Police Agency Wants Dallas Incident To Be Classified As Hate Crime By DOJ
The Fraternal Order of Police has asked the Justice Department to look into the killing of Dallas’ five police officers – to consider it a hate crime. The FOP is the nation’s largest group of sworn law enforcement officers. Its president, Chuck Canterbury said the DOJ is always putting itself in local investigations and demands the same thing be applied to mass murder incident in Dallas.
According to police, 25-year-old Army veteran Micah Johnson was livid about the two highly-charged incidents where an officer shot and killed a black man. Johnson is black.
David Brown, police chief for the Dallas Police Department, said Johnson was killed in the standoff, where he said he had wanted to kill white people but especially white police officers.
The Justice Department’s hate crime definition is limited to bigotry, intimidation or violence based on race, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or disability, even though police groups have tried to say attacks on police should be added to that list.
Canterbury said if there were ever a time where the assassination of police officers fits into a hate crime legislation, this would be the time. While the main offender has been killed, a hate crime investigation would prove to the DOJ and country that the committed crime was hate-based.
According to police, Johnson did act alone. In the heat of the moment and reports of more than one shooter, three other people were taken into custody. Police have not made any updates about these folks.
Since Johnson did die in the attack and acted alone, it could hurt the efforts of police groups to ensure the DOJ investigates these types of shooting as a hate crime or civil rights violation.
Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, said the investigation is not over, and police will follow every lead to ensure there are no other suspects involved or people who helped Johnson carry out the heinous crime.
David Jacobs, a spokesman for the DOJ, said the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office, ATF and U.S. Marshals Service is working with the local and state departments and would provide assistance to investigate the attack.
The DOJ has, in the last few years, gotten involved with hate crime and civil rights investigations, especially in high-profile cases where a black man dies when in police custody.
It investigated the death of Freddie Gray – a black man who was seriously injured while he rode unrestrained in a police wagon in Baltimore and died seven days later. The department also looked into the 2014 Ferguson incident where Michael Brown, a black teen, had been fatally killed by a white police officer.
These incidents, and others like them, sparked destructive riots. The agency filed no charges in either the Baltimore or Ferguson case.
President Obama did not clarify if he thought the Dallas incident was a race crime, saying instead that interpreting the shooter’s motives is hard to do since there’s been an array of mass shootings.
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