Police to study 170 hours of footage
Eleven police officers fired their weapons, and two officers used an explosive device to stop an Army veteran’s deadly shooting rampage during a protest last week, Police Chief David Brown said Monday.
“We’re going to turn over every rock” to make certain Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, was the lone gunman who killed five police officers and wounded nine Thursday in Dallas.
“I want to make sure there isn’t somebody else out there that has something to do with this,” Brown said.
Johnson was cornered in a parking garage and killed by a remote-controlled robot’s bomb after a two-hour standoff with police.
Brown said investigators were downloading more than 170 hours of body camera footage from officers and collecting dashcam videos and video from surrounding businesses.
Brown said a large stockpile of bombmaking material was found in Johnson’s apartment. Brown said he believes Johnson learned about explosives online, but he said that was also being investigated.
Investigators were going through Johnson’s laptop, jour- nals, cellphones and other effects to learn more about his motive and plans.
Investigators suspect he had planned a much larger attack targeting officers. Brown and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Thursday’s protest, prompted by recent shootings of African-American men by police in Minnesota and Louisiana, may have motivated Johnson to act sooner.
Johnson scrawled the letters “RB” in blood in two locations after he was trapped in the garage. Brown said authorities were trying to determine the meaning of the letters.
Brown stressed that the murder and violent crime rates in Dallas have been down sharply in recent years. He said the city remains committed to community policing, but the department has been hamstrung by low pay that led to officers leaving for departments that pay better.
“Don’t be a part of the problem. We’re hiring,” Brown said. “Get out of the protest line, and put an application in. We’ll put you in your neighborhood.”