On the evening of July 7, 2016, Micah Johnson, an Army Reserve veteran who'd served in Afghanistan, opened fire at a rally in Dallas against the recent police killings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. Johnson's intended targets were not the protestors; they were the police. Though five policemen died, the heroism demonstrated by their fellow officers ensured that the toll wasn't higher.

Leading the Dallas Police Department at the time (and for the previous six years) was Chief David Brown, who'd grown up in the city and whose tenure as the head of the department had been a mixed bag. But in the wake of the shooting, Brown became known nationally not just for swiftly ending the attack but also for the type of humble resilience that inspired others to do the same, effectively helping heal a city in crisis. Within months, Brown had stepped down.

This was not the first time Brown had faced tragedy, of course, nor was it the most personal: In 2010, his son, David Jr., suffering from bipolar disorder, killed a neighbor without provocation as well as a police officer who'd arrived on the scene. David Jr. was killed in the ensuing shootout with police.

These incidents, each supremely tragic in its own way, had an enormous impact on Brown's life. They, and many other stories of leading a police force in one of America's largest cities, are shared in unsparing detail in his memoir titled , out now. In an Esquire exclusive, we've adapted Brown's recount of last year's shooting spree, and how the police, under his guidance, acted to stop it.

2016 will go down as one of the bloodiest years in the history of American law enforcement. More than 130 officers had their lives cut short in the line of duty, and of those, 64 were shot to death—21 in ambushes. Cops killed 963 people, according to the Washington Post database. Most of those killings did not make national headlines, but over that summer, two claimed the global spotlight. Alton Sterling of Louisiana and Philando Castile of Minnesota were shot by police one day apart, just after the Fourth of July weekend.

Alton's death came first. On July 5, the thirty-seven-year-old black male was shot and killed after two white Baton Rouge cops responded to a call that a man wielding a gun was issuing threats outside a convenience store. The following day, on July 6, Philando, a thirty-two-year-old black man, was pulled over by a Hispanic cop in a Saint Paul suburb. The stop turned deadly when the officer shot him at close range, as Philando's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, live-streamed the encounter on Facebook for the world to witness.

Laura Buckman Getty Images

The Sterling and Castile shootings were just the latest in a series, and they served as a tipping point. That week thousands assembled in peaceful demonstrations in some of the nation's major cities. Atlanta. New York. Chicago. Philadelphia. Los Angeles. D.C. And of course, Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. On July 7, 2016, those winds of protest swept through Dallas.

"Hello, uh—chief?" David Pughes, my second-in-command, stammered, sounding out of breath. "We've got shots fired and three officers down."

I was at home after being on the clock for nearly fourteen hours, about to take off my uniform and hit the sack. "How many shooters are there?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"We don't yet know," he said. "There are reports of several."

"And what is the condition of the officers?" I pressed.

"They're low sick," he explained—a term we use to describe victims who are not likely to make it.

"I'll be there in a minute," I said. Before I darted out the door, my wife, Cedonia, and daughter hugged me tight, and we whispered a quick prayer.

Chief Brown and his wife, Cedonia. Courtesy of the author and the Dallas Police Department

Earlier that evening, at seven p.m., a crowd of about eight hundred had gathered at Belo Garden, a park at the center of town. My commanders and approximately one hundred officers had been at the scene. The Dallas event had gone exactly as planned. It'd been a bit loud at moments—at one point protestors began chanting "Enough is enough!"— but that's common at a rally. Among the crowd, we had spotted about twenty activists wearing heavy SWAT-like vests, gas masks, military fatiguesm, and AR-15 rifles slung over their shoulders. The demonstrators had every right to display their guns. Texas is an open-carry state.

As the event was ending, the organizers had made an impromptu move: They'd begun leading the mass of demonstrators in a spontaneous march. Officers in squad cars and on motorcycles moved with them.

At two minutes to 9 p.m., as the demonstrators inched up Main Street, Micah Johnson, a twenty-five-year-old African-American army veteran, had parked a black SUV on a street near El Centro College and joined the crowd. He wore a ballistic vest and carried high-capacity bullet carriers and an SKS- styled semiautomatic assault rifle, yet next to the protesters with gas masks and AR-15s, he blended right in; no officer even took notice of him.

