It was a little after 1 a.m. Friday when Dallas Police Chief David Brown told Mayor Mike Rawlings that he planned to kill the sniper who gunned down five police officers — and how he planned to do it.
The mayor and the chief had rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital to be with the families of fallen officers even as a standoff with the gunman continued downtown.
“When we got out at Parkland the chief told me, ‘OK, I’ve made the decision that we’re going to blow this guy up,'” Rawlings said Saturday.
Specifically, Brown told the mayor that officers would use a remote-controlled robot to detonate a brick of plastic explosive — C4.
Police departments across the country have been training for that very scenario for years. But this is believed to be the first time a chief has ever made the call to use explosives to kill a suspect and end a standoff.
Rawlings detailed for the first time how and when Brown made the decision — one Rawlings said he was “very happy” with, both at the time and after the mayor learned Dallas had done something no other department has done.
“As I talked to [Brown] about the upside of that decision,” the mayor said, “it sounded good to me.'”