“The Dallas shooting is what unmitigated political correctness give us—cops who can’t look militaristic in the face of civilians who are militaristic.”
July 7, 2016 was one of those game-changing moments for police officers, their families, and supporters of law enforcement around the country. Similar to the night Ferguson burnt to the ground, every cop remembers where they were and what they were doing. During Ferguson, I was white-knuckling it from Georgia to Jersey in the car with my family as we headed home for Thanksgiving that weekend. With adrenaline beating my heart fast in my chest, I lost track of how fast I was driving on the interstate as reporters at the scene advised officers were taking cover from gunfire during the massive rioting. The stroking of a ticket at the hand of a Virginia State Trooper was my result. I got a speeding ticket from a fellow cop working a speed trap on Thanksgiving Eve as our fellow officers were taking gunfire live on Fox News XM Radio. Let it never be said we don’t write our own.
During Dallas, I was on patrol working a beat. I had a terrible case of food poisoning from something I ate at the outset of my shift and was running back and forth between the restroom and my car all night long. I must have thrown up ten times that night, and I still can’t stomach a gyro from Nick’s Greek—but I couldn’t go home because our shift already had multiple unexpected sick-outs.
As one of the only bones in a skeleton crew, I was in it until the end whether I liked it or not. Regardless of my illness, I knew I was one lucky cop as I watched videos of officers armed with pistols being gunned down by a psycho with a long rifle. I also had a good buddy of mine there to bring me a bottle of Pedialite to help me rehydrate as I sat outside the restroom in the precinct waiting for the next round of god-awfulness to send me running back in. That’s a brother I owe a challenge coin as I sit here thinking about it.
If you’re reading this right now, I trust you are well familiar with the Dallas police shooting that saw two civilians and nine officers shot and five officers killed. You know that the killer, Micah Xavier Johnson, was a tactically trained Army combat veteran who was turned into a cold-blooded killer by the constant race baiting and police vilification taking place during an election year.
The setting of the mass murder was none other than a Next Generation Action Network protest against police in response to the Alton Sterling shooting in Louisiana and the Philando Castille shooting in Minnesota where one hundred officers were assigned to work a protest of 800+ marchers. The two Baton Rouge officers involved in the Sterling case have since been cleared by the US Department of Justice, who hastily opened up a civil rights investigation for all the wrong reasons, while the officer involved in the Castille case was recently acquitted of manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm last month.
It was reported by former Dallas Police Chief David Brown that Micah Johnson told hostage negotiators that he “did this alone” and “was not affiliated with any groups” at the scene of his last stand inside an El Centro College building—but his Facebook page told a different story. Johnson’s page showed that he “liked” three groups designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “black separatist hate groups.”
Brown also told reporters at a presser that the murderer’s last words expressed his desire to kill as many white cops as possible and that he wished he could kill more. The branches of our armed forces are the meltiest of pots in this melting pot country of ours. Johnson surely didn’t learn such blind hatred during his time as an Army Reservist alongside Americans of all different races, cultures, and religions.
The seeds of the cancerous ideas that took over his life were sewn by groups like the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Riders Liberation Party—and they were watered by a clickbait, racism-sells, anti-police mainstream media that has been all too eager to profit off of racial division and dead cops in this country.
I wanted to write an article in remembrance of the officers killed that day. They were Senior Corporal Lorne Ahrens, Officer Michael Krol, Sergeant Michael Smith, Officer Brent Thompson, and Officer Patricio Zamarippa. Three of the five officers Johnson killed were military veterans who would have been fighting alongside him on a battlefield somewhere in Afghanistan had their fates dictated such irony. I really did want this piece to be about these officers and the legacies they’ve left behind for their families, friends, and police departments—but some disturbing news has come out of local Dallas media outlets this week that cannot go unaddressed.
On June 29th, the Dallas/Fort Worth CBS local affiliate investigative team reported that many of the roughly one hundred officers working the protest on June 7th of last year were told by command to leave their Kevlar helmets, Level IV vests capable of stopping rifle rounds, and patrol rifles in their cars. According to Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata, “They didn’t want the police department to look militaristic to the community, look aggressive, or incite any type of trouble.” In other words, Dallas PD and DART PD sent their officers out, unprotected, to work on the front lines of an anti-police rally that had armed gun-rights advocate groups such as the militant Huey P. Newton Gun Club marching with loaded rifles. Not only was Johnson a member of this group, but its co-founder, Babu Omowale, says the cop-killer should be celebrated.
The heads of both police departments didn’t just send these officers out to protect lives in a hostile setting outnumbered eight to one, they sent them out there with pistols and standard ballistic vests—essentially carrying knives to a gunfight. The men and women who were shot that day were outgunned and equipped with protective gear that was cut through like butter by Johnson’s 5.45x39mm rifle rounds—all at the behest of police command that didn’t want to appear “militaristic” in the face of rifle-toting militias chock full of members who hated them and wanted to see them dead.
The Dallas shooting is what unmitigated political correctness give us—cops who can’t look militaristic in the face of civilians who are militaristic. It is a wonder how even more blood was not shed both accidentally and in cold blood that night with so many guns on the ground and so many officers ill-equipped to deal with them.
The most angering aspect of the whole situation is realizing that those vests and weapons we hope we never have to use would have actually saved police lives had they been allowed. According to Mata, “A lot of those shots, and a lot of those wounds were chest shots, lower abdomen wound shots, and those heavy vests would have covered them.”
Officers sustained fatal gunshot wounds that very well could have been stopped by the Level IV vests that sat unworn in the trunks of their patrol cars as they gasped their last breaths. Had those officers been allowed to meet force with equal force, Johnson might have been shot dead long before he got to declare open season on them.
As we sit and reflect on the one year anniversary of one of our nation’s most deadly attacks on law enforcement in its history, we’ve got to be able take something positive away.
Yes, Dallas Police Chief David Brown made the right call by sending in a SWAT robot equipped with a bomb that killed Johnson upon detonation to put an end to the threat.
Yes, Chief Brown provided a strong and steady presence in front of cameras at a time when that was exactly what was needed.
Yes, Chief Brown made a stirring speech when he proclaimed “we’re hiring” as a response to those who protest police in the first place. But that’s about it as far as positivity goes.
I’m fairly certain book lovers will be reading page after page of everything Chief Brown has done right in life when they get their hands on his autobiography Called To Rise, which was published yesterday by Random House—but within the pages of a book deal that he’s profiting off of on the one-year anniversary of the Dallas shooting, will Chief Brown make any mention of the folly behind his decision to prioritize political correctness over the lives of five of his own? I should hope so, Chief Brown. I should hope so.
