Ledyard King

USATODAY

David O. Brown, the Dallas police chief trying to help his city heal after the deaths of five officers Thursday, knows the horror of such violence all too well: His son killed a police officer six years ago before being fatally shot himself.

Brown's son, also named David, died in a 2010 shootout with police in the suburban Dallas community of Lancaster.

He was 27 and reportedly on drugs.

The elder Brown had been on the job as chief for only seven weeks.

It was Father's Day.

And it was not the first tragedy to befall Brown, who also lost a brother and a partner to violence.

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Those personal tragedies, friends say, give him a unique — and painful — window to the horror that unfolded late Thursday when a sniper, a former Army veteran, killed five police officers and wounded several others following a peaceful protest through downtown Dallas. The 25-year-old black assassin, Micah Xavier Johnson, told negotiators he wanted to "kill white people, especially white officers."

Brown, speaking in a halting manner at times, tried to be stoic during his news conference Friday. But the 30-year veteran of the force couldn't hide the pain of seeing his officers gunned down or refrain from making the incident more than just a crime against law enforcement.

"We're hurting ... We are heartbroken," he said. "There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city."

And yet he tried.

"All I know is that this, this must stop," he continued. "This divisiveness between our police and our citizens."

Keith Humphrey, the police chief of Norman, Okla., who once held that post in Lancaster, isn't surprised Brown has been front and center in helping Dallas deal with the brutality of the killings.

“There are some people who would just shut down, and they would have others conducting the interviews,” Humphrey told The Washington Post. "But that is not David. He realized the community wants to hear from him. The nation wants to hear from him.”

Brown's string of personal tragedy began in 1988 when he responded to the shooting of an officer only to find out it was his partner and police academy classmate, Walter L. Williams. ​Brown was with Williams’s children the night they learned their father died at the hospital, according to a Dallas Morning News profile published shortly after he was named chief in 2010.

"When things like that happen and you're really close, you don't believe it for the longest time," Brown told the newspaper. "I really relate to all of those in-the-line-of-duty deaths (on a) much more personal level ... you lose a partner, you just never get over it."

Three years later, Brown lost his younger brother, Kelvin, when drug dealers killed him in the Phoenix area.

Then in 2010, it was his son and namesake.

News reports at the time indicate the younger Brown was "behaving erratically" at the apartment complex where the shootings occurred in Lancaster. Wearing boxers, sunglasses and no shoes, Brown apparently killed a man who had just pulled into the complex in his car with his wife and children. When officer Craig Shaw arrived on the scene, Brown shot him dead before officers returned fire and killed the shooter.

Afterward, Brown personally met with the families of the two men his son killed.

The killings in Dallas on Thursday come amid growing unrest between minorities and law enforcement agencies following a spate of incidents where police officers have shot blacks.

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During his news conference Friday, Brown, who is black, seemed to address the entire country when he urged the public to consider the dangerous and often under-appreciated job police officers perform.

"Please join me in applauding these brave men and women who do this job under great scrutiny, under great vulnerability, who literally risk their lives to protect our democracy," he said. "We don't feel much support most days. Let's not make today most days."

Humphrey said he's proud of how Brown has handled himself in the face of such grief and shock.

“He is setting an example to chiefs all over the nation of what resilience is and how to help your officers get through these tragedies,” Humphrey told The Washington Post. “He’s a true leader.”