Domestic Terror in Dallas

The group that committed the vile police shooting in Dallas was a group called "Black Knights Sniper Assassins" which seems to be a sub-group of "Black Power Political Organization." According to news sources, the BPPO showed up on social media about five months ago, posting pictures of what appear to be black Africans with sniper rifles shooting the weapons, hiding in bushes, and working as such military members would do.

The suspect killed by police officers, Micah X Johnson, said that he was “upset about the Black Lives Matter [protest], about recent police shootings, upset at white people, and he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers."

What caught my eye was the "upset about the Black Lives Matter [protest]." This may be some extreme group, as the Nation of Islam was back in the 1960s, that decides that peaceful protest is not the means to deal with perceived problems, but violent, radical action. The BPPO was putting increasingly disturbing pictures and material on their social media feeds -- all have since been taken down, but it's unclear if it was by the media organizations or the group itself. What does seem to be clear is they do not have any known connection to Black Lives Matter, but chose this time and place to lash out in the sick, twisted way terrorists do.

Dallas police have several suspects in custody, and hopefully the local police working with the FBI can find out more about this group and locate further members. As an educated guess, as a person that studies and teaches on terrorism, I'd say this is a fringe group in the style of Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army, that used violence to forward their extremist, fringe causes.

My main concern is that we are dealing with a well organized terrorist group that had this well planned and obviously knew what they were doing. They say they will strike again, and I don't doubt that at all.

I work with retired and active police on a regular basis, and know that the vast majority of police do their job honorably, and in no way can such a twisted act or murder by the group be justified. My heartfelt condolences to the families of the five officers that were killed in their line of duty, and also to the families of the two civilians that lost their lives in this brutal act.