Officials: No charges for officers who killed Dallas sniper
DALLAS — A grand jury has declined to bring charges against Dallas police officers who used a bomb-carrying robot to kill a sniper who had just gunned down five officers during a downtown rally, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The Dallas County District Attorney’s office said in a release that investigators presented their findings to a grand jury more than a year after the July 7, 2016, attack by Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old Army reservist who investigators said was upset by recent shootings of black men by police.
The use of the robot to detonate a pound of C4 explosives near Johnson, killing him, was a first for a U.S. police department.
David Brown, who was the police chief at the time and has since retired, said shortly after Johnson was killed that he made the decision to use the robot because negotiations had failed and he wanted to end the continued threat to officers. Police said they believed Johnson was also wounded by gunfire, but few details about the police response that night have been shared with the public.