Dallas shooter acted alone, says police

Micah Xavier Johnson (25), the gunman, was an Army veteran with no criminal record against him

The shooter who killed five police officials and injured seven in Dallas, Texas earlier in the week acted alone, the police said but was planning the attack for a long time. Initially, the police had suspected that more shooters could have been involved as firing came from at least two directions.

Micah Xavier Johnson, the gunman killed by the police using a robot that propelled an explosive at him, was shooting from both places, the police later found. Other suspects held by the police turned out to be either innocent bystanders or protestors.

Johnson (25), a U.S Army veteran had served in Afghanistan and had no criminal record. Search at his home yielded bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and literature on black protest movements.

The sorrow and shock that engulfed America in the hours after the incident appeared later on Friday to have given way to a deeply divisive political debate, despite calls for calm from leading political figures, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Fox News termed the Dallas shootings “an act of terrorism”, a term they do not use for incidents involving white shooters, and launched a campaign against ‘Black Lives Matter’ protestors, calling them ‘police haters’.

President Barack Obama is cutting short his Europe tour by a day and is scheduled to return on Sunday. He will travel to Dallas soon.

Mr. Trump termed it “an attack on our country,” and also called the police shootings of two African-American men earlier in the week “senseless, tragic”. “Our nation has become too divided. Too many Americans feel like they’ve lost hope. Crime is harming too many citizens. Racial tensions have gotten worse, not better,” Mr. Trump said.

Ms. Clinton said “white Americans need to do a better job of listening when African-Americans talk about seen and unseen barriers faced daily. We need to try, as best we can, to walk in one another’s shoes. To imagine what it would be like if people followed us around stores, or locked their car doors when we walked past…”

Mr. Trump’s assertion that “racial tensions have gotten worse, not better” targets Mr. Obama. After Mr. Obama’s ascent to the White House, white supremacist organisations have grown dramatically in the country, but ironically, many conservative commentators blame the President for “not doing enough” to bridge the racial divide. Ms. Clinton also became the target for asking white Americans to listen more to African Americans.

The investigation that followed the Dallas shooting itself became an illustration of the racial biases that dominate the society and the police. A black man, who had a rifle slung over this shoulders and was part of the protest, was declared a ‘person of interest’ his photographs displayed on TV channels before he turned himself in to the police. Texas allows civilians to openly carry guns, and it is not unusual to see people carrying assault rifles openly in the streets and shops.

The shooting has also triggered another round of hostile debate on gun control. While President Obama, Ms. Clinton and a host of other Democratic and civil rights leaders called for sensible gun control, conservative politicians and media rejected it altogether.