5 officers killed during Dallas protest by snipers

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Last tweet of police officer Patrick Zamarripa, killed last night in Dallas:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/201 ... ttack.html

In addition to the 10 police officers hit by sniper gunfire Thursday night, two civilians were also struck by bullets, including one woman shot the right calf as she departed the Dallas protests with her family. Thirty-seven-year-old Shetamia Taylor was shot when snipers opened fire, shielding her four sons as she took an injury. Taylor’s sister Theresa Williams told reporters her sibling was there with her boys, ages 12 to 17, and threw herself over her sons as shots rang out. Taylor underwent surgery early Friday.

The fallout from the Dallas attack:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/poli ... allas.html

A former Illinois rep. tried to stir stuff up even further:

So, an ex .mil black supremacist.

This all seems part of a now-familiar tragic pattern.

Either rhetoric or actions of mistreatment become more and more overt. We have pastors & imams calling for gays to be put to death, followed by attacks on LGBT people and eventually the shooting of 49 people in a nightclub. We have an ongoing pattern of police officers shooting black men until eventually they shoot one that was fully complying in every possible way, and a black guy shoots five cops dead.

We have a news media machine that makes money off ramping up people's fear into outright paranoia and unbridled anger. Eventually, in a nation of 320 million people, these messages resonate with some percent more than the rest of the masses. And one person snaps. And then another.

And the leaders and media simply shrug their shoulders and say, "Hey, *we* didn't pull the trigger".

And the pattern continues...

There are now a whole bunch of copycat shootings going on:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/gunman-in-t ... 1468014854

At least 1 person has been killed.

Yep

The writing is all over the wall, but the media keep on pushing sensation attached to a specific narrative, which fuels protest groups, which in turn brings out the rare extremists. The advent of the "eyewitness device" has given everyone the ability to see things they'd never see in the majority of a lifetime, and a good portion of people aren't able to see past biases and emotion when viewing these things, and they can't respond with caution--they aren't emotionally intelligent enough to handle it. "Problems" seem worst than what they actually are.

But hey, it's their 1st right.

Naturally, I expect "easy access to powerful weapons" to be a big part of the narrative regarding this incident (even though a man armed with a perfectly acceptable deer rifle would have been able to do the same thing). What about "easy access to powerful imagery devices"? Yeah. Both are arguably silly, as it's ultimately the individual responsible that's to blame (McVeigh is a good example of the same type of extremist).

My thoughts, and my prayers, go out to Dallas tonight. The officers injured are fighting for their lives, and we've already lost five of them to one horrible sicko sniper. This news breaks my heart. God bless the officers for their service.

Oh, and by the way: three more officer-involved shootings tonight, in Missouri, in Valdosta GA, and in Bristol TN. My thoughts and prayers to those officers as well.
People are going crazy. It is sickening.

Proactive policing is one of those unfair things that do work; more of group A does something, then police focus on group A more. Perhaps they can remove such in the US if the people don't want it; pretty sure they've done it in some areas now [with a resultant increase in murder].

If you have the look at the BLM and similar protests that stirred the pot (which led to riots, looting and deaths), they were initially based on false accounts of events, which were repeated in mass media--that's clearly not a group that values objectivity. They continue to get riled up over events where all the facts aren't known. Enter more deaths.

There's always going to be the odd event where a police makes a mistake, and it's found by the courts and citizens to be a mistake. That's justice.