Dallas chief: Hard to identify shooter due to open carry
DALLAS — Texas has always prided itself on its vigorous exercise of the Second Amendment. The state has long allowed the open carrying of rifles, and this year, it joined a majority of other states in allowing handgun owners to carry their weapons openly.
But the presence of up to 30 people carrying rifles during a protest last week at which 12 police officers were shot complicated law enforcement’s attempts to identify the gunman, police Chief David Brown said Monday.
The armed protesters also were wearing camouflage gear, bullet-proof vests and gas masks, police said.
“We’re trying as best we can as a law enforcement community to make it work so that citizens can express their Second Amendment rights,” Brown said.
“But it is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over and shootings occur in a crowd … and we don’t know if they are the shooter or not. We don’t know who the good guy is versus who the bad guy is if everybody starts shooting,” Brown said.
Thursday’s fatal shooting, which left five officers dead, erupted during a protest against recent shootings of African-American men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The gunman, Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old former Army reservist, had told police negotiators he was targeting white police officers.
Some gun rights advocates have argued that armed citizens, so called good guys with guns, can aid police in combating crime. Last year, Texas passed its law allowing the open carrying of handguns, and another law allowing people to carry handguns on college campuses is set to take effect Aug. 1.
In other developments Monday, police said they are questioning Johnson’s family members to determine if he had any accomplices.
Johnson kept a journal of “combat tactics,” stockpiled bomb-making materials and other weapons, took a self-defense class and was seen by neighbors practicing military exercises in his backyard, officials have said. Records show he lived with his mother.
How could his family not have known? “That’s my question,” Brown said at Monday’s news briefing. He said Johnson’s relatives have been cooperative and have not been detained.
He said it also wasn’t clear how Johnson learned about bomb-making.
In an excerpt of an interview with TheBlaze website published Monday, Johnson’s parents said military service changed their son from an extrovert into a hermit.
His mother, Delphine Johnson, said her son wanted to be a police officer as a child. His six years in the Army Reserve, including a tour in Afghanistan, were “not what Micah thought it would be what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectations.”
His father, James Johnson, said haltingly and through tears: “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better. I didn’t see it coming.”
Brown clarified Monday that Johnson was killed on the second floor of El Centro College, not a parking garage as authorities previously described. Brown did not provide more details, including the locations of the negotiations that came before Johnson’s death.