Dallas shooter taunted, laughed, sang during stand-off with cops

The shooter who killed five Dallas police officers taunted authorities during two hours of negotiations, laughing at them, singing and at one point asking how many officers he had shot, Police Chief David Brown said Sunday.

Releasing chilling new details of the attack by Micah Johnson, police chief David Brown said Johnson taunted police as he negotiated with them during an hours long standoff – “playing games, laughing at us, singing” -- asking how many cops he had killed and saying he wanted to take out more.

Johnson, who was apparently wounded in a shootout with police, wrote the letters “RB” and other markings, which investigators are trying to decipher by looking through evidence from Johnson’s suburban Dallas home, Brown said.

Johnson, who was black, also insisted on speaking only to a black police officer when he began negotiating with the police, Brown said.

“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to target law enforcement -- make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of colour,” Brown said in an interview.

Brown said police found bomb-making materials and a journal at the shooter’s home that suggested he’d been practising detonations and appeared ready to take aim at larger targets.

He said the shooter, Micah Johnson, “obviously had some delusion. There was quite a bit of rambling in the journal that’s hard to decipher”.

Johnson was a private in the army reserve and had served in Afghanistan.

He knew the route of the Dallas march, and his military training apparently benefited him during the shooting, as he effectively triangulated police and started taking them out with his high caliber rifle, Brown said.