Dallas gathers to mourn 5 slain officers

Today, President Barack Obama will deliver remarks at an interfaith memorial service in Dallas and meet with the families of the fallen police officers and those injured in Thursday night’s shootings.

“These slain officers were the best among us”, he continued. “We want the unity of hope, affection and higher goal”. “I’m praying that Obama being here brings us some kind of peace”.

Mr Obama and Mr Biden on Monday met with law enforcement officials to discuss police reform and how to fix relations between police officers and the communities they protect. “Instead, we have public servants, police officers, like the men who were taken away from us”.

“I am not naive”, Obama said, taking pains to argue that his calls for unity were based in his experience of American reality, not fantasy but also acknowledging that a mere speech by a president could not paper over the country’s divides.

“To be quite honest, I’m running on fumes”, Brown said during an at-times emotional press conference. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, flew to Dallas on Tuesday. “We also know that centuries of racial discrimination – of slavery and subjugation and Jim Crow – they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation”, he said. “I’m exhausted of seeing my brothers and sisters killed, but the police don’t deserve that”, said Williams, who is black.

The memorial service was held at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center music hall in downtown Dallas, about a mile from where the police officers were gunned down. “The families who are represented by those empty seats”. “The city of Dallas shall overcome the evil from that day”.

Obama and Biden met Monday with police chiefs, sheriffs and rank-and-file officers to discuss adopting a series of reforms that were drafted by a White House task force on policing, as well as how to restore trust between police officers and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. Hate crimes, which carry more severe penalties, are offenses committed with an added element of bias against a person or group for race or ethnicity, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. Johnson attacked during a march protesting the police shootings last week of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St. Paul, Minnesota.

Johnson, 25, was an Army Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan.

While en route to Dallas aboard Air Force One Obama called the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile to extend his condolences on behalf of himself and the first lady.

The dead officers included Michael Smith, 55, Patrick Zamarripa, 32, Lorne Ahrens, 48, Michael Krol, 40, and Brent Thompson, 43.

In paying tribute to the police, Obama said that officers in Dallas and around the country had embraced a profession that came with risks like no other.

“At a time when our country is feeling so divided, I think it is important that the country’s leaders are coming together across party lines despite significant political differences to emphasize our shared desire to unify the country”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters travelling with Obama. Last month, he went to Orlando to speak with the loved ones of 49 people shot to death at a nightclub. I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace.

Bacon reported from McLean, Va.; Contributing: Vanden Brook from Washington.