Michael O'Mahoney, a former police officer, places his patch on a make-shift memorial at the Dallas police headquarters on July 8. | AP Photo Activists worried Dallas shooting will set back police reform effort

The tragic deaths of two black men by police officers this week provided hope for some activists that that progress on police accountability and reform would finally come.

But the response by politicians to the subsequent killing of at least five police officers in Dallas by a black man has those activists concerned change will again be politically stalemated.


A string of high-profile deaths of black men by police officers in the past two years has resulted in nationwide protests over the use of force by cops and calls for reform. Their efforts, however, have not led to much tangible change from Congress or the White House.

“What happened in the tragedy in Dallas is a setback to the effort for police accountability because of the narrative that has been written about it both from media and from many politicians,” said Judith Browne Dianis, the executive director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization in Washington. “In some ways, the narrative today sweeps the anger, the fear, the pain of black people under the rug.”

Browne Dianis pointed to Friday’s cover of the New York Post, which read “CIVIL WAR,” and a now-deleted tweet from former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh as examples of how the narrative about the Black Lives Matter movement has been misconstrued. After the Dallas shooting, Walsh tweeted, “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”

Browne Dianis said the depiction of the Black Lives Matter movement as against the police is “dangerous and inaccurate.”

Five police officers in Dallas were killed Thursday evening at a peaceful Black Lives Matter march following two separate incidents where black men were killed by police officers. The Dallas shooter, who police have identified as 25-year-old Micah Johnson, told police he wanted to kill white people because he was upset about the police shootings. Investigators have not found any ties between Johnson and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The massacre brought back to the surface in a more forceful way the racial tensions that had already been reignited by the back-to-back shootings of black men earlier in the week.

On Tuesday morning, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed in Louisiana as two police officers were holding him down outside a convenience store where he was selling CDs. Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop Wednesday in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

President Barack Obama on Thursday night called for action in the wake of those killings and reiterated on Friday morning his desire for a change to the national dialogue about race, guns and policing after the Dallas shooting.

But activists are concerned that Obama has not been able to shepherd any tangible progress and especially fear the possibility that a Donald Trump presidency would be a major setback.

Trump released a statement Thursday morning on the three incidents, calling for the restoration of “law and order.”

“This morning I offer my thoughts and prayers for all of the victims’ families, and we pray for our brave police officers and first responders who risk their lives to protect us every single day,” he said in a Facebook post. “Our nation has become too divided. Too many Americans feel like they’ve lost hope. Crime is harming too many citizens. Racial tensions have gotten worse, not better. This isn’t the American Dream we all want for our children.”

Trump’s statement describes the current state of affairs, said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau and senior vice president for policy and advocacy, but he said Trump failed to provide solutions to the problem – an all-too-familiar response from politicians.

“There will be probably be those that will attempt to use that horrific incident as an excuse to do nothing,” Shelton said. “We should not let that carry the day. If we leave things as they are, without making any changes to our policies, programs, laws and our levels of accountability, that would quite frankly allow this to happen again and again.”

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