Dallas attack spurred by decades-long abuse of blacks: Analyst

Decades-long abuse of African Americans by US police has created a great deal of hate and resentment toward law enforcement in the country, says a political commentator.

The shooting death of five officers in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday was “a result of the recent police murders,” social justice activist Myles Hoenig said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

He said the Dallas attacker, who was identified as Army reservist Micah Xavier Johnson, “is being condemned and everyone is now seeing the police as the victim, rather than the instigators.”

Johnson targeted police in Dallas during a peaceful protest against police violence, allegedly citing revenge for recent police shootings as a motive.

The incident came during one of several protests across the country against the killing of two black men by police this week.

The fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota were the latest in a long string of killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter social movement.

“Today, we are not seeing a spate of police killings,” Hoenig said. “What we are seeing is the proof through modern video technology a problem that has been going on for decades, the abuse of black and poor Americans by police departments all over the country.”

“The two most recent murders by the police are just a continuation and the demonstrations and public pronouncements of horror and sorrow are part of the script,” he added.

He said “the response is fairly new” and what caused the Dallas incident was “the hate that has been built up” through decades.

Hoeing further explained that the “murder of Castile showed how racist the society is and in particular, the police.”

Castile, 32, was shot inside his car on Wednesday during a traffic stop as he tried to reach for his driver’s license.

The video, captured after he was shot, showed a woman sitting in the car next to Castile who was covered with blood and a police officer standing outside the car pointing his gun at him.

Hoenig said that although Castile’s death “has been condemned by nearly all people in the country, that the police felt empowered to kill him shows the extent of the racism that exists in this country.”