By Jacquielynn Floyd
Dallas Morning News
8 July 2016
Dallas Police Chief David Brown is not an especially polished speaker. He doesn’t love the cameras; he doesn’t always have carefully prepared remarks ready to deliver with a politician’s effortless grace. When he can, he leaves it to somebody else.
That makes his remarkable performance on what was surely the most anguished day in the Dallas Police Department’s history so moving, and so persuasive. In the hours after five officers – four Dallas policemen and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer – were murdered by a deranged sniper, Brown’s delivery was pitch-perfect, unrehearsed and straight from the heart.
“We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred in our city,” Brown told reporters early Friday, less than eight hours after his officers were mowed down while escorting a peaceful protest through downtown Dallas.
“All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.”
With those words, he spoke for every police department in America – many of which have far worse relationships with their minority communities than ours.
“We don’t feel much support most day,” he said. “Let’s don’t make today most days. We need your support.”
The nobility in that direct appeal was profound. If he had responded with tough talk about hunting ’em down, vowed vengeance, assigned blame, it would have been understandable, given the depth of the tragedy.
If he felt such rage, Brown kept it to himself. He was matter-of-fact about the measures taken to negotiate with and ultimately kill the gunman. Continue reading “The worst day of his career was perhaps Dallas Chief David Brown’s finest hour”