“There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred in our city. All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said that following the horrific shooting Thursday night in Dallas, where five police officers were killed and seven police officers were injured along with two civilians.

“The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings,” Brown said. “The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

The shootings seemed to be some response to shootings earlier in the week where police officers in Baton Rouge and in St. Paul shot and killed black men, one outside a store where police were investigating reports a man had a weapon, the other after an officer pulled over a vehicle for unknown reasons.

The shootings in Dallas were clearly premeditated.

The police officers shot were escorting protestors, mostly blacks, who were protesting the two shootings by police. Worth noting in video from the Dallas shootings is how police officers, most of them white, ran towards the shooter not away, in an effort to protect the people in the march.

At the time the bullets first started flying they would have had no idea if the shooter were a terrorist or perhaps a racist enraged and wanting to kill black people involved in the protest.

And why shoot Dallas police? The police chief there is a black man. His department is reportedly among a few that have committed to publicly releasing detailed data on officer-related shootings.

USA Today reported how the Dallas police website reports that shootings involving its officers have dropped in the past three years, from 23 in 2013 to 11 in 2015. Since 2014, 111 people have reportedly been shot and killed by Houston Police while over the same period, 58 were shot and killed by Dallas police. The year before Brown became the chief, USA Today reported there were 147 excessive-force complaints against officers and through November 2015, only 13 had been filed.

It would appear the Dallas police are making a real effort to improve community policing but clearly that didn’t make a difference to the shooter Thursday, who just wanted to kill police, especially white police.

Chief Brown summed it up for Dallas or Baton Rouge or St. Paul or New Iberia or anywhere when he said the divisiveness between police and civilians has got to stop.

Wrong is wrong, whether it’s wrong actions by a few police officers or wrong by people upset at the perceived wrongs of police. We’ve got to work through the system to address wrongs, not take violence to the streets much less targeting innocent police officers, or the public.

WILL CHAPMAN

PUBLISHER