A Year Later, What Should We Remember About the Downtown Shooting?

One year ago today, five Dallas officers were shot and killed while watching over a peaceful downtown rally against police brutality. Nine other officers and two civilians were wounded in the hail of bullets. Moments before, some marchers had chatted with officers. Others took photos with them. Many of the cops left their ballistic vests in the back seats of their cruisers. The evening had been one of peace and proclamation.

Now, a dozen months later, it is important to honor the ones we lost, to comfort the families who remain in pain, and to put into record the ones who selflessly gave their energy—sometimes at the risk of their own lives—to help. So we first remember the fallen: Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson, Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, Sgt. Michael Smith, Ofc. Patrick Zamarripa, and Ofc. Michael Krol.

Their names are now etched into six elevated stone plaques in the Design District, arranged in a circle on a trail near the Trinity River. There is a plaque for each officer who lost his life, and another dedicated to the narrative of the day attributed to Assistant Chief Gary Tittle. The simplest etching of all reads: “Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

A great many also tried to save them from that sacrifice. Fellow officers shoved the fallen into damaged cop cars and sped them to nearby hospitals, sometimes riding on the rims of their police cruisers. Some were taken to Parkland, others to Baylor.

People like Drs. Laura Bruce Petrey and Michael Foreman organized the care teams at Baylor, which saw emergency staffers leave their homes to return to work to care for the victims. There were people like Dr. Alex Eastman, DPD’s deputy medical director and the trauma chief at Parkland, who was downtown when the shooting started and found himself at the public hospital through the rest of the night. There was Dr. Brian Williams, the trauma surgeon in charge of the emergency room that night last year, who bounced between trauma rooms trying to save the officers who had arrived there. When he couldn’t, it fell to him to tell family members that their loved ones had passed.

“Does it always have to be that hatred forces us to love?”

Imam Omar Suleiman

There were civilian victims like Shetamia Taylor, who brought four of her five children downtown to show them a peaceful protest of police violence. She would be shot in the leg and then pull her 15-year-old son, Andrew, down to the ground, shielding him with her body. An officer would later take them to Baylor; they survived.

Hospital psychologists stood at the ready, both for police and families but also for the caregivers. Their workload extended far beyond the horror of the shooting. When the first officer arrived at Parkland, there were already 300 patients in the emergency department. Another 134 would come in as the police were treated.

In the days that followed, community leaders leaned on unity. Hours after downtown got the all-clear, hundreds of mourners packed into the sun-drenched Thanks-Giving square at noon. They heard from Rabbi David Stern. They listened to Bishop TD Jakes. “We refuse to hate each other,” declared Pastor Bryan Carter. “Look around,” said Imam Omar Suleiman. “This is the America we want.”

Institutional racism, inequality, segregation, police brutality, economic disparity—they all had their tentacles wrapped around some part of this. Dallas didn’t run from it. At Parkland’s first press conference after the shooting, Dr. Williams dove right in, saying he’s been troubled by the shootings by police of unarmed black men like Philando Castile in Minnesota. He exposed his own personal conflict: “I want the Dallas police to see me, a black man, and understand that I support you, I will defend you, and I will care for you. That doesn’t mean that I do not fear you.”

The people we looked to knew we had to talk about these issues if we were ever wanted a hope to escape this sort of ideological violence in the future. These things are far from fixed a year later, but they became, for a time, part of the public lexicon. Suleiman, as Zac Crain noted in his July issue profile of him, took on the cadence of a preacher in highlighting both the division in our communities and the frustrating reality that we only come together under tragic circumstances: “Does it always have to be that hatred forces us to love?”

It’s natural to drift apart after some time, fall back into our old routines. After all, the city gradually shifted its focus toward a crisis of a different sort, this one involving a vanishing police and fire pension that threatened the livelihoods of law enforcement and the safety of civilians. It took months of maneuvering until a deal was cut with the Texas Legislature. If anything, it is as remarkable as it is expected at how quickly the shooting faded in our rearview.

But a year later, the clearest thing that we can look back upon is the unity that settled in afterward, the extraordinary people from so many backgrounds with whom we share this city who gave themselves valiantly for their community. This goes to the police officers who showed up to work that day, the healthcare workers who snapped into action, the city officials who disseminated information and kept the public abreast, the protestors who sought to bring a voice to the voiceless, and the faith leaders who welcomed all who needed consolation and introspection with open arms regardless of what religion you were. There are the people who made donations honoring the victims, those who brought their signs and flowers and balloons to Dallas police headquarters afterward, and others who made sure those items were archived at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library.

That shooter tried to create chaos with his guns; the city bound together to prevent that from happening. That’s something we must never forget as July 7, 2016 gets further and further away.