Bomb-disposal robot violently disposes of Dallas cop-killer gunman Police in Dallas, Texas, used a bomb-carrying robot to blow up a cornered sniper who earlier shot 12 officers during a protest. The suspected gunman was holed up in a building not far from where the shootings took place, we're told. Negotiators tried to persuade the ex-US Army reservist to surrender – but the talks broke down …
Really?
C'mon, that's not even funny.
It makes sense because the shooter had already shot and killed several traffic officers and refused to surrender. He was a continued threat so that's the only way to get to him.
BTW, you can blame Holder and Obama for creating this mess... but you have to understand how Holder and company got involved starting with the Zimmerman/Martin shooting.
I agree, Obama incites this kind of violence regularly, and his flying monkey Holder did the same every chance he got. They both have lots of blood on their hands, mostly from blacks getting killed by other blacks at an alarmingly increased rate this year, due to the police holding back on enforcement.
They wanted a race war and here it is.
"They wanted a race war and here it is."
unfortunate, but most likely true. Obaka's roots are in "agitation" of unhappy citizens. The 'civil rights coalition' becomes EMPOWERED when there is racial strife.
If people stopped caring or making a big deal about race, pointing it out whenever possible, making it an excuse or reason or motivation for 'whatever', there would be no racism. But then "they" wouldn't be powerful, important, or perceived as "needed" any more...
so there you have it.
(expecting lots of thumb-downs, just like the other two).
Oh, and gotta LOVE the geek factor of hacking the bomb DISPOSAL robot's usage to dispose of a cop-killing perp!
@bombastic bob
RE: "If people stopped caring or making a big deal about race...there would be no racism"
No shit Sherlock.
I fink you mite be on to sumfink here. Keep goin', yu mite solve it and wunt the wurld be nice then. Ya kno, I fout of summat else too - If peepl stopped hatin gays ther wunt be no omofobia either.
I like yor finking bobby
>If people stopped caring or making a big deal about race, pointing it out whenever possible, making it an >excuse or reason or motivation for 'whatever', there would be no racism. But then "they" wouldn't be >powerful, important, or perceived as "needed" any more...
The most racist thing I've read on this thread to far. Yes, I am a white person.
BTW, you can blame Holder and Obama for creating this mess
I surely can - he continued the program where police departments are armed with military weapons and given military training including the part which treats anyone and everyone as the enemy without any rules of engagement to counterbalance it. Sure, Shrub instituted that mess, but Obama continued it and expanded it too.
As a result police shoots first, asks questions later, especially in black and poor neighbourhoods. From there on, not expecting someone to snap and return fire is a bid disingenuous. In fact I am surprised that there are so few incidents of that considering the amount of firearms in the general USA populace. If this was somewhere in Eastern Europe, there would have been a civil war situation by now. That is by the way a good example of a region where the populace is armed to the teeth (anyone not believing me is welcome to visit a residential neighbourhood in Sofia, Buchuresti or Belgrade on New Year's Eve - the tracer bullets from Ak47 are quite spectacular). The police however is not anywhere as trigger happy (and for a reason too).
".....As a result police shoots first, asks questions later, especially in black and poor neighbourhoods. From there on, not expecting someone to snap and return fire is a bid disingenuous....." Bullshit. The biggest killer of black male youths in the US is another black male youth, has been for years. Over the same weekend that Philando Castile was shot, there were 65 people shot (10 fatally) in Chicago alone, predominantly in poor and black neighbourhoods. Of the deaths, so far as I can discern from news reports, all were the result of black-on-black gang violence. Pretending that the cops are the trigger for violence in such neighbourhoods is simply blinkered and naive.
If you want to try looking at it from another angle, between 2003 and 2013, FBI figures showed that black criminals killed cops in the US in equal numbers with white criminals, despite being only 12% of the US population compared to about 44% whites. That means that during that period, every time an officer of any colour encountered a black suspect during the course of their duties, there was potentially three times more likelihood that they would be shot by that black suspect than any other ethnic group.
"If you want to try looking at it from another angle, between 2003 and 2013, FBI figures showed that black criminals killed cops in the US in equal numbers with white criminals, despite being only 12% of the US population compared to about 44% whites. That means that during that period, every time an officer of any colour encountered a black suspect during the course of their duties, there was potentially three times more likelihood that they would be shot by that black suspect than any other ethnic group."
Erm, no it doesn't. It means that any given black person chosen at random is three times more likely. But police officers in general interact more with blacks than whites (because, ooh, racism maybe?) so you cannot use this statistic, but multiply it by the number of interactions with each race.
