Use of ‘sniper’ label criticized by some
In the immediate aftermath of the attack that killed five police officers in Dallas, a term came up numerous times to describe shooter Micah Johnson: sniper.
The description was used by the Dallas Police Department shortly after the shooting, and it has been repeated by media outlets. Dallas police Chief David Brown and Mayor Mike Rawlings made several allu- sions to officers being attacked by snipers or “sniped” at.
“Suspects like this have to be right once,” Brown said last week. “They don’t have to work very hard to do cowardly acting like this, to snipe at our officers from elevated positions and to ambush them from secreted positions around corners.”
The initial description has drawn criticism from some U.S. military veterans.
In one example, former Army Ranger Nicholas Irving tweeted that the shoot- er was “not a sniper” and that he hates “the fact that name is loosely thrown around.”
The implication: A sniper is a highly trained shooter who typically also uses a weapon that fires with great precision.
Johnson reportedly used an aging SKS semi-automatic rifle, a weapon carried by Soviet soldiers before the AK-47, and unleashed a heavy volume of fire — first on the ground and later from higher floors above his targets.
Johnson wounded nine people, including seven officers, in addition to the officers killed.
But it does not appear he relied on any advanced military training — while he served in the Army, he was a carpentry and masonry specialist. He deployed to Afghanistan once from November 2013 to July 2014 but never saw direct combat, according to Army records. Instead, Johnson is said to have trained at a private self-defense school in Texas. A Texas official investigates the scene where Micah Johnson shot at officers and some civilians in Dallas last week.