That’s a strange way of noting that his son murdered a police officer and then died in a shoot out.
Is he really the best man to lead the Dallas Police Department or is he an affirmative action hire over his head?
Only a woman (Theresa Vargas in this case for the WP) could write like this:
Few people understand loss better than David Brown, the Dallas police chief who stood before television cameras Friday morning and said, “We are heartbroken.”
Even before five police officers were killed during a Black Lives Matter protest Thursday where seven other people were wounded, Brown had become intimate with loss, pummeled by it, again and again, in his career and personal life.
Before this week, violence had already taken from him a former partner, a brother, a son.
When Brown was named police chief in 2010, he entered the position with a reputation of being an intense and introspective leader, according to a Dallas Morning News profile, which quoted him as telling a friend, “You know I’m a loner, man.” But if he was a quiet force, his personal pain was very public — and would become even more so after the son who bore his name killed a police officer and another man before being fatally shot more than a dozen times.
At the time, in June 2010, Brown was only seven weeks into his new position as chief and again spoke of heartache, this time in a statement to his own officers.
“The past few days have been very troubling and emotional for all of us,” he told his 3,600-member department, according to an article by The Guardian. “My family has not only lost a son, but a fellow police officer and a private citizen lost their lives at the hands of our son. That hurts so deeply I cannot adequately express the sadness I feel inside my heart.”
Brown’s son, who was also named David and was 27 years old at the time, had been reported earlier that day when his girlfriend called police to say he was having “a psychotic breakdown” and had hit her, according to media reports. Hours later, the younger Brown shot 23-year-old Jeremy McMillian as he drove with his girlfriend and two children in Lancaster, Tex., a suburb of Dallas. When a Lancaster police officer, 37-year-old Craig Shaw, responded to the shooting, the younger Brown shot and killed him, too…
In 1991, Brown’s younger brother Kelvin was killed by drug dealers. He doesn’t talk much about the loss, but he acknowledged that it remains a piece of him.