Around that corner stood Johnson, dripping in blood and sweat, loaded down with ammo. Our negotiations began.

Johnson bolted toward the intersection of Main Street and South Lamar. He charged up behind cops who were directing traffic and providing crowd control and mortally wounded three of those officers, without hesitation and in cold blood. "He's got a gun!" protesters yelled. Panic ensued as people screamed and scurried in every direction. The shots echoed through downtown, the deafening claps reverberating from the tall buildings, making it sound as though the gunfire were coming from multiple areas. Several officers chased him into the nearby El Centro Community College building.

El Centro Community College, after the standoff ended. Fort Worth Star-Telegram Getty Images

Scores of officers and firefighters ran toward the gunfire. Others knelt over the bodies of their colleagues, desperately trying to revive them and get them into squad cars and ambulances to rush them to the hospital. Some of the protesters who'd been wearing fatigues and toting rifles were initially arrested and taken to jail. Once they were interviewed and ruled out as suspects, they were released.

Sirens screamed through downtown as ambulances rushed in to reach those in need of urgent medical attention. Frightened protesters and passersby, all badly shaken, sought help and shelter wherever they could find it: beneath cars, inside the lobby of the nearby Bank of America building, crouched behind concrete statues and walls. Shell casings—hundreds of them—covered the ground.

On my drive over to command center, I rang Mayor Rawlings and City Manager Gonzalez and informed them of the shootings. They both rushed to the basement of City Hall. As soon as I arrived, I sent all our SWAT teams to the scene. "I want to hear the nine-one-one calls," I ordered. I instructed a dispatch team to report to the command center and run the incident dispatch operation from where I was seated.

The reports were streaming in by the hundreds, and as I'd come to expect, many of the accounts were conflicting. Some said they'd seen multiple shooters from multiple locations, both elevated and at ground level. I raced around to every area of the basement—from the 911 Center, to the situation room where the mayor and city manager and I convened, to the command center where our Police Intelligence Operations tracked social media and cable news. I tuned in to the commanders' radio communications at the scene.

Marcus Yam Getty Images

"Put the Facebook and Twitter feeds up on the big screen," I told my public information officers. "I want you to closely monitor everything that's being said—and immediately correct any misinformation." The entire time I updated the mayor, the city manager, and the council members there, but I parsed my words carefully; I'd learned that a politician often digests information differently from the way an operational manager does. I thought of the family members of those fatally injured. The last thing I wanted was for them to hear news of their father's or husband's or brother's or mother's death before they'd been personally notified.

The sound of rapid gunfire mixed with shrieks and shouts came through, clear and unrelenting, on my radio. Large television screens in one of our conference rooms captured the devastation. Journalists, pausing as shots were fired, filed reports even as they tracked the movements of the gunman from their perches in nearby buildings. "Here comes someone running up and shots are being fired!" one brave reporter shouted. "I've never seen anything like this in my life!"

Officers who'd just reached the scene and hadn't witnessed Johnson escaping up the stairs understandably assumed there was more than one shooter—and that was the information they passed along to us at the command center. By this time, our SWAT teams were scouring every inch of the downtown area in search of snipers. "We can't find any other shooters," a commander told me.

The roving gunfight intensified. Several bystanders got caught up in the crossfire, and their wounded bodies collapsed to the asphalt. Inside the college building, Johnson fled up the stairway to the second floor. Officers briefly cornered him, but instead of giving up, he held them off with a volley of gunfire. At one point, he peered down from a second-floor window onto the street and spotted an officer protecting innocent protesters. Johnson aimed, shot, and mortally wounded that officer. This was pure evil at work.

The gunfire stopped momentarily. Officers inside the building could spot Johnson looking for an escape route. He instead found a dead end, a blind corner he hadn't been able to see around from the entrance of the corridor. We'd later learn that there was a single doorway he could have fled through—and if he'd noticed it, countless more citizens and officers might have been killed.

"I've already killed a bunch of cops," he bragged, "and I want to kill more."

A small army of SWAT officers crept up the stairway and onto the second floor, first peering down the shadowy hall before shuffling toward the dead end. There, around that corner, stood Johnson, dripping in blood and sweat, loaded down with ammo. Our negotiations began.

