A peaceful protest against police violence turned deadly in Dallas in July 2016, when a lone gunman murdered five officers, wounding nine others along with two civilians. This deeply reported article combines a strong narrative with maps, drawings, photographs, videos and other alternative story forms, to focus on the SWAT team's hours-long effort to subdue the heavily armed shooter after he was trapped in a school – long enough to explode a bomb near him.
From Dallas News:
Larry Gordon could hear the fear in his own voice, and he wondered if the gunman could hear it, too. In standoff negotiations, tone is everything. He needed this guy to know he was heard, feel he was understood.
But this had lasted too many hours, and the tension, like the burnt smell of gunfire in the air, was overwhelming. Gordon’s knees ached from crouching. Pain shot through his shoulders and the back of his neck — either from stress, or the weight of his ceramic-plated vest, or both.
He usually felt calm, even a little bored, in negotiations. Most involved desperate men with small guns and no real plan. This guy, separated from Gordon by a few dozen feet and a couple of sheetrock walls, had a semiautomatic rifle and a clearly defined endgame. The cops weren’t intervening in some private drama he’d set in motion. The way the gunman saw it, he was doing the intervening. He’d come for them.
