Shooting at Dallas BLM Protest, Multiple Officers Shot

[Patroklos]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/philan ... index.html

Three police officers in Dallas were killed and seven others were wounded on Thursday night, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in a statement. Brown said two snipers shot the 10 from elevated positions during a protest. Two officers are in surgery and three are in critical condition. No suspects were in custody.
[Previous story, posted at 11:35 p.m. ET]

One Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer has been fatally shot during a protest over shootings by police of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, the agency tweeted.
Three other DART officers were also shot. Their injuries are not considered life-threatening, DART said.
The shooting happened as protests were underway about two blocks from Dealey Plaza. Video showed the crowd suddenly sprinting away.
CNN affiliate KTVT reported that two Dallas officers were shot. CNN could not immediately confirm that information and it's not clear if they were referring to the DART officers.
Witness Clarissa Myles said she was eating at McDonalds when the chaos began.
"Everyone was screaming, people were running," she said. "I saw at least probably 30 shots go off."
"I was walking next to the officer who was helping with the protest, all of a sudden I saw six to eight shots," one witness told the station. "It looked like two officers went down."
Another witness who was at the protest told the station he heard multiple gunshots.
"Whoever was shooting had an assault rifle — and I know guns. The shots were in rapid succession," the witness said.
Video showed numerous police officers crouching behind vehicles. Others approached a location holding protective shields.

10 officers shot, three have died of their wounds.

So far all reported targets were police shot from elevated positions on nearby buildings. Two shooters.

[Mr Bean]

So police show up to a police protest, I've always wondered how long till nutters took one look at that and took advantage since they are kind enough to stand in the open in nice neat lines in areas without cover. It's something that had to happen sooner or later like the terminal bombing we've yet to have in America.

Also reporting possible bombs, lets hope that's initial attack rumors.

[The Romulan Republic]

A disgusting act of terrorism, and a possible gain for far Right nutters and corrupt police who will use this to associate Black Lives Matter and other Civil Rights protesters with terrorism and try to delegitimize them with guilt by association.

My sympathies are with the victims and their families.

And with everyone who suffers when the political process descends into violence.

[Gandalf]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

[Aether]

Yahoo has posted an article that embeds a couple of videos. In the second video, you can hear multiple gunshots presumably from the gunmen. Serious shit.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/three-office ... 00452.html

[Patroklos]

There are reports that another officer has died, and the total shot is now at 11.

[Aether]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

What bothers me about the BLM Movement is that they have focused/hijacked the discussion about police brutality only in regards to the black community. On the outset, I have always seen this as a fundamental problem with law enforcement and how they interact with any citizen; black, white, hispanic, etc. It's antagonistic.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

What bothers me about the BLM Movement is that they have focused/hijacked the discussion about police brutality only in regards to the black community. On the outset, I have always seen this as a fundamental problem with law enforcement and how they interact with any citizen; black, white, hispanic, etc. It's antagonistic.

There is a larger police brutality and corruption issue, but let's not pretend that their isn't a disproportionately high rate of police violence towards black people.

Also, what does this have to do with the topic of the shooting, unless you're trying to insinuate that Black Lives Matter adopting the position you described above is somehow responsible for this atrocity?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

What bothers me about the BLM Movement is that they have focused/hijacked the discussion about police brutality only in regards to the black community. On the outset, I have always seen this as a fundamental problem with law enforcement and how they interact with any citizen; black, white, hispanic, etc. It's antagonistic.

It is, but blacks are taking so much of the brunt of that antagonism that they have every reason to view it as a racial issue.

It's like, maternity leave isn't strictly a women-only issue; fathers have a legitimate interest in taking time off to care for newborn infants too. But realistically, given the society we live in, the issue impacts women so much more strongly than men that it becomes a women's issue in the eyes of pretty much everyone including the women.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

What bothers me about the BLM Movement is that they have focused/hijacked the discussion about police brutality only in regards to the black community. On the outset, I have always seen this as a fundamental problem with law enforcement and how they interact with any citizen; black, white, hispanic, etc. It's antagonistic.

While there are issues with our police forces generally, black people get hit by them especially hard. '

Relevant light reading (there is no paywall for PLOS):

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0141854

Abstract
A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of police-involved homicide, this data set is less likely to be biased by police reporting practices. County-specific relative risk outcomes of being shot by police are estimated as a function of the interaction of: 1) whether suspects/civilians were armed or unarmed, and 2) the race/ethnicity of the suspects/civilians. The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.

[Simon_Jester]

IF this guy turns out to be one of the shooters, one wonders how it will impact the way people view "open carry" as a statement of political values at future political events.

He isn't the shooter, everyone in America thought he was for 30 minutes, but he was interacting with the police peacefully(at a different location) when the shooting started from an elevated location(parking garage?)

Yeah, I'd heard about a mistaken identity case, which is why I led off with a big "IF."

[Note, this was not intended by me bringing up the issue gun control per se, it is because the open carrying of guns in places where such things are legal has become a form of political expression in the US in the past ten years or so]

[Lonestar]

My understanding is that once the shooting started he handed his AR over, and the cops said go home and come on down to the station tomorrow to get it.

Then when he got home they said "errr..can you come on down to the station anyway?"

The impression I'm getting us a cross the T's and dot the I scenario regarding him as a POI.

[Aether]

I'm actually surprised that it took so long for something like this to occur.

What bothers me about the BLM Movement is that they have focused/hijacked the discussion about police brutality only in regards to the black community. On the outset, I have always seen this as a fundamental problem with law enforcement and how they interact with any citizen; black, white, hispanic, etc. It's antagonistic.

It is, but blacks are taking so much of the brunt of that antagonism that they have every reason to view it as a racial issue.

It's like, maternity leave isn't strictly a women-only issue; fathers have a legitimate interest in taking time off to care for newborn infants too. But realistically, given the society we live in, the issue impacts women so much more strongly than men that it becomes a women's issue in the eyes of pretty much everyone including the women.

Perhaps, I am far too egalitarian in my worldview, but when you do have a situation that effects one particular group more, it goes a long way to highlight how it effects others as well; especially when you are arguing for societal changes. For shits, If 10% (42 million) of the black community suffers at the hands of poor law enforcement while only 1% (240 million) of the white community suffers thats 10 times as many blacks at the short end of the stick. That's 4.2 million to 2.4 million. But that's still over 6 million people. So I would argue that it's of little benefit to dismiss the suffering of over 2 million people...for what exactly?

Excuse me, I'll go fuck off and go be idealistic amongst myself.

[Patroklos]

While there are issues with our police forces generally, black people get hit by them especially hard. '

Relevant light reading (there is no paywall for PLOS):

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0141854

This is all rather useless unless you disqualify shootings that were justified. If, for instance, black suspects are shot because they resist arrest more often (which could in fact correlate with crime rate) that won't be captured here. The abstract, anyway, doesn't account for this.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It would correlate strongly with baseline crime rates, yes. And even without a 1:1 correlation, black people don't resist 5 times more often, that would be ridiculous. There are also plenty of studies that show that police are more likely to mistake unarmed black people for armed black people, than they are to mistake an unarmed white person for an armed white person; and they are faster to make that call with black people than whites. It is called implicit bias, and is largely a subconscious process.

Also merely resisting arrest does a justified shoot make.

You can in fact read the entire paper using that link.

[bilateralrope]

Well fuck.

How long before copycats and police overreactions make the tension even worse ?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well fuck.

How long before copycats and police overreactions make the tension even worse ?

Thanks to the Werther Effect* we are probably going to see killings of police spike (relative to baseline likelihood) over the next few days and lasting about a month as people who are (for lack of a better term) radicalized are inspired to take out their frustration at the police as civil institution out upon the bodies of police officers.


*The Werther Effect is a pheneomon by which, after some kind of well-publicized tragedy, tragedies of a similar etiology spike in likelihood. Originally coined for suicides, the same thing applies to a lot of other things. After an abortion clinic bombing, abortion clinic bombings (and political bombings in general) spike; after a plane crash, commercial airline pilots are more likely to commit suicide taking their passengers with them.

[Wild Zontargs]

We're up to 12 officers shot, 5 dead, and 2 civvies wounded.

[Broomstick]

Aside from deaths and injuries, this is just throwing fat on the fire. It discredits the BLM movement which, while not an ideal group has some legitimate grievances and leads to asshats making comments about race wars and "punks".

Video of the event shows that those protesting were appalled at the police getting shot and some of the crowd helped the injured. That's sort of the point of these protests: people want the violence and killing to stop, regardless of who is what color or has a particular profession. The people who targeted police just spit all over that idea.

[mr friendly guy]

Have they caught the perps? Last I checked police released an image which turned out to be the wrong person as they let the person of interest go after questioning. Hopefully they took that tweet showing this person off if he is no longer a person of interest.

[Lagmonster]

Have anyone said anything about the suspects yet? I heard someone on the radio speculating that for all we know, they could be ISIS sympathizers responding to the call to target the police, and that it had the nature of a pre-planned attack. Has someone confirmed the shooters were responding specifically to police shootings?

[Broomstick]

Have they caught the perps?

1 dead two in custody.

Have anyone said anything about the suspects yet? I heard someone on the radio speculating that for all we know, they could be ISIS sympathizers responding to the call to target the police, and that it had the nature of a pre-planned attack. Has someone confirmed the shooters were responding specifically to police shootings?

The head of the Dallas police department is on the news right now. He repeated some comments from the deceased shooter that included being upset at BLM, upset at cops, and wanting to kill "white people" and especially white cops. The deceased also said he was not affiliated with any groups.

So, from that, I suspect this was a non-white, likely black gunman who is not associated with ISIS. Speculation subject to change with more information. The fact there was more than one would seem to indicate that even if the dead shooter wasn't affiliated with a large, organized group he was at least affiliated with the other two shooters.

[Flagg]

So now the po-po have an excuse to kill everyone darker than George Zimmerman even if they are trying to show them the ID demanded by them no matter how day-glow orange or yellow the wallet holding it is. Was really hoping this was some needle dicked white supremacist shit.

[Grumman]

Flagg, do the world a favour and fuck off.

[Flagg]

Flagg, do the world a favour and fuck off.

No. Do you have a problem with my logic here or is this a vendetta post? Not that I'd lower myself into reporting gutter trash like you, but what exactly do you have a problem with regarding my post? Do you not think the worst on the force who signed up for a gun to use won't use this as an excuse, or was it the implication that white supremacists have needle dicks and might have tried to set such a situation up?