"Put your weapon down and come out with your hands up!" the negotiator, Larry Gordon, yelled through a megaphone.

The gunman snickered. "I'm not coming out of anywhere," he blurted out. "I've already killed a bunch of cops," he bragged, "and I want to kill more. You dirty, racist police have taken the lives of too many unarmed black men. Now it's your turn to die. How many did I kill so far?"

He'd talk for a few minutes and then stop, peer from around the corner with his rifle raised, and fire at the officers. The cops crouched close to the walls and, holding up body shields, returned fire.

"The end is coming!" Johnson shouted.

"The end of what?" Larry asked him. In a situation like this, it is the negotiator's job to pull out information from the suspect and cool him off, all while distracting him long enough for us to gain a tactical advantage and end the exchange— whether through peaceful surrender or lethal force.

"It's the end for this entire city," Johnson responded. He claimed he'd planted bombs all over downtown Dallas—a message we passed on to our SWAT officers.

"Send me a black officer, you white idiot!" he yelled. "I want to talk to a brother!" Larry was African-American, but Johnson clearly had assumed otherwise. We played along by pretending to switch negotiators. After a few moments, Larry began talking again, this time in a lower pitch.

Chief Brown and President Obama at the Dallas Police Memorial on July 12, 2016. Tom Pennington Getty Images

"Do you like R&B?" he asked him, thinking that might convince him he was black.

"Sure do," he said. "I love some Michael Jackson." In between rambles, he belted out a couple of songs.

"Yes, that's a good one," the officer said, egging him on. "Do you know any others?"

He mentioned a few other hits, then returned to taunting the cops and assuring them he had every intention of killing more of them. As he bragged about the lives he'd taken, he also joked about his own death. It was clear he assumed he would not survive this standoff; nor did he seem to care. Dealing with an assailant who has little desire to live obviously puts officers at a disadvantage. And we already had one tall hurdle to navigate: We could not see around that blind corner to take a clear shot at him. "You're going to have to kill me if you want me to come out!" he yelled. "I'm never going to surrender!"

"Why are you shooting?" the negotiator asked. "What do you want?"

He paused. The response he finally gave still sends chills up my spine. "I want to kill white cops," he said, letting out a hearty laugh. "I want them to pay in blood."

Midnight came and went. From his stakeout down a long hallway and around that corner, the assassin alternated between mocking officers, threatening to remotely detonate bombs, and firing at the cops in that corridor. As one hour of negotiations stretched beyond three, I knew I had to make the tough choice that only I could make. I had to end this horror.

"We need to do a press conference," Mayor Rawlings told me. I knew the mayor was right that we needed to update the public. The eyes of the world had shifted in our direction. And yet the last thing I wanted to do was a presser. On my way out to the podium, I talked by phone to one of the SWAT commanders on the ground. "When I get back from this conference," I told him, "I want to hear a plan. Use your creativity to come up with the best way to take him out." I'd concluded there was no way to end this standoff peacefully.

Barbara Davidson Getty Images

I stepped up to the mic and delivered the facts as I knew them. "At eight fifty-eight p.m.," I said, "our worst nightmare happened. Our Dallas Police Department and transit officers were fired upon. I am sad to say that we have deceased—and it is a heartbreaking moment for our city." Even after cornering Johnson in the El Centro building, I reported, we still hadn't ruled out the possibility of multiple shooters. No explosives had been found. With a cracked voice and lowered head, I at last delivered the most heartbreaking news: eleven officers had been shot, nine had been seriously injured, and three had passed on. "We're negotiating with the gunman as we speak," I concluded, "so I'm going to have to get back real quick."

The idea of rigging a robot with a bomb had never been discussed, and it certainly hadn't been carried out in any police department in the country.

By this hour, my officers engaged in the standoff with Johnson weren't just fatigued; they were borderline delirious. Like me, most had been at work since eight o'clock the morning before. For nearly four hours, they'd been awaiting my go-ahead. From my SWAT days, I knew how frustrating and even infuriating it can be to wait for the negotiations to play out—and for your commanders to make a call. The whole time you're thinking, What the hell is taking them so long? They're in the comfort of their command post while I'm in the line of fire. The adrenaline crashing through their veins initially keeps the cops on the ground dialed in, but as the hours tick by, they struggle to remain fresh and focused. And the longer they remain in that static position, at once exhausted and prepared to fire, the more likely they are to make mistakes. I needed to act—and fast.

