vice | One of the bleak
ironies of what happened in Dallas is that, while the city's police department has
a dismal reputation among much of the population, Dallas's police chief, David
Brown, is one of the most reform-minded in the country. Brown has overseen a recent
drop in excessive force complaints and shootings by the police—and his own son
was killed in a shootout with the police in 2010.
Darren X claims
that he and other members of the gun club had left the early in the evening, feeling
that the march was "too watered-down... they were singing church spirituals and
'We Shall Overcome'... We understand that not everyone is a militant, but it was
just not something we were interested in."
While they were
driving home, they passed police cars racing downtown, and assumed that BLM
protesters had blocked an intersection. "We had no idea police officers were
being assassinated."
Everyone, particularly
armed black gun clubs in Texas, should be worried about what will happen next—it's
possible that there will be
more attacks on police across the
country, and
potentially a dragnet or fearful, retributive clampdown against armed black
radicals.
Darren X told me
the group would continue to organize and advocate for black Second Amendment
rights, but added, "We are aware of the possibilities of what could happen...
there are thousands of white militias here in America with .50-caliber machine
guns and automatic weapons. While there is a lot of attention being directed at
the few black gun clubs, we're outnumbered 1,000 to one."
When
I asked Balogun if he was worried about what might happen next or if Huey P.
might get the brunt of blowback in the aftermath, he said he was not and would
continue to organize to get justice for the victims of people shot by the
Dallas police. He emphasized that he would be defiant if authorities tried to
peg what happened on him or members of Huey P.
"I will not cooperate with any investigation
process. I will not speak to any police, FBI... I'm not cooperating with any
police agency in the United States of America."
