to watch Superman on television. Superheroes, he said, are a lot like police officers. “At times like this, we feel like we stand alone,” said Rick Keys, a lieutenant with the North Charleston, S.C., Police Department, who drove 15 hours with three of his colleagues to attend Mr. Thompson’s funeral. “It means a lot to the families to see the officers come from so far.”
“Faster than a speeding bullet,” he said at the end of his speech. “More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look. It’s a train. It’s a plane. No. It’s Patricio Zamarripa. Look, it’s Brent Thompson. Look, it’s Michael Krol. Look, it’s Lorne Ahrens. Look, it’s Michael Smith. Godspeed. God bless you. God bless the Dallas Police Department.” Robert Parker, the assistant chief of police in Watauga, a city about 30 miles west of Dallas, said he hoped that this could be an opportunity for police departments and the communities they serve to come together.
“We have a long way to go before we get where we need to be,” he said after Mr. Thompson’s funeral. “One of the things that I’ve talked to my wife about, and many others, is everybody on all sides of this, whether it’s Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, everyone needs to sit back and gain all the truth and the facts of each case before they pass judgment. If we do that and then we have an open dialogue and sit down and look at each other’s points of view, maybe we can go through this without further violence.”
After Mr. Thompson’s funeral, hundreds of officers lined up outside, saluting his coffin as an honor guard fired off a gun salute.
The department then did what is known as a last call. A radio dispatcher, over a loudspeaker, called for Mr. Thompson, by his name and badge number, three times. When he did not answer, she said a final goodbye.
“We will miss you, Brent,” she said. “You will never be forgotten.”