"So what's your plan?" I asked Commander Bill Humphrey.

He and I had been in SWAT together in the 1990s, and I was very confident in his skill level; he had the historical perspective that comes from decades of leading squads. From someplace on that second floor away from the officers, he was whispering to me on his cell. "We could charge down the hallway, confront him, and take him down," he said.

Ron Jenkins Getty Images

I nixed the idea of a shootout right away. For one thing, that hallway was way too long. I had gone down many a long hallway in my SWAT days, and I'd always hated every step, exposed with no cover and nowhere to go. The corridor's walls were made of Sheetrock, which a bullet can easily penetrate. There'd be no protection for my officers.

"What's your alternative plan?" I asked Bill.

"We could hold up our shield as we approach him," he told me. Our department owned a metal protector made of ballistic materials. It was about three by five feet in size and had a bar across it for two officers to hold it up as they moved toward a violent suspect. I'd held that shield many times. Number one, it's very heavy, and I knew my team was tired. Number two, the shield does not protect every part of your body: your shin, your elbows, and your sides are exposed. If someone shoots you in the leg with an automatic rifle, you're going to lose that leg and possibly your life. I wasn't willing to take that chance.

"So what's your last idea?" I asked, running low on patience. "We could use an explosive," he said.

Would politics take over one of the most significant SWAT operations in U.S. history? Not if I had anything to do with it.

I paused. Bill had been one of the officers who'd persuaded me to send men to that specialized bomb-breach training program in Las Vegas, following the gun battle at headquarters.

"We have the robot here," he continued. Our SWAT teams had been standing by with a van filled with equipment; it had become protocol for them to arrive at the scene of every crisis. "We could use it to deliver the explosive," Bill said, explaining that he'd already talked this over with our bomb technicians, and an ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) team had arrived on the scene to assist.

Up till then, we'd used our remote-controlled robot in two ways: first, to retrieve an explosive so we could safely dismantle it; and second, to deliver an item such as a cellphone onto the front porch of a barricaded person. Bill was suggesting we weaponize the three-feet-tall, two-feet-wide robot by mounting some C-4 onto the clamp of its little metal arm. We'd then send it rolling down the hallway toward the assailant, as quietly as possible, and detonate the bomb.

When it came to explosives, we'd only ever considered using them to breach a doorway or wall—not to take down a gunman. The idea of rigging a robot with a bomb had never been discussed, and it certainly hadn't been carried out in any police department in the country. I'd asked Bill and his teammates to get creative. This strategy certainly delivered that.

He'd apparently had his finger on the trigger when the bomb went off, and it reflexively cranked off one last bullet.

But it came with risks. Major ones.

What if Johnson heard the hum of the robot rolling down the corridor and lunged out to begin shooting again? Or what if the bomb didn't detonate? Or what if the explosion claimed the life of the gunman but also injured or killed nearby officers with its flying fragments?

"We'll use just enough C-4 to contain the blast at the end of the hall," Bill reassured me. "And we'll keep him distracted with conversation while we're sending down the robot."

"I like this idea," I finally told him.

I'd weighed that risk against the potential outcome: a decisive end to this ordeal that was least likely to get any more of my cops killed. "You all work on that while the mayor and I go out to do another press conference," I told him. "When I get back, be ready."

President Obama speaks at the Dallas Police Memorial on July 12, 2016. Chief Brown is seated in the front row, third from the right. Tom Pennington Getty Images

Mayor Rawlings and City Manager Gonzalez wanted to pre-brief for the next press conference. We gathered with other City Hall personnel, and the mayor asked me for an update. He wanted to know how many of those we'd detained were suspects we could charge; I told him we couldn't charge anyone. I could tell the mayor wasn't satisfied and maybe sensed I wasn't telling him everything. He was right. He then asked if we should seek out the help of the attorney general. "No!" I said. "I know what I'm doing." For me, this was a moment of truth. Would politics take over one of the most significant SWAT operations in U.S. history? Not if I had anything to do with it.

I tried to keep the second briefing even shorter than the first. That didn't work. The press pool was understandably eager for an update, so the discussion dragged on. In reality, it probably lasted only fifteen minutes, but it felt like forever. I felt so anxious that I could hardly even focus on the questions we were fielding.

Back at my post, I rang Bill. "Take care of business," I said. "Your plan is approved," I told him. "Just don't blow up the whole building."

After the press conference, the mayor suggested that he and I visit the area hospitals to check on our wounded officers and console the families of those who'd already passed. Before we left the command center parking lot, my phone rang. It was Bill. I stepped aside and took the call. "We're ready to go, Chief," he said.

When I hung up, I walked with the mayor to his car. I hadn't yet breathed a word about our plan. "We're about to end this crisis," I told him. "We're going to blow him up." I could see the blood vanish from his face as he gazed at me. I gave him a confident look like, Yes, I know what I'm doing. I didn't explain the details, and he didn't ask for any.

A Remotec Andros similar to the one that Dallas Police used to end the standoff with Johnson. Michael Nagle Getty Images

Bill and the bomb technicians prepared the robot—one we'd purchased back in 2008. It was the Remotec Andros Mark V-A1, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, at a cost of approximately $150,000. It weighed nearly 800 pounds. Its arms could lift between 60 and 1,000 pounds and could grip with up to 50 pounds of force. It came with a long detonation cord (almost like a long extension cord). We wanted the option of triggering the explosion either by cord or by remote detonation, the former being more reliable. My team carefully placed a single pound of C-4 in its clamp.

In the meantime, Larry, the negotiator, drew Johnson into a loud and prolonged conversation. "How are you doing, man?" he shouted. Johnson responded by belting out another song and spewing out a string of threats. Larry encouraged it. "I hear you," he told him. "So why is it that you hate cops so much?" That really sent him off into a full-blown tirade of curses and insults—which gave the commanders an opening to send down the robot.

We'd later learn that there was a single doorway he could have fled through—and if he'd noticed it, countless more citizens and officers might have been killed.

The soft hum of the robot's motor was audible, but thanks to our negotiator, Johnson was utterly distracted, caught up in his own rant. He was trashing the police force loudly and blaming all his troubles on others. Through the gray shadows of the long corridor, the robot moved closer.

Just as it was within about a foot of him, Johnson peered from around the corner, spotted the device, and put his finger on his rifle trigger. Right then, an officer triggered the cord detonation, and fragments and smoke scattered in every direction. A moment later a shot rang out. Could he still be alive? Once the smoke cleared, about ten officers crept down the corridor, hanging close to the walls, and rounded the corner. Johnson's body lay lifeless—charred, mangled, and bloody. He'd apparently had his finger on the trigger when the bomb went off, and it reflexively cranked off one last bullet.

There were no more shooters; just him. It was finished. Our day in hell was over.

As the dust settled on the July 7 crisis, public officials and citizens alike approached me with heartfelt gratitude. A police chief is not meant to be a celebrity. He or sheå should never be beyond criticism. You can't be an excellent chief and consider yourself untouchable, bulletproof to criticism. I wasn't yet feeling that way, but I knew that could become my reality. And that meant it was time for me to go. So in October 2016, after thirty-three years on the force and as Dallas's longest-serving police chief in modern history, I retired.

Retirement has given me the time and space to further reflect on D.J.'s passing. Out of my tragedy, an unexpected blessing emerged: A profound and enduring sense of perspective. My son's loss kept all the political shenanigans, all the times when I was criticized for making a tough call, in their proper place. Once you've put your child in the ground, nothing else can wound you as deeply. My greatest heartache eventually became my Kevlar shield.

It took losing my son for me to see other young people as I saw D.J.—to regard them with the same level of love, attentiveness, and care that I gave to my own son. When I wake every morning, I think, 'Is what I'm going to do to get us talking about drug use and mental illness? What can I say or do to light the way for families struggling with these issues? How can I engage and promote the natural entrepreneurial talent of would-be drug lords in our neighborhoods? If I respond to a request to become involved in an effort, will that effort lead to greater mental health funding for a community that otherwise would not have it?' These are just some of the questions that get me out of bed every day. I will not rest until I've found some answers.

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