Armed Texas citizens policing the police

Darren X and his AR-15. Darren X and his AR-15. Photo: Photos By Bobby Scheidemann For VICE Photo: Photos By Bobby Scheidemann For VICE Image 1 of / 51 Caption Close Armed Texas citizens policing the police 1 / 51 Back to Gallery

For the Dallas New Black Panthers, marching against police violence is nothing new.

But officers' fatal shootings last year of unarmed black men in Missouri, New York and Ohio gave the Dallas group's leaders a new rallying cry, according to VICE magazine.

Meanwhile, in suburban Arlington, a group of white police watchers carrying guns has been following and filming police officers who have done nothing in response, according to Atlanta Black Star.

Although Arlington police might see the cop-watchers as an annoyance, they don't seem to be afraid of a "group of guys" (who happen to be white) bothering the cops, Atlanta Black Star said.

This is not the history of the Black Panthers, who aroused fear among police officers 40 years ago when they roamed neighborhoods carrying weapons, Atlanta Black Star noted.

In August, the Dallas New Black Panthers formed the Huey P. Newton Gun Club as an umbrella organization for five smaller black or brown groups, wrote Aaron Lake Smith in the VICE article, "The Revolutionary Gun Clubs Patrolling the Black Neighborhoods of Dallas."

Gun club c0-founders Charles Goodson and Darren X, national field marshal of the New Black Panther party, have been working together for a decade, Smith wrote.

"We accept all oppressed people of color with weapons," Darren X told the author. "The complete agenda involves going into our communities and educating our people on federal, state and local gun laws. We want to stop fratricide, genocide — all the 'cides.' "

In August, after police fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., the Huey P. Newton Gun Club staged its first armed march in Dixon Circle, a predominantly black Dallas neighborhood where police killed James Harper, an unarmed black man, in 2012, according to the article.

Since that march, the group's membership has grown and donations have "poured" in, although another march in October drew only a dozen participants, eight of whom had weapons, the article said.

After the October march, the group delivered a Dallas Communities Organizing for Change report on police violence to the U.S. Attorney's Office downtown, according to VICE.