Watkins: More violence, more heartbreak in Dallas

DALLAS — Skylines are cool.

I always marvel at the engineering precision it took to build each piece. I think of the thousands of people who are in those buildings and walking the streets around them. What kind of day are they having? How many multi-million-dollar deals are being negotiated at that moment? How many homeless humans are simply hoping to fill their stomachs enough to defeat the hunger pains for one more day?

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All of that ran through my mind shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday evening as the Dallas skyline filled my driver’s side window. And it was a welcomed sight because my wife and I knew that soon we would feel the precious hugs of our grandchildren, ages 10 and 8, for the first time in four months.

It is numbing now to realize how close we were to the hell that was about to break loose downtown.

How close we were to an intense but peaceful protest by approximately 800 people, angered by the deaths of young black men at the hands of white police officers in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, Minnesota, in the previous 48 hours.

How close we were to Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old black man who had served the military in Afghanistan, a trained gunman who saw the gathering as the perfect opportunity to aim his assault rifle at white police officers walking in front of the protesters.

Dallas police say Johnson killed five officers and wounded seven others. Johnson died inside a parking garage at approximately 3 a.m. Friday when police detonated a city-owned robot carrying a bomb.

By that time, my grandchildren had been asleep for three hours. But they had watched much of the news coverage with us. We wondered what was going through their innocent minds, just a half-hour drive from the terror.

We found out during bedtime prayers when our granddaughter, the youngest, prayed: “God, please let this be a night that helps everybody turn things around.”

'Active shooter'

When a local TV station interrupted normal programming and reported there was an active shooter — a term that has become a familiar member of our vocabulary — in downtown Dallas, we were in the kitchen, laughing and enjoying In and Out burgers.

We talked about our scheduled trip downtown to the Dallas World Aquarium the next day. I was particularly looking forward to seeing a McCullochi clownfish.

My son-in-law was closest to the TV, which rests on the counter between the sink and stove. He was born and raised in Dallas, a full-blooded Texan and rightfully proud of it.

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He stared at the screen in silence.

“Wait … what’s going on? Is that downtown Dallas?” I asked from the table across the room.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen. We all gathered round and eventually moved to the larger TV in the den.

Each update packed more punch. Four officers down. One dead.

Ten officers shot. Two dead.

“That’s happening in almost the same spot President Kennedy was assassinated, what … 53 years ago?” my son-in-law said. He is passionate about family, sports, food, weather and history. He teaches at a local high school and also coaches basketball and football.

His town, once again, had the whole world watching, just as it did Nov. 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald aimed his rifle at President Kennedy.

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He and I stayed up Friday night after the others had gone to bed. Standing in the kitchen, he talked about how tough it had been to watch the events of the previous 24 hours.

“The city went through so much when JFK was killed here, and it’s been a long, long process coming back from that,” he said, his eyes moist and his words bathed in pain. “We were known as the city that killed JFK, the city that killed the spirit of incredible potential for America.

“When you go down to where he was killed, there are always tourists there. I’ve taken people there from Great Britain. Everyone is mesmerized by it. But that one day has defined Dallas for more than five decades. I felt we were finally, maybe, rounding a corner after 50 years. And now it’s like, ‘Man, here we go again.’

“But I’ve always been proud of my city, and I’m even more proud of it today after seeing chief of police (David) Brown and mayor (Mike) Rawlings … the way they’ve led us through this. It’s been remarkable.”

Brown, who is black, has been a rock throughout. A remarkable story by Theresa Vargas in Saturday’s Washington Post shed light on how he could be so strong in a situation that would make so many wither.

His younger brother was killed by drug dealers in Phoenix in 1991. Three years earlier, while working as an officer in Dallas, Brown responded to a shooting. He discovered at the scene that his former patrol partner, a father of three, had been killed.

And six years ago, just before being named Dallas’ chief, Brown’s son shot and killed a member of the police force and a civilian in Lancaster, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Brown’s son, who was bipolar, died in an ensuing shootout with officers.

One of the first things David Brown did was apologize face to face to both victims’ families.

Anger pervasive

Following the killings in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, black friends of mine spared no words in angry posts on Facebook. One of those friends, 35-year-old Kaniesha Holly, wrote that she was upset because her white friends had expressed no remorse about either tragedy.

Holly, a 2003 graduate of Jackson State, used to work at the desk in the lobby of The Clarion-Ledger. She and her husband, Ramon, and their children moved to the Dallas suburb of Arlington in 2011. I met and talked with her Friday about the deaths of the   five Dallas police officers.

“My heart hurts that an individual retaliated against innocent officers,” she said. “But the hatred right now between the black community and the police is strong. People are fed up. Tempers are flaring. My daughter told me that on Snap Chat, boys she's in school with — 15-year-olds all the way down to 12 — are proudly saying what they'll do if they run up on the ‘pigs.’ It's a war which shouldn’t be happening. There can’t be a victor.

“Black lives matter and there isn't a but. Black people have to keep reminding white America that they do matter. If that weren't the case, so many black men and women wouldn't be getting killed in the streets by police, dying in prisons at the hands of police and also the hands of other black men. It's not a chant or rhetoric. It’s a cry.”

Our future?

My brother pointed out to me Friday, “If this keeps happening, it will be harder and harder to recruit police officers.”

And then where will we be?

I thought of my friends Bud and Karen Brown of Meridian. Bud is a former defensive back with the Miami Dolphins, a firefighter and EMT. Karen is a scrub nurse who assists in surgery.

Their 28-year-old son, Clint, will soon head to the Middle East  with the Army National Guard. Their other son, Hunter, is 27 and served in Iraq in 2009. In 2014, he became the youngest member of the Starkville police department.

“As a mother of a law enforcement officer, the danger of it is something you have to leave at the foot of the cross,” Karen said. “It's just too heavy a burden to carry. None of us are promised today or tomorrow. But Hunter loves what he is doing.

“I'm not under any illusion that we are safe here in our small towns and communities, but I trust that our officers are properly trained to defuse situations, take appropriate actions to keep themselves and their coworkers safe. We need to support our public service personnel, with our words and prayers. So I pray for my family's safety. We are all secure in our salvation, so in the event of a worst case scenario that issue is resolved.”

Karen recalled eating with Hunter one night at the Waffle House in Starkville.

“As we were paying our ticket, the cook, a young black man in his early 20s looked at Hunter and shook his hand,” she said. “He said, ‘You don't remember me, do you?’ Hunter said, “No, sir. I don’t.’ The cook said, ‘You pulled me over the other night.’

“Then the cook looked at me and told me how nice, polite and professional my son was to him. This mother is very proud of the men I've raised. They're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they respect people of all color and walks of life.

"And I still believe there are more good police officers out there than bad.”

More than ever across America, it is time for them to step forward.

Contact Billy Watkins at 769-257-3079 orbwatkins@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @BillyWatkins11 on Twitter.