Politics and Protest Have No Place at Next Week's Dallas Police Memorial

We're but 58 days from that grim reminder circled on the calendar: July 7, the day a lone gunman murdered four Dallas police officers and one of their DART colleagues following a protest and march through the streets of downtown. What little time has passed has not healed a wound that was reopened just last week, when Dallas Fire-Rescue paramedic William An, still recovering at Baylor University Medical Center, was critically injured by a suicidal shooter, and Officer Chase Blake, first on the scene and a close friend of the four slain cops, took shrapnel to the calf. Next Wednesday, the mourning will begin anew with the annual remembrance held at the Dallas Police Memorial in front of City Hall. A somber service under any circumstance will be freighted with grief still fresh, unprocessed. But, now, there will be anger, too, aimed at a mayor who only 10 months ago was hailed by then-President Barack Obama as someone who, with then-Chief David Brown, unified "a shaken city, a shaken department" with their "strength and grace and wisdom."  Continue reading...