President Obama, addressing the tumult, anger and
confusion at home, said here Friday that he was outraged by the sniper attacks
on the Dallas police that left five officers dead and seven wounded, calling
the carnage "a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law
enforcement.”
Obama's
remarks were brief, coming hours after the Dallas shootings and an earlier,
emotional 16-minute speech that he delivered in response to the killings
of black men by police in Falcon Heights, Minn., and Baton Rouge. The Dallas
attacks took place during a protest rally over the police shootings in the
other cities, which have prompted a national outcry and reignited debate over
racial bias among law enforcement.
[‘Like a
little war': Snipers shoot 11 police officers during Dallas protest march,
killing five]
The
president said there was "no possible justification" for the violence
against police.
“We are
horrified over these events and we stand united with the people and the police
department in Dallas,” said Obama, who is in Poland for a NATO summit. He
called the killings “senseless” and pledged “justice will be done.”
Obama,
appearing at a pre-planned press briefing with two European leaders, said he
would have more to say after additional information is learned about the
shooters and their “twisted motives.” Three suspects are in custody, Dallas
authorities said, and another is dead following a standoff with police.
[The
Dallas sniper attack was the deadliest event for police since 9/11]
The
president’s remarks were carried live on cable news channels that had been
airing blanket coverage of the overnight attacks. Obama emphasized that he had
spoken by phone with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and offered full federal assistance
into the investigation, and he added that the FBI has been in touch with local
officials.
Aides said
Obama had been briefed by senior advisers. He appeared grim as he addressed
reporters in the same small meeting room at a hotel here where he talked
late Thursday about the killings in Minnesota and Louisiana that generated
protests across the nation. In those remarks Obama said he was “deeply
troubled” by the deaths and called them “symptomatic” of a broader problem in
the country.
After the Dallas shootings, Obama once again offered
condolences to the families of the dead. He spoke generally of the need for
reforms to America’s gun laws, which last month prompted sit-ins by Democratic
lawmakers in the Congress demanding change.
“We also
know when people are armed with powerful weapons it makes events like these
more deadly and more tragic and we are going to have to consider those
realities,” Obama said.
One of the
most immediate questions for the president going forward will be whether he
chooses to cancel the second leg of his European trip, a two-day visit to
Spain, that is scheduled to begin Saturday evening and is packed with largely
ceremonial visits. The cable news channels cut away from Obama's news briefing
in Warsaw moments after he finished his remarks on the Dallas shootings,
ignoring the rest of his remarks about the NATO summit.
The
president's trip is likely to feel discordant to the American public at a time
of renewed tensions between law enforcement officials and the communities they
serve.
Obama’s
impulse in the past — especially in response to major terror attacks in
the United States or Europe — has been to stick to his planned business as much
as possible. He resisted calls from Republicans to cut short his visit to Cuba
this spring after the Islamic State terror attacks in Brussels. In 2014,
following the beheading of journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants,
Obama played golf, a move he later conceded was a mistake.
White
House aides have said that canceling trips following terror attacks feeds the
enemies’ narrative, makes them look more powerful and unnecessarily inflates
the terror threat.
"I
think everybody who knows me — including, I suspect, the press — understands
that ... you take this stuff in. And it's serious business,” he said in an NBC
interview in 2014. “And you care about it deeply."
The police
shootings in Dallas and the events in Minnesota and Louisiana present a
very different dynamic. The president has sought, in the wake of racially
charged police shootings over the past several years, to balance support for
police officers on the front lines with heightened federal scrutiny over the
tactics they employ in the field. He established a federal commission to make
policy recommendations after the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., following the police
shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in 2014.
It has
proved to be a tenuous balance, however, and the president at times has been
accused by his political opponents of leaning too heavily against the police. Joe
Walsh, a former one-term Republican congressman from Obama's home state of
Illinois, blamed Obama for the violence in Dallas in a series of Twitter
messages overnight.
At the same time, the Black Lives Matter protest movement
focusing on police brutality has become a political force that has forced the
issue into the 2016 presidential campaign and disrupted events from the
candidates vying to replace Obama next year.
Flying
aboard Air Force One to Poland, Obama scrambled Thursday to respond to the
shooting deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that were broadcast
on gruesome videos. He posted a message to Facebook saying "all Americans
should be deeply troubled" by the incidents, then he made impromptu
remarks to reporters shortly after arriving in Warsaw.
He made
clear that the country needed to focus more and move faster to curtail police
violence against minorities. “This is not just a black issue. It's not just a
Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we should all care about,” Obama
said Friday night, just hours before the Dallas police shootings. “All
fair-minded people should be concerned.”
Cutting
short his trip to Spain would signal the importance that he places on the
issue.
Obama’s
forceful critique of the racial inequities facing minorities in the criminal
justice system could, in the wake of the Dallas killings, increase pressure on
him to demonstrate more sympathy for the slain officers and their families.
“When people say 'black lives matter,' that doesn’t mean
blue lives don’t matter,” Obama said during his remarks Thursday. “It just
means all lives matter, but right now the big concern is the fact that the data
shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.”
The
shootings in Dallas, which came less than 10 hours later, seemed to underscore
the dangers facing police. Police have “an extraordinarily difficult job and
the vast majority of them do their job in an outstanding fashion," Obama
said Friday. "Today is a wrenching reminder of the sacrifices they make
for us."
Representative
Image
Source: TheWashingtonPost
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