Eric Prisbell

USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS — In what has been called an unprecedented move, Dallas police used a robot to kill the sniper suspected of killing five officers in ambush-style killings during a peaceful downtown rally.

It may not be the last time the tactic is used. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings can foresee the device being used in similar situations across the nation in the future — but only as a last resort.

“You answered your own question by saying when there is no other way, I think this is a good example,” Rawlings told USA TODAY Sports and two other reporters outside City Hall following Friday’s late-afternoon news conference. “The key thing is to keep our police out of harm’s way, and this was able to do that and accomplish the tactical objectives we had.”

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Rawlings elaborated on the decision made early Friday to use the so-called bomb robot, whose arm was attached to an explosive before it moved to a spot near the gunman. Rawlings said the decision was ultimately made by Dallas Police Chief David Brown.

“He is the officer in charger, and I think he made the right call,” Rawlings said. “We spent a lot of time with SWAT forces talking to this individual, trying to bring him out peacefully. It was obvious that he was escalating his bellicose nature and verbosity, if you will.

Rawlings said the gunman, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

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"Meanwhile, he’s talking about other bombs and so the police were called on to take some action," he added. "Two plans were created. They were presented to the chief shortly after our 12:30 press conference. He approved one of them, which was this plan. I think it was a wise plan. No other officers were killed and this suspect went down.”

The mayor said the crowd of protesters in downtown Dallas on Thursday night could be broken down into “three layers of people.”

"People that honestly disagree with some policies who were peacefully demonstrating,” he said. “You have, in my mind, some crazies who like to dress up in gear and carry rifles and scare us all. And then you have this character, which was the next step, that lived out his fantasies to the detriment of five families.”

When asked how the ambush will affect how officers deal with protestors in the future, Rawlings said: “There are photographs last night of officers hand in hand with protestors, joking, being cordial with one another and letting the first amendment kind of play out."

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"Now it’s like, wait a minute, my head has got to be on a swivel, any moment there might be something happening," he said. "And does that take us to a different level in dealing with protests and in its own right start to escalate things? That’s ultimately the call of the chief. We’ve dealt with this issue before and we have had many, many protests in the city and they have all been peaceful. We had this one madman and he took it to an extreme.”

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the protestors who ran away from the gunfire “hypocrites” during a Friday interview on Fox News. In response, Rawlings said, “I think everyone in this town was courageous last night, and that’s all I’ll say.”

Rawlings also addressed whether the shooting will linger in the minds of officers called to handle protests in the future.

“That’s what we don’t appreciate as citizens,” he said. “We don’t appreciate that, at any moment, these officers could go down and their families could lose fathers and husbands and wives.”