5 cops killed at anti-police atrocity march in Dallas: Is this America?
It could be easily be touted as one of the most deadly targeted attacks on the United States police force.
On Thursday, July 7, a peaceful "Black Lives Matter" demonstration - to protest the police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota - in Dallas, Texas turned into a bloodbath with sniper attacks on policemen, killing five officers and injuring many more.
At least two snipers reportedly fired at the cops from a height along the protest route, in what can be gauged as a planned assault, according to reports quoting Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
It's not clear if civilians were targeted in this coornidated killings of US policemen.
However, the snipers shootings turned into a prolonged exchange of gunfire as the cops retaliated, but in the process, Dallas Police also released a suspect image - of a man named Mark Hughes, who was seen carrying an assault rifle in a video, but it wasn't clear if he did indeed carry out the attacks.
| Dallas snipers shootings could easily be the worst attack on United States police force in a long time, but whether Mark Hughes (in pictures) was one of the shooters is being debated. |
Several tweets have poured out in support of Hughes, while also lamenting the loss of lives of the five serving American officers.
The incident happened a few minutes before 9 pm local Dallas time, with at least two snipers shooting 11 police officers from elevated positions along the protest route, according to Dallas police. Five of those officers have died: 4 were Dallas Police Department officers and 1 was a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) officer, according to reports.
There have been claims that the armed suspect had said that multiple bombs had been planted in several areas of Dallas city, while engaging in gunfire exchange with the cops. The matter is being investigated by both Anti-Terror Squad and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
| At least five cops have succumbed to bullet injuries, while six more are critical. |
The Dallas shootout is a unique case of both gun culture and institutional racism in American police force coming back to hit the violence-ravaged nation.
While a number of police atrocities on black men have been hogging the national headlines, the stiff resistance to hold on the notorious Second Amendment - that allows US citizens to carry licensed firearms in self-dence - has only meant more guns and assault weapons in the public domain.
Dallas mass shooting is also a double whammy because it's the law enforcers themselves that have become the target of attacks this time, oestensibly in a severe case of vigilante justice and deep, seething anger against white privilege over compromised black bodies.
Names like Alton Sterling, Trayvon Martin, et al were only a handful of the hundreds of unarmed black men killed by American, chiefly white, police force in a case of deeply entrenched and violent institutional racism.
That a backlash would occur sooner than later wasn't entrely unexpected, but as the Dallas shooting shows, it's a complicated interplay of unchecked gun laws and untempered whiteness of American privilege.
| The shootouts occured at a #BlackLivesMatter protest against the recent gunning down of African-Americans by cops. |
Even though US President Barack Obama has called this a "vicious despicable, calculated attack on law enforcement" from the sidelines of a NATO meet in Poland, until the bigger remedies are brought, there seems to be no quick fix solution to the tensed racial equations and spawning of automatic rifles on the highly unsafe streets of America.
As of now, it's United States of Anarchy.