In the wake of Thursday's sniper shooting that killed five law enforcement officers at a peaceful protest in Dallas, leaders in cities like Tampa are expressing concerns about the safety of their own officers.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Police Chief Eric Ward spoke to reporters at a press conference Friday morning on the political climate that seems to breed such violence, and tried to assure the public that, while the city's not immune, they're doing what they can to keep Tampa's officers and citizens safe.
“This is a sad day. It's sad for America, sad for the City of Dallas, and particularly tragic for the families of the officers who lost their lives. Our hearts go out to the city of Dallas and the families,” Buckhorn said.
The shooting capped a week in which smartphone videos surfaced of two separate incidences of police killing African-American males, one in Louisiana and one in Minnesota, despite no apparent provocation or threat. Those events are just two in a long line of police killings of unarmed African Americans, either through neglect (in the cases of Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray) or use of force (Michael Brown, Eric Garner). Activists with the group Black Lives Matter have been holding peaceful events throughout the country (like one planned for Tampa Friday evening).
The Dallas Observer reported that the expressed intent of the man who carried out the shootings was to kill white people, namely police officers.
Though Buckhorn expressed sympathy at the loss of lives at the hands of police, he stressed that changing a nationwide environment in which African Americans are being killed at the hands of police with no justification or due process takes time, and that violence should never be responded to with violence.
“It is an ugly time in America for a lot of reasons," he said. "There is a dynamic in this country that certainly I haven't seen in the 30-plus years that I have been in public life. There are reasons for that, but ultimately as a nation we've got to understand that violence is never the answer, and the only way that you combat violence is with love.”
Tampa has experienced its own tensions between police and the African-American community.
While there have been no violent upheavals since riots erupted in the wake of a 1987 police shooting, last year's revelation that Tampa police were systematically targeting African Americans on bicycles didn't exactly create a climate of trust.
Police Chief Eric Ward, who is African American and from East Tampa, took the reins of TPD in 2015, and has sought to incorporate a more community-centered policing strategy as well as complete transparency.
“We're not perfect, but we are going to move forward on measures to improve those relationships," Ward said.
Ironically, as the Washington Post noted, Dallas is one city President Obama recently commended on its efforts to ease community tensions through increased transparency.
As for the safety of police in Tampa, Ward would not go into detail about specific measures the department is taking.
“We have measures in place in Tampa that make sure our officers are safe, and the citizens are safe as well,” he said. Asked to elaborate, he added, "When we put that information out it's kind of defeating the purpose."
Social media and heated political rhetoric largely come into play here, both officials acknowledged, given how easy it is for a video or scant details to be disseminated to millions in a matter of hours, causing people to form opinions well before all of the facts are discovered and understood.
Fanning the fire, Buckhorn said, are the words of demagogues (though he didn't mention Donald Trump by name) and the lack of political will to keep dangerous weapons away from those who would use them out of malice.
“We are in an unusual place as a country, and I don't think it is helped by some of the inflammatory rhetoric, the divisive rhetoric we see, by some who aspire to run for president,” he said. “I don't think it's helpful that the United States Congress has refused to act in any way, shape or form on any type of efforts to reduce gun violence and reduce the availability of guns to people who should not have them.”
