US: Dallas police chief gets death threats after attack

NEW YORK

The chief of police in Dallas received death threats "almost immediately after" an attack that killed 5 officers in the city, he told reporters Monday.

“We're taking them all as credible, whether they can be confirmed or not,” David Brown said.

The chief said he will not be satisfied until he is sure threats no longer existed and that there were no accomplices to alleged shooter Micah Xavier Johnson.

Johnson, who had served in Afghanistan for the U.S. army, reportedly killed a dozen officers during a Black Lives Matter protest.

The protests came on the heels of the shooting deaths of two black mean by police on consecutive days last week.

Johnson was killed in a standoff after police detonated an explosive device that was delivered via a robot near him inside a garage.

Thirteen officers used force against Johnson, Brown said, with 11 opening gunfire and 2 using the robot.

Brown said an ongoing investigation was looking into 170 hours of footage from officers' body cameras.

Recreating the crime scene, the police chief said officers’ jobs were made difficult by the protesters who openly carried AR-15 rifles and other weapons during the protest. That presented challenges for police to identify suspects after shots were fired.

He criticized the media for giving officers a "scare" by reporting shots were fired when that was not the case, prompting a public announcement from the Dallas Police Department denying the reports.

"That puts our officers at risk. You tell me shots are fired, the adrenaline pump and rush for that ... it's hard to take a step," he said.

Brown also lamented that police face unrealistic expectations from society.

“We're asking cops to do too much in this country,” he said. "Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding. Let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding. Let's give it to the cops."

Meanwhile, Johnson's mother, Delphine, told the Blaze that she saw his son, who "loved" and wanted to protect his country", morph from a fun-loving person into a “hermit” after his military service, which lasted six years, including a seven-month tour in Afghanistan.

“The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” she said. “He was very disappointed, very disappointed. But it may be that the ideal that he thought of our government, what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectations.”