8 July 13-19, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The biggest bombshell of the session came when Attorney General Ken Paxton, a McKinney resident, was overwhelm- ingly impeached in the House and sus- pended from his duties, pending a formal impeachment hearing by the Senate. Over the course of a whirlwind couple of days during the week leading up to Memorial Day weekend, Paxton and Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan faced off in a war of words. Paxton called for the speaker to resign after a video showed Phelan appearing to slur his words on the House floor. Shortly thereafter, word got out that a hearing would commence re- garding a deep-dive investigation into Paxton and the circumstances involving his $3.3-million settlement of a whistle- blower lawsuit against his office. It was a Republican v. Republican power battle of the highest order. We’ll soon know whether 2023 will end without Paxton occupying the seat he’s managed to hold a firm grip on through mul- tiple elections and just as many controver- sies. ▼ POLICE ‘KILLER ROBOTS’ MANY WONDERED IF BOMB- EQUIPPED ROBOTS WERE A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME AFTER DALLAS POLICE USED ONE TO KILL MICAH ZAVIER JOHNSON. BY KELLY DEARMORE T hroughout the second week of July 2016, headlines from around the country asked a wide range of ques- tions raised by the deadly July 7 attack on police in downtown Dallas by Micah Xavier Johnson. The 25-year-old Johnson killed five officers and injured nine others over his reported anger about several high-profile cases involving the killing of black men by white police officers across the United States. Similar to how the country seemed to be ready to explode during the pandemic summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, the summer of 2016 had a wave of killings at the hands of law en- forcement. A number of cases, including the killing of Alton Sterling by police in Baton Rouge on July 5, 2016, seemed to light a fuse in Johnson that detonated in the form of his orchestrated, murderous ambush. But a literal explosive also went off that night in Dallas. In the process of an hour-long standoff between police and Johnson in an El Centro College building, Johnson presented him- self as a well-armed revolutionary who had planted bombs in other parts of the city. De- ploying a robot packed with a pound of C-4 explosive, police remotely detonated the bomb, killing Johnson immediately. “Police said they came up with the deadly plan in less than 20 minutes, after Johnson said that ‘the end was coming’ and negotiations with him broke down,” the Washington Post reported on July 21, 2016. Bodycam footage from an officer inside an El Centro fire escape shows just how on- the-fly the plan was. The video shows po- lice and SWAT team members discussing the need for a back-up robot in case the one selected “goes down again.” At one point a SWAT officer says, “Y’all are welcome to blow up our robot if you need to.” A police- man replies matter-of-factly, “Oh, we’re gonna blow it up.” In short order, news outlets online, in print and on television wondered if the so- called “killer robot” represented a new era in local law enforcement. Was Johnson denied due process? Was deploying a bomb-equipped robot the same as firing a police rifle? On July 9, 2016, The Associ- ated Press published an article entitled “Killer robot used by Dallas police opens ethical debate,” which ran in many outlets across the country. “‘If lethally equipped robots can be used in this situation, when else can they be used?” Elizabeth Joh, a University of Cali- fornia at Davis law professor who has fol- lowed U.S. law enforcement’s use of technology, asked in the AP article. “‘Ex- treme emergencies shouldn’t define the scope of more ordinary situations where po- lice may want to use robots that are capable of harm.” The department and Brown also re- ceived a great deal of praise for its han- dling of the attack. Three days after the downtown attack, Brown replied to the questioning and criticism of using the ex- plosive to kill Johnson, telling CNN, “And I’ll do it again if presented with the same circumstances.” The improvised decision to use a robot to carry a pound of plastic explosive to blow Johnson away was widely reported at the time as a first for a police force in the United States. And in the summer of 2016, the question of how forceful and well- armed police needed to be was a question being debated around the country. The no- tion that an unusual, extreme form of deadly force was used against a man in the wake of a Black Lives Matter protest against high-profile examples of police brutality wasn’t lost on many. Joe Pappalardo, then the editor in chief of the Observer, defended the decision by Dallas police. He saw the logic in some of the arguments being made by those who said the police should have waited Johnson out for as long as it took since he was barri- caded in, away from easy access to others. That view, however, did not address the news that Johnson had told police he had a bomb. “But then again, there’s that bomb threat,” Pappalardo wrote in 2016. “When Johnson introduced explosives into the mix, it’s hard to argue that ‘no one was in imme- diate danger.’ Any officer getting close to that part of El Centro would have been in danger of a possible explosion. That is not just some legal dodge, especially not when the emergency rooms are filled with victims and officers are trading gunshots with the perpetrator. It’s a good reason to end the standoff in a deliberate, decisive way.” But for all of the discussion surrounding the ethics or practicality of the bomb- equipped robot used by Dallas police in the months after the July 7 attack, they haven’t been much of a story since. The concerns raised by some about how many police de- partments would start using this new method have largely proven to be for naught. One reason is a simple one: money. Bomb disposal robots are not cheap. In 2018 The Dallas Morning News reported that such machines used by police in Plano and Garland cost between $160,000 and $280,000. In a 2022 Department of Justice assessment of the somewhat lower-cost Vanguard bomb robot device, it was noted that “the most critical shortcoming of bomb-disposal robots is the high cost. Most bomb squads in the United States cannot afford them.” Add the financial factor to the rare num- ber of scenarios in which blowing up an ex- pensive robot to neutralize a threat is the obvious way to go, it’s easier to see why killer robot usage has yet to proliferate in lo- cal police departments since 2016. In 2022, the San Francisco Board of Su- pervisors approved the use by police of bomb-equipped robots to kill “when risk of loss of life to members of the public or offi- cers is imminent and officers cannot sub- due the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics,” according to CNN. Naturally, the measure was de- bated heavily, but aside from its Bay Area neighbor Oakland, whose police are pursu- ing a similar policy, killer robots have not been newsworthy for some time now. In much of the coverage of San Francisco’s new policy, July 7, 2016, in Dallas is promi- nently noted. As for the Dallas police, the bomb- equipped robot remains an option should they feel it necessary to use again. In an email to the Observer, DPD spokesperson Kristin Lowman explained that Texas law allows the department to keep the bomb ro- bot option available and detailed how the Dallas police may use them. “Robots can be used on tactical opera- tions to communicate with suspects and de- escalate situations through negotiations,” Lowman states. “Their deployment inside areas that are deemed not secure increases safety for not only the public, but for our of- ficers.” In a written statement provided to the Observer, Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia remembered July 7, 2016, for the lives that were lost, not for the way in which the standoff came to an end. “The events of July 7 forever changed the Dallas Police Department. There is not a day that goes by that we do not think of our fallen,” Garcia said. “On July 7, we will all pause to remember the sacrifice our broth- ers made and those who were injured while protecting our city courageously and with honor. Each day we put on our uniform, our badge, we honor and carry on their legacy by serving our city with respect, dignity and fairness. We will never forget.” ▼ JFK FILES REJECTED AND REDACTED IS PRESIDENT BIDEN ‘WASHING HIS HANDS’ OF JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS? BY JACOB VAUGHN L ast December, President Joe Biden’s administration released more than 13,000 documents related to the No- vember 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However, some 3% of the JFK documents were still redacted or withheld from release. In a memo on June 30, the Biden Administration said it was choosing to continue to withhold some of those docu- ments. Others will be released. To date, about 99% of the documents have been re- leased. “This action reflects [President Biden’s] instruction that all information related to President Kennedy’s assassination should be released except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, ac- cording to CNN. The President John F. Kennedy Assassi- nation Records Collection Act of 1992 set a 2017 deadline for the release of all related documents, but the release has been de- layed time and again. The 2017 deadline was waived by former President Donald Trump, and the Biden Administration has continued to withhold some of the docu- ments “to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the con- duct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” On May 1, the acting archivist Unfair Park from p6 >> p10 Brian Maschino July 7 marked the seventh anniversary of the 2016 attack that killed five police officers.