"The biggest killer of black male youths in the US is another black male youth, has been for years."
The biggest killer of ANY male youth has always been someone from their own group. The same applies for white male youth, asian male youth or small purple furry alien youths.
That doesn't excuse that USA police shootings are out of control and that the victims in the are predominantly male youths and of those, black ones figure highly. The entire USA structure is rotten and systemic disenfranchisation of the poor is rampant.
What doesn't help is that a significant number of police recruits in the USA are sociopaths and another significant number are psychologically unsuited to operation under pressure. These are not being weeded out during training and they're not removed when they show themselves as unsuitable for the job. The police are failing to police themselves _and_ they mostly regard the "protection of their own" as more important than the "protection of the public" regardless of how egrariously evil the conduct of some of their own may be.
Just like the 1970s, when the London flying squad would struggle to secure a conviction of armed bank robbers even if they caught them in the act of robbing a bank(*), confidence in USA police is at an all-time low. Serious cleaning up is needed and there seems to be no will to get on with it. (The violence and disregard for legalities has been there a long time - see Rodney King. What's new is the ubiquitousness of cameras to record it) Jurisdictions could start with an assumption of malfeasance if bodycams or microphones are disabled or non-functional.
(*) Not just London. The Greater Manchester Serious Crimes division was found to be responsible for _committing_ most of the serious crimes in greater Manchester....
"What doesn't help is that a significant number of police recruits in the USA are sociopaths and another significant number are psychologically unsuited to operation under pressure. These are not being weeded out during training and they're not removed when they show themselves as unsuitable for the job."
One question. How do you go about winnowing out the unfit if you don't have money to afford all the psych exams to do it since the public are bitching about taxes as it is (and the heavy weapons and vehicles are being subsidized by the Feds, so they're not paying the full bill for them)? That's always the $64M question as to why things aren't getting done: Where's the money, sonny?
It makes sense because the shooter had already shot and killed several traffic officers and refused to surrender. He was a continued threat so that's the only way to get to him.
Total, utter bullshit. This is exactly the same moronic reasoning that lead Bush 43 and Blair to invade Iraq.
The state use of force on citizens should never preempt justice without an immediate threat to more lives. This is basically the ATF invading the Branch Davidian compound all over again, with the Dallas Bomb Squad executing a murderer who wouldn't surrender.
>with the Dallas Bomb Squad executing a murderer who wouldn't surrender.
You should have volunteered to go in and get him then. Nah lets sacrifice a few more cops so we respect his civil rights.
>The state use of force on citizens should never preempt justice without an immediate threat to more lives
The reason they used the bomb disposal robot in the first place is he told the cops he was rigged with a bomb. Also I mean what threat could an military trained active shooter who had already shot 13 cops possibly pose to the public eh?
You should have volunteered to go in and get him then. Nah lets sacrifice a few more cops so we respect his civil rights.
Ah yes, civil rights, the non-respecting of which by the police lead to this outburst in the first place. Not that I'm defending his actions, but I'm actually surprised it took this long.
I think what the commenter is flagging is that the US has gone pretty binary on how it handles threats, which is exactly part of the problem. They really ought to work on more, non-lethal approaches to threat resolution, and while they're at it, they may want to start dealing with the problem. If those who are supposed to protect citizens actually become the threat you're heading towards civil war pretty quickly, and once ignited that's a fire almost impossible to put back out other than with yet again extreme bloodshed.
But hey, it'll sell guns and bullets, and that's what it's all about, no?
I'm also a bit puzzled about fighting a bomb threat with a bomb - depending on what it was this explosive could have set off whatever he'd been carrying. It's OK if you know what you're dealing with, but I don't have the impression that was the case here.
I really don't like the escalation here on both sides. This will only end in tears.
I'm also a bit puzzled about fighting a bomb threat with a bomb - depending on what it was this explosive could have set off whatever he'd been carrying. It's OK if you know what you're dealing with, but I don't have the impression that was the case here.
Isn't this the "controlled explostion" where a small charge is used to vaporise a larger charge before it has a chance to explode?
> You should have volunteered to go in and get him then. Nah lets sacrifice a few more
> cops so we respect his civil rights.
Fscking hypocrite. Or you could send a robot in with tear gas. Or you could sit it out and wait for him to get hungry.
Instead Dallas PD decided to be Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
Funny how the numb knuts gun nuts are quick to start foaming at the mouth about "The Constitution" whenever they think you're threatening _their_ civil rights, but then quickly look down and shuffle their feet when other people's civil rights get trampled.
The reason they used the bomb disposal robot in the first place is he told the cops he was rigged with a bomb.
Exactly. Now let's all put this in context.
"He was rigged with a bomb" = "he was wearing a suicide vest". Let's remember that this shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, had already shot and killed police officers and indicated he wanted to kill more. After hours of negotiations where Johnson continued to fire at officers it was clear that he had no intention of surrendering himself. A bomb disposal robot was sent in with a bomb.
Johnson was told a robot with a bomb was being sent it, he saw the robot with the bomb and was given another opportunity to surrender. He refused. The bomb was then detonated.
I really can't fault DPD for how they handled this as Johnson had a clear understanding of what was going to happen. In this case it's better and safer for the police to detonate a known device at a time of their choosing (which would not necessarily set off the suicide vest) than wait for the inevitable detonation by Johnson.
> I really can't fault DPD for how they handled this
You can't? Really? I can. It's called the Sixth Amendment: Right to trial by jury.
Nothing, nothing, no, not one single thing that anyone does, no matter how heinous, revokes their constitutional rights. Including their right to a trial for having committed that crime. Nothing!
Last week people I know were posting pictures of tombstones on Facebook marking the death of The Rule of Law after Hillary Clinton was essentially absolved of any wrong doing for running an email server. Running a fscking email server. The rule of law is dead? Give me a fricken break.
I submit that yesterday is the day the Constitution died. If the decision makers in Dallas PD who okayed the murder of a suspect, depriving that person of his Sixth Amendment rights, aren't charged with First Degree murder, then truly the rule of law _is_ dead.
(And yes, I'm specifically talking about the American Constitution, in America. And I realize that it is not applicable in other countries, and this is an international forum, yada, yada, yada.)
Really? You mean it didn't happen when US drones were used to take out a US citizen suspected of helping ISIS. It didn't happen when the DOJ turned a blind eye on guns being walked over the Mexican border during the Fast and Furious operation. It didn't happen when multiple Constitutionally guaranteed rights can be brushed aside with little more than hearsay provided by a third party with no due process that is the no-fly / terrorist watch lists bullshit since you can't really even find out your on it until you discover that your rights have been removed. Oh, there's plenty more examples but I'd rather not write a novel listing them all.
No, today's your day but for some of us who've been paying attention, it happened a while ago.
It's clear this was not a "Suspect". Shooter convicted himself. He forfeited his civil rights when he murdered civil servants performing their duties, repeatedly and with continuance of purpose.
Should you wait while a rapist brutalizes your loved ones, or are you going to take action if resources are available to you? Are you going to let your family suffer while you concern yourself with Assailant's right? Are you going to risk letting your loved ones die so a violent criminal can have his rights read to him after he's done?
"Nothing, nothing, no, not one single thing that anyone does, no matter how heinous, revokes their constitutional rights."
NO right known to man is absolute. Don't believe me? Read US v. Schenck and the concept of falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater. In this case, your rights end where another's begin. And taking several officers' inaliable right to life pretty much means you've crossed the Point of No Return.
If the Dallas PD had him contained they could settle in and wait him out. There was no indication of any hostages, so taking up positions to cover escape routes and waiting is viable. He will either try charging his way out, shoot himself, or surrender.
>try charging his way out, shoot himself, or surrender
Or take pot shots at the cops or bystanders where return fire might be dangerous to civilians (bullets can travel up to miles depending on gun and angle). You shoot 12 cops in the US you can reasonably expect to never see a judge. As for that bullcrap in Iraq nothing guarantees war like electing a Texan. Its a good thing Cruz and Perry are friggin halfwits.
Common body armor is not capable of stopping a .30-06 (think M1 Garand or SMLE with 303) or more powerful rifle round. Also at the ranges one is likely talking about (< 100 meters) a competent sniper should be able to hit any exposed body part or the weapon itself. It has been done before.
The Dallas PD had other options to flush him out they could have used but did not.
@a_yank_lurker
You're assuming they could find a suitable position from which a sniper could take a good shot. In the time it would take for them to work out which building can give them the required line of site how many more people could have died?
Clearly the shooter was confined to an area with no alternative escape routes. Flooding it with a tear gas or a fast-acting anesthetic (perhaps using the same robot which was deployed for the execution) would have been a safe and effective way to take him down. Even if he did have a gas mask, these only protect you for a limited time, especially at high concentrations of the active agent.
Putting a douchebag on trial is always preferable to potentially creating a martir through an extra-judicial execution.
>Flooding it with a tear gas or a fast-acting anesthetic
Didn't the Russians try that in that theater and it turned out the fast acting anesthetic killed a fair amount of people as well? You shoot 12 cops in Texas you probably aren't going to get the Scandinavian treatment.
There are are various levels of risk with everything. So,e people can have nasty reactions to teargas too, but that is used fairly indiscriminately
However, a mass event like the Russian theater is a bit different than a solo guy that they can put observation on through via the robot
It would appear to me that the risk of death if exposed to a fast anesthetic, under observation, allowing police to move in as soon as he goes down, slap cuffs and an oxygen mask on him, possibly inject an antidote/inhibitor, would be rather smaller than the almost certainty of death when driving an explosive charge up to him and setting it off...
".....gas....." He claimed to have a bomb. Despite what you've seen in the movies, magic "knockout gas" that instantly disables people does not exist, and there was a good chance he could have activated any device before gas affected him (and no guarantee someone who came prepared with body armour might not also have packed a gas mask).
"He claimed to have a bomb."
So, we are afraid he will detonate a bomb, so we will send in a robot with a bomb and detonate it (to kill him), thereby risking the detonation of the bomb we are afraid of. This makes no sense whatsoever.
"So, we are afraid he will detonate a bomb, so we will send in a robot with a bomb and detonate it (to kill him), thereby risking the detonation of the bomb we are afraid of. This makes no sense whatsoever."
Actually, it makes perfect sense. No one arms a one-way bomb if they have the slightest hope of getting out alive. I suspect the attack was made before the perp crossed the Point of No Return. As long as the explosive isn't armed, the odds favored blowing up the perp before he DID arm it.
"......so we will send in a robot with a bomb and detonate it (to kill him), thereby risking the detonation of the bomb we are afraid of. This makes no sense whatsoever." Only because your knowledge of explosives seems to only extend to Saturday morning cartoons. Most such devices have two stages - an initiator, AKA a detonator, and a main charge. The initiator provides a very intense, high-pressure pressure wave to trigger the main charge. The initiator usually has to be at least in contact with if not embedded into the main charge, otherwise the main charge will not explode. In looking for an example that might tie with your limited knowledge, you may have seen pics of mining charges where detonators are pushed into plastic explosives - the same detonator triggered only inches away from the plastic would not trigger the plastic (plastic explosive is so stable you can burn it on a camp fire). The type of explosives that make up main charges are usually chosen because their stability makes for safe handling, otherwise you (allegedly) end up like Abu Hamza al-Masri. When the cops used their small explosive they knew it was very unlikely to be close enough to the main charge of any bomb to cause it to explode. The same pressure wave that would not be triggering any explosives was still of sufficient force to disorient, disable or kill the perp, even through body armour (one of the nasty effects of the pressure waves caused by bombing in WW2 was people could survive the initial blast but have their lungs shredded by the pressure wave, leaving them to drown in their own blood).
" Most such devices have two stages - an initiator, AKA a detonator, and a main charge"
And a serious bomber will have a dead-man switch. Even a nearby explosion won't be enough in most cases to disable the mechanism or prevent the bomber exploding when he lets it go.
"And a serious bomber will have a dead-man switch."
Unless he was still holding out on hope of getting away. In which case, he wouldn't cross the Point of No Return unless he was certain he was doomed. I'd have to look, but either they took him out before he could sense he was doomed, or they realized somehow he was bluffing.
"Clearly the shooter was confined to an area with no alternative escape routes. Flooding it with a tear gas or a fast-acting anesthetic (perhaps using the same robot which was deployed for the execution) would have been a safe and effective way to take him down. Even if he did have a gas mask, these only protect you for a limited time, especially at high concentrations of the active agent."
I wonder if you know how stupid you sound...
Do you recall the movie theater where the Russians used gas to take out a bunch of Chechen terrorists who were holding dozens of civilians hostage?
Definitely an armchair QB.
I wonder if you know how stupid you sound...
Oh, I do not mind sounding like a peaceful village idiot. We already have a quite sufficient supply of strong, brave men here for whom terminal violence is the first and only possible course of action.
>He started shooting at the police so no, they couldn't take the chance to wait him out.
Why not? They had a bomb handy to blow him up but nothing slightly less lethal? Has no-one developed a weapon system where you can calibrate the range and hit someone in body armour hard enough to knock them down without killing them?
Perhaps getting to the point where we are bombing criminals is an indicator that someone's been watching too much robocop? It might have been effective this time, but what happens next time, when the gunman knows high might be on the bad end of a bombing run? Does he start carrying sticks of dynamite to lob at the robots... or the police hiding around the corner?
At least the prospect of a trial where he can "say his piece" has the chance of calming the situation rather than forcing him to go down all guns blazing.
>Has no-one developed a weapon system where you can calibrate the range and hit someone in body armour hard enough to knock them down without killing them?
I've idly thought along the same lines in the wake of past school shootings - or rather, in the wake of some people calling for teachers to be armed. Is there some non-lethal system of taking a gunman down, or a system of containing them, or rendering their weapon unusable - like a massive electromagnet? I haven't thought of anything plausible, but then I'm not a weapons designer.
Sadly though, most research into non-lethal weapons have been focused on crowd control, gassess, nets, gloopy foams, noise, microwaves etc Curiously, tear-gas is used because it was originally developed as a tactical warfare weapon, but the Geneva Convention on chemical weapons banned it for that use. The manufactures therefore pitched it as a civilian crowd-control agent instead.
They couldn't just wait him out because he had already threatened to explode himself, and there was a high risk for collateral damage. If he felt he had no way out, he'd likely engage in a fail-deadly suicide charge like you read all the time in the Middle East. Could be as simple as a grenade still gripped but with the pin pulled; shoot him and he drops and arms it. Could be as elaborate as an explosive-packed jacket with a dead-man's switch. They had to take him out while he still felt he had a way out, meaning he wouldn't cross the Point of No Return yet.
"If the Dallas PD had him contained they could settle in and wait him out. There was no indication of any hostages, so taking up positions to cover escape routes and waiting is viable. He will either try charging his way out, shoot himself, or surrender."
Absolutely. Let's respect the rights of a mass murderer who has just erased the rights of so many other people. Let's commit God knows how many officers to an effective siege. Let's cordon off a substantial chunk of the downtown area and disrupt countless businesses and the lives of all who work in 'em. Let's make an even bigger dent in the public purse for the additional cost of the law enforcement resources required to respect the aforesaid mass murderer's rights.
The glib nobility of nauseating posts like yours says all there is to say about why contemporary Society is so dysfunctional. Determinedly oblivious to the cost and consequences of what they propose, it's thanks entirely to oh-so politically correct libertarians that a mindset now exists within which the abuser and the abused, the murderer and the murdered, have equal rights.
Well done then, Dallas PD, for displaying a different kind of nobility by exercising that particular f*cker's right to a quick and humane exit.
"Absolutely. Let's respect the rights of a mass murderer who has just erased the rights of so many other people. Let's commit God knows how many officers to an effective siege. Let's cordon off a substantial chunk of the downtown area and disrupt countless businesses and the lives of all who work in 'em. Let's make an even bigger dent in the public purse for the additional cost of the law enforcement resources required to respect the aforesaid mass murderer's rights."
Yes, because it's the law. If you are up for extrajudicial killings of bad people, why bother having a criminal justice system at all? Just point and shoot at everyone who commits a crime, saving a lot of money.
The reason we have the rule of law is precisely to prevent such things from happening. The same law that Micah Johnson broke in killing police officers is the one that should prevent criminals being summarily executed by police without trial. You know, murder.
"Total, utter bullshit. This is exactly the same moronic reasoning that lead Bush 43 and Blair to invade Iraq"
WTF?
If they had followed that reasoning they would have used the robot/bomb to blow up some other criminal who hadn't shot anyone (recently).
Although I do agree deadly force should always be a last resort, try to look at it from the cop's point of view.
1) 5 of their own shot dead (one a newlywed, one the father of two children) and 7 wounded.
2) A trained soldier holed up with assault weapons, threatening to kill more people and explode bombs.
3) An unconfirmed report that other shooters were on the loose.
The Dallas police officers must have rightly decided that negotiations would go nowhere with this guy and could even be highly counterproductive. Imagine if he made good on his threat to detonate explosives and kill more people? If any police sniper had been able to draw a bead on him, they would have dropped him after the first warning, and rightly so.
Being killed by a robot bomb is a bit bizarre, admittedly, but the cops will most likely be vindicated here. As for the two other shootings that sparked these events, that is less clear.
The real concern should be about what happens next. A very large, red line has been crossed here in America. Ironic that it should happen in Dallas, of all places.
> Imagine if he made good on his threat to detonate explosives and kill more people?
And blowing him up doesn't risk triggering whatever he might have had? Riiiiiisky call, IMO, unless you have good reason to think the bomb threats are BS.
> If any police sniper had been able to draw a bead on him, they would have dropped him after the first warning, and rightly so.
If popping up to shoot again, sure. If covering in a hole yelling " you ain't getting me" not being able to shoot at anyone, then I don't see the justification for shooting.
> Although I do agree deadly force should always be a last resort, try to look at it from the cop's point of view.
From a cop's point of view: if other cops stopped executing black men for having broken tail lights then the situation would never have arisen.